1 - FIRST DEATH

I was killed when I was eighteen years old.

Stripped naked, bound to a stone slab, a dagger shoved up under my ribs and straight into my heart. By that point, a concoction of sacred chemicals, forced down my throat earlier, was surging through my veins. They helped keep me calm—a little bit, at least. They dulled the pain—but not as much as I'd been promised.

But more than anything else, they kept me paralyzed. This was necessary because the priest needed to be precise about where he stabbed me.

It felt like a sharp piece of ice had just entered my chest. The chill spread rapidly through my body.

The last thing I saw before I died was my father, Prime Necromancer Asathiran Asar, the High Lord of Bones.

For the first time in my life, I saw pride in his eyes.

And then death claimed me.

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What can I say about dying? Not much, I suspect; I suspect that my experience was not the norm. At the exact moment of my death, the priest, whose name was Salakan, and who had once been my tutor, used his necromantic powers to bind my soul to my body.

This was not an easy thing for him to do, and there was a great price to pay for it, although I would not know about that until later.

Nor was it easy for me.

A great, black void beckoned. Endless. Fathomless. Boundless.

It called to me. And I wanted, so very desperately, to fall into its infinite embrace. But I had been warned that this would be the case. I was prepared. And more than that, I was determined.

I couldn't die yet. I had too much to do.

I had an Autarch to kill.

A world to conquer—and to save.

And perhaps most importantly, I had gods to devour.

You will learn more about that soon.

Because I knew what the void meant—and I knew that there could be no escaping it once I entered—I pulled myself away from it. Formless, intangible, a soul lost upon the winds of undeath.

I dragged myself, inch by inch, back into my body.

And I came back to life.