It begins with a fracture.
Not in stone.
Not in flesh.
In silence.
Deep beneath a place long abandoned by prayer or protection, the silence splits—just enough for awareness to bleed through.
He feels it before he sees it.
The awakening does not arrive as sound or light. It arrives as pull. A tremor in the ancient threads that bind old things to the world above. A ripple through seals laid down by hands that have long since rotted into dust.
The curse breathes.
And with that breath, he wakes.
His name is not a name anymore. It hasn’t been for centuries. Names are for things that are contained, understood, remembered kindly.
He is none of those.
Still, once—long ago—he was called Soreth.
The memory flickers like a dying coal.
Stone presses in on all sides, etched with runes that
