Velcryn and Myrrakhael shared an amused look. It was a subtle, dry exchange, the kind shared by scholars watching a lab rat navigate a maze.

  "Possession is such a... mortal concept," Velcryn purred. "The Tome does not belong to you, boy. You belong to it. You are the scabbard, not the blade."

  "But a blade is useless without a hand to wield it," Myrrakhael added, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "And it seems the grimoire has chosen its hand.”

  Velcryn drifted closer, the blue frost radiating from his skeletal frame hissing as it met the green heat of the braziers. He tilted his head, his empty sockets flaring with a sharp intensity as they fixed on Caldreth’s face.

  "The grime of the Wastes was a convenient veil," Velcryn rasped. "But even a mountain of ash cannot hide the sun forever. Look at you. The deep bronze, the gold, you finally wear the skin of your ancestors. A dangerous vanity, boy. You no longer look like a corpse from a crypt. You look like a target."

  The dungeon was silent, save for the crackle of green fire in the braziers and the faint, humming vibration of the Tome in Caldreth's hand.

  Caldreth didn't bother listening to them. The vibration of the Tome against his palm was drowning out their mockery. It was resonating with the new rhythm of his heart.

  A cold, heavy certainty settled in his chest, displacing the fear that had lived there since he woke in the crypt. It was a feeling of ancient validity. Never had the Sangrathi been rats scurrying in the dark.

  He looked at the liches. They were powerful, yes. Ancient and terrifying. But they were undead. Static.

  I am alive, Caldreth thought, the realization making his spine straighten.

  He didn't feel like a scabbard. He felt like a king returning to a usurped throne. Caldreth took a step forward, his boots clicking on the stone floor.

  A cold hand clamped onto his forearm.

  "What do you think you are doing?" Krim hissed, his voice trembling with a panic he rarely showed. The necromancer dug his heels in, his eyes darting between Caldreth and the floating figures.

  "Those are liches, Caldreth. They aren't simple death-callers or pushover wizards. They are Highborn of the Necropolis. They stripped the souls from thousands to bind themselves to this plane. You do not walk up to them."

  Caldreth looked down at Krim's hand, then up at the necromancer's face. He didn't feel the fear Krim felt. The fear was there, distant and dull, but it was buried under the humming instinct of his true nature.

  "Krim, release me," Caldreth said, tugging his arm free with a strength that surprised them both.

  He turned his crimson gaze back to Velcryn and Myrrakhael.

  "There is no reason to delay," Caldreth said, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. "If they wanted us dead, we would be ash on the floor. They want something."

  Velcryn let out a sound that might have been a chuckle, a dry rattle like stones shaking in a box.

  "Bold," the frost-wreathed lich mused. "He has a semblance of intelligence behind those piercing eyes. Most mortals would be screaming by now."

  "Or begging," Myrrakhael added, drifting lower, his green sockets flaring with hunger. "I prefer the beggars. They are softer."

  Velcryn waved a skeletal hand, silencing his brother. He floated down until he was eye-level with Caldreth, though he kept a respectful distance from the leftover static still crackling around the Tome.

  "Curiosity overrides hunger, brother," Velcryn rasped. He looked at the leather-bound grimoire. "Tell me, little one. How does a fledgling come to possess such an artifact? A sentient grimoire, bound to your very essence. The Underworld has seen very few of those."

  Caldreth looked back where Krim was hovering by the wall, trying to look invisible.

  "Join the conversation, Krim," Caldreth commanded. "You were present when it appeared, and I was dead."

  Krim swallowed hard, smoothing his tattered clothing. He stepped into the light, bowing low, a reflex of survival when facing the masters of his craft.

  "Well," Krim stammered. "Where do I begin..."

  Krim recounted the events, his voice gaining strength as he fell into the rhythm of the tale. He glossed over his travel from the Necropolis into the Wastes, focusing on his own attempt to raise Caldreth as a thrall, and the violent rupture that occurred when the Tome burst forth from the aether, cutting its way into the Underworld to bind itself to Caldreth. He told of the demons they encountered and their travels before the liches ambushed them in Hollow Canyon.

  The liches listened in silence, floating motionless like statues. They absorbed every word, their sockets fixed on Caldreth.

  When Krim finished, the silence stretched out for a long, heavy minute.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "Four hundred years," Velcryn rasped. "The Crimson Night ended in a monumental sea of blood four centuries ago. We watched the Sangrathi empire burn from afar. We thought them hunted to extinction."

  "Like rats in a cellar," Myrrakhael giggled, toying with a green flame in his palm. "Pop. Pop. Pop."

  Velcryn ignored his brother, his glacial blue sockets sliding toward Krim.

  "It is fitting that an undead found him first. Our kind were the only ones the Sangrathi could never bring to heel."

  Velcryn turned back to Caldreth, his voice dropping into a mocking reverence.

  "Your ancestors were voracious, little one. They swept across the Underworld like a plague. But there was one gate they never breached."

  Velcryn gestured toward the far north, toward the distant, unseen lands of the dead.

  "The Bastion of Oblivion."

  Krim straightened, a flicker of pride cutting through his exhaustion.

  "They tried," Velcryn stated, his eyes flaring. "Once. And they learned what every entity that has ever walked the dark lands of the Underworld has learned: The Necropolis does not fall. It is not a kingdom; it is a law of nature. The Grand Necromancer sits on a throne that has never been toppled."

  Velcryn forced the next words through gritted teeth, each one a distinct, heavy strike. "The land... of the dead... is... eternal."

  The lich turned his head, fixing on Krim with a freezing intensity.

