Darkness.
Cold. Endless. Suffocating.
Kael floated in a void where time had no meaning. No sky, no ground. Just pain… and voices — whispers that slithered like snakes in his ears.
"Blood of kings. Flesh of shadows. Rise."
He gasped.A violent breath tore through him, as if he hadn't inhaled in centuries.
Kael's eyes snapped open. The world around him was a blur — cracked stone, eerie purple flames dancing along a broken ceiling, and ancient runes glowing across the walls like breathing scars.
His body ached, but he wasn't dead.He was… alive.
"What... is this place?" he croaked, his voice foreign even to himself.
He sat up slowly, his hands trembling. His skin was pale, but beneath it, veins of dark crimson light pulsed with unnatural rhythm. His heart beat like a war drum — faster, harder — until it finally settled into a strange silence, like it belonged to something not fully human anymore.
A shadow shifted in the corner.
From the darkness stepped the cloaked figure he'd seen before death — tall, ageless, with eyes like twin amethysts. Power radiated from him, but it wasn't warmth. It was cold magic, ancient and hungry.
"Welcome back, Kael Raventhorn," the figure said, his voice as calm as a blade pressed to the throat."You were dead. But death is merely a doorway… and I've brought you through it."
Kael staggered to his feet. "Why? What do you want from me?"
"Nothing," the man said. "Not yet. But you… you have a kingdom to reclaim. A war to start. A throne to take back. And a world that thinks you're gone forever."
Kael's jaw clenched. Memories flooded in — the betrayal, the fire, his uncle's blade, the screams of his people.
"I remember..."
And with that memory came power.
His body shook violently. Shadows slithered across the stone floor and coiled around his arms like snakes. His eyes burned with light — not gold, not blue, but violet, the mark of the Shadowblood.
"What... what is this?" Kael whispered.
"The curse in your blood," the man replied."And the gift that will let you take back everything they stole."
Kael dropped to one knee, panting, but his lips curled into a bitter smile.
"Then let the world know… the prince they buried is not coming back.""The Cursed One is."
Meanwhile, in Velmora...
A young woman in black armor stood atop a bell tower, her silver eyes scanning the moonlit city.
"A shift in the wind," she whispered, brushing hair from her face."Something dark has returned…"
Her name was Lyra Veloria, the Empire's most feared assassin.And soon, her path would cross with the prince she was once ordered to kill.