The first sensation was cold.
Not cold like weather—cold like absence. Like the memory of something warm that no longer existed. Lucian's eyes snapped open beneath a lid of marble. He gasped, and the stone above him echoed the sound back like a second breath.
He pushed.
Dust whispered from the edges of the slab as it slid, grinding reluctantly aside. He sat up, coughing dry air. Around him: silence. The walls shimmered faintly with dark lacquer. No candles, no summoners, no skeletal attendants in parade armor.
This was not how the rite was supposed to go.
He was supposed to wake inside a royal crypt, summoned by Queen Marguerite and her endless court of bone. There should have been incense. Incantation. A choir of the almost-dead.
Instead: the Obsidian Tombs. And no one.
Lucian swung his legs over the edge of the slab, boots thudding softly against the chilled floor. The glyph was gone from his hand. The familiar hum—absent. But his memories were whole.