  "It seems the Sangrathi and the lichlords have something in common. Being purged."

  Velcryn drifted closer, the air around him growing colder. "You remember, don't you, necromancer? You walked the lands of the Necropolis when the culling began."

  Krim didn't flinch. He met the lich's glare with a hardened stare.

  "I had nothing to do with the politics of the Necropolis," Krim retorted, his voice low and steady. "I was a soldier then. Nothing more. When the Grand Necromancer gave the order to rid the Necropolis of the lichlords, I followed orders. I survived."

  "Orders," Myrrakhael scoffed, the word dripping with ancient bitterness. "The shield of every executioner."

  "And the reality of every war," Krim shot back. "And here you stand, survivors, just like Caldreth and I."

  Velcryn turned away, the edges of his tattered robes swirling in an unseen wind. "We saw the tides turning during the purge. The Grand Necromancer's power was absolute; his legions endless. To stay was to perish."

  "So we sought a fresh canvas," Myrrakhael continued, his voice grating like metal on stone, dragging out the vowels as if savoring the taste of the words. "We descended upon the Infernal Wastes over a century ago. We assumed the acquisition of this land would be trivial. A grim harvest waiting for the scythe."

  "Roving bands of demons," Velcryn spat. "Disorganized. Primal. Easy to cull and easier to raise. We intended to build a new host from their corpses within a year."

  "We did not account for the sheer vulgarity of their desperation," Myrrakhael admitted, lifting a skeletal hand in a gesture of dramatic resignation. "The humans here turned out to be ferocious. They debased themselves, dealing with the demons. And their mastery of flame was an affront. A scorching brilliance we failed to respect. They reduced our masterpieces to ash before the paint could even dry."

  Velcryn interjected, his voice dropping to a dangerous, vibrating hiss. "They entombed us. We were sealed in stone coffins in the lower vaults of Nethervale, not a thousand paces from where we currently are."

  "So, let me get this straight," Krim said, his eyes twinkling with mockery. "Two lichlords of the Necropolis, masters of the dark arts, fleeing the Grand Necromancer... only to be stalemated by a bunch of desert scavengers and beasts playing with fire? That is a humiliating chapter for the history books."

  Velcryn drifted closer. "Watch your tone, Necromancer," he hissed, the icy mist in his sockets flaring with hate. "Or you will find yourself joining our ranks, serving as a husk rather than speaking as a guest."

  He turned away, his skeletal fingers twitching as if remembering the confinement.

  "We lay in darkness, fully conscious," Velcryn continued, the bitterness in his tone palpable.

  "And yet, you are free," Krim noted, his tone losing its mockery as the weight of Velcryn's words settled. "Who was foolish enough to break the seals?"

  "The wretches," Myrrakhael rasped, tilting his head in reverence. "The divinely broken. The infected."

  Velcryn nodded in agreement. "When the sickness took their minds, it left a void. They were lost, feral beasts screaming in the dark. They sought a frequency they could understand. They sensed the resonance of our power bleeding through our stone prisons."

  "They clawed through the earth for us," Myrrakhael said, a dark, sensuous satisfaction coloring his words. "They tore at the rock until their finger bones snapped and splinters of granite pierced their flesh. They shattered the wards not to liberate us, but because they were starving for a master. They sought our dark power to grant them the one thing this plague had stolen: a symphony to conduct."

  "Enough of this," Caldreth cut in, his voice sharp enough to slice through the heavy atmosphere.

  He stepped between the necromancer and the floating liches. The movement drew their eyes.

  Caldreth looked at Velcryn, his crimson eyes narrowing. "You mentioned a war. The Crimson Night. I'm not familiar with it."

  The dungeon went silent. Even the crackle of the green fire seemed to dim.

  Velcryn and Myrrakhael exchanged a look, not of amusement this time, but of genuine confusion. The frost around Velcryn's robes ceased its swirling.

  "Not familiar?" Myrrakhael repeated the concept, as if it were alien to him. "How can you be ignorant of the genocide that defined your species?"

  Caldreth's eyes flashed. "I know of this place, of Nethervale," he said, his voice hard. "I have seen it burn in my dreams. I saw demons pouring through our gates, butchering us in the streets. But that was a siege, not a war."

  He looked at Velcryn. "Who led this grand campaign you speak of?"

  "Vladar the Eternal," the lich named him. "The Lord of Blood."

  Caldreth felt a shiver run up his spine at the name.

  The Tome ripped itself from Caldreth's grasp, shooting upward. It hovered near the cavern ceiling, vibrating so intensely it blurred.

  A sound like tearing metal and screaming souls erupted from the leather, a high-pitched frequency that forced Caldreth and Krim to cover their ears in agony.

  Caldreth froze, crying out in sudden shock.

  His hand, the one that had held the Tome, spasmed uncontrollably. He watched in horror as the skin on his palm split open. A stream of his own blood was ripped forcibly from his veins, arcing through the air like a red rope to feed the hovering Tome.

  Caldreth clutched his wrist, trying to staunch the flow, but the blood defied gravity, bypassing his fingers to rush toward the Tome. He felt a wave of dizziness, a cold violation settling in his chest. The Tome had claimed what it needed.

  The Tome drank the stream of blood greedily, the shrieking noise shifting into the wet, heavy sound of a bursting artery.

  Then, the blood exploded outward.

  A thick, crimson mist began to pour from the pages, falling heavy like rain, pooling on the floor before rising. It defied gravity to sculpt a scene from the past in coagulated red light.

  They were no longer in the cavern. They were in a throne room of impossible scale, suspended over a void.

  And there he was.

  Vladar the Eternal, The Lord of Blood.