The mountain groaned as if in mourning.
Deep within a keep carved into black volcanic glass, the Ash King sat upon a throne of molten iron. Flames curled lazily around his bare feet. Smoke thickened the air, but he did not cough. He hadn't drawn a natural breath in centuries.
A servant crawled across the obsidian floor, lips bloodied from silence. "My lord," he whispered, voice cracking under the heat. "The mark... it's awakened."
The king did not move. Not at first. Then his fingers twitched, chains clinking softly from his wrists—not chains of imprisonment, but self-imposed, forged to hold back the storm he could become.
"Where?" he asked.
The servant swallowed. "South. Witchwood."
The king smiled, a grim sliver of char and cruelty. "So... she stirs."
He stood. The chamber ignited. Fire licked the walls as runes etched into the glass pulsed red-hot.
"She lives," he said. "But not for long."
He approached the flame pit in the room's center. Fire cracked open like an egg, and from it emerged a skeletal creature—a bird of ash and cinder with melted feathers and hollow sockets.
"Go," the king commanded. "Find my queen before she remembers who she is."
With a screech, it obeyed.