The charcoal catches on one of the carved letters—a deep groove that cuts clear through to the stone beneath. The edge is sharp, jagged.
Sharp enough to draw blood.
"DO NOT BLEED HERE."
Brother Aldric’s warning echoes as I stare at the thin line of red welling from my fingertip. Just a scratch. Nothing serious.
But my blood hits the carved rune with a hiss.
The stone trembles.
Oh, shit.
The rune flares brilliant gold-red, drinking my blood hungrily. The light spreads, racing along the carved channels, leaping from symbol to symbol in an ever-widening spiral. The air grows thick, charged with power that makes my teeth ache and my bones hum.
Heat rises from the stone—not the gentle warmth I felt before, but something fierce and hungry. The temperature spikes so fast, sweat beads on my forehead.
The floor groans beneath my feet. Cracks spider out from the sarcophagus as whatever lies within begins to stir. The lid shifts with the sound of mountains grinding against each other.
Move. MOVE.
But my feet seem rooted as the sarcophagus lid slides open with a groan that reverberates through my bones. Smoke pours out—not the clean gray of hearth-fire, but rich, dark clouds threaded with embers and the scent of ancient burning.
My lantern gutters and dies, plunging the chamber into dancing orange firelight that seems to come from the tomb itself. Armor plates scrape against stone as whatever I’ve awakened unfolds from centuries of cursed sleep.
A hand emerges from the smoke—massive, clawed, crossed with scars that look carved by lightning. It grips the tomb’s edge with enough force to crack the stone.
Run. RUN.
But I can only watch in frozen terror as the rest of him rises.
Orc. Definitely orc, but unlike any I’ve seen in the coven’s bestiary texts. He towers at least seven feet, broad-shouldered and built for war. Gray-green skin bears the texture of old leather, scarred and weathered by centuries of violence. Ash dusts his dark hair, and more ash swirls around him in a personal storm.
His armor is blackened iron, plate and mail that has seen battles beyond counting. Cracks run through the metal, and ember-light glows in the gaps, as if forge-fire burns inside his chest.
But it’s his eyes that steal my breath.
Molten red. Not the warm red of garnets, but the deep, terrible red of forge-fire. They sweep the chamber with predatory focus before fixing on me with an intensity that makes my knees shake.
He inhales—deep, deliberate—and his expression shifts from confusion to recognition.
His lips pull back in a snarl that reveals tusks. When he speaks, his voice is the rumble of distant thunder, rough with disuse and barely contained rage.
"Blood."
The word hits me. I try to step back, but invisible chains hold me fast—the power I awakened won’t let me flee from what I’ve called up.
He moves faster than anything that size should. One moment he’s rising from the sarcophagus, the next, he’s looming over me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his scarred skin.
His hand closes around my bleeding wrist.
The world explodes into fire.
Pain lances up my arm, white-hot and merciless. The rune carved into the chamber floor flares brilliant gold-red, and magic whips around us in a living storm. My scream echoes off the stone walls as power brands itself deep into my flesh.
The mark.
I can feel it burning its pattern into my wrist—spirals and angular lines that match the ones carved into his tomb. The magic flows between us, binding, claiming, sealing whatever contract my blood just signed.
