I didn't breathe as the figure stepped through the shadows of my room.
He moved like smoke. Hooded, robed, with a crooked staff made of twisted bone and obsidian. A chain of silver skulls rattled around his waist. Each skull had runes carved deep into the bone—some still dripping with faint black ichor.
And his eyes glowed blue. Cold, ancient, watchful.
Not like mine.
"Cassian Vale," he said, his voice brittle like dead leaves. "You are trespassing."
I said nothing, only tightened my grip on the dagger under my cloak. A gift from a Roman centurion I had raised three nights ago. It could still cut soul-flesh.
"Who are you?" I asked, forcing my voice not to shake.
The figure tilted his head.
"I am Alaric. Bonecaller of the Sixth Vein. Warden of the Pact. And I am not your enemy—yet."
He flicked his fingers, and the shadows recoiled. Light from the fireplace seemed to shudder.
"You've awakened over thirty graves in the last ten days. You are bleeding power into the Veil. Do you even know what that means?"
I stayed quiet. I didn't.
He sighed, sounding almost tired.
"Every necromancer must sign the Pact," he continued. "To maintain balance. To pay the dead what they are owed. You have not."
"I didn't know I had to."
"Ignorance is not innocence."
He raised his hand and summoned a shade—not a zombie, not a skeleton, but something in between. It crawled from my shadow, mouth stitched, eyes leaking green flame, hissing in silent agony.
My stomach turned.
"This is what happens when debt goes unpaid," Alaric said. "Spirits rot. They twist. They hunger."
"I didn't make any deal," I snapped.
Alaric stepped forward.
"Did you not? When you took the Coin of Ephrassus, you made a choice. That coin belongs to the Vein. And the moment you touched it, you bound yourself."
His eyes narrowed.
"Unless you formalize your bond, the dead will come for you. And when they do, they will not ask nicely."
I had so many questions. Why me? What was the Pact? Why had no one warned me?
But one thought overpowered the rest.
"What happens if I sign it?" I asked.
Alaric's mouth curved into something that might've been a smile.
"You will be accepted. Watched. Protected. But you will also be… owned. Your power will be sanctioned. Regulated."
"So, I'd be a registered necromancer."
"No. You would be a servant of the bone-throne. You would answer to the Council of Thirteen. You would pay your toll in death, like the rest of us."
I clenched my jaw. I didn't like the sound of that.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then survive. If you can."
With that, Alaric turned. The shadows around him spun like a cloak.
But just before he vanished, he tossed something at my feet.
A bone ring. Engraved with the same spiral that burned on my palm.
"Wear it if you change your mind," he said. "The Council is watching."
And then he was gone.
The silence in the room returned like a punch.
I picked up the ring. Cold. Heavy. Older than the bones it was carved from.
But I didn't put it on.
Instead, I went to my summoning chamber—the old wine cellar I had converted under my mansion—and stared at the fifteen corpses standing silently in the dark. My collection. My bank. My army.
I summoned one.
A noblewoman named Lady Virella, buried with sapphires and secrets. She still wore her burial gown, and her voice echoed with a ghostly melody.
"Do you regret your death?" I asked her.
She smiled with cracked lips.
"Death is not the end, Lord Cassian. For some of us… it's the beginning of business."
That was all I needed to hear.
I wouldn't bow to a council I'd never seen.
I wouldn't hand over power I had earned.
If they wanted to claim me, they'd have to try harder.
The next day, I made my first move.
I summoned three of my strongest Revenants—an assassin, a grave-knight, and a plague doctor—and sent them to the ruins beneath Gallows Market, an ancient smuggler's crypt that, according to rumor, had the bones of a Forgotten King buried in gold.
If I could raise that king… his knowledge alone would be worth more than anything I had yet found.
But that night, only one Revenant returned.
Barely standing. Torn. Burned. Its jaw broken.
It held out a single message carved into its rotting flesh:
"You were warned."