Prologue

  The air in the cavern was thick. Not with dust, nor damp, but something unknown. Something that coiled unseen through the lungs, pressed against the skin like an unseen tide. Even the torches, enchanted to burn in the void-black tunnels beneath Varthan’s Descent, flickered like dying stars. Archmagus Veylor Adrastis felt the weight of it in his very bones.

  He had spent decades among the greatest scholars of the Basilisk Consortium, charting the unknown, threading the past into the present. And yet, as he stood before the door, a monolithic slab of obsidian-veined stone, humming with a resonance that had no source, he felt something foreign crawl up his spine.

  It was a door, but not merely so. It was a thing meant to be shut.

  “Magus Adrastis,” one of the attendants—a Noscari scribe, ink still drying on his fingers—spoke with hesitance. “The sigils…they resist translation. They do not match any known lexicon, not even the Pre-Imperial Tongues of the First Myrian Dynasties.”

  Veylor did not answer at first. He ran his hands over the deep etchings, tracing the curves and lines with the familiarity of a man who had spent his life pursuing the unknown. And yet, even the most obscure runic matrices of the Szannite Weavers paled in comparison to this. This was not meant to be read so simply. It was not language as mortals understood it. It was a command, a truth written into stone and time. One did not open doors such as these lightly.

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  But the Emperor had given his will, and the Taraxian Empire did not yield to the past.

  “Prepare the ritual.”

  A rustle of movement—scholars retreating, tethered stepping forward, the scent of burning oils and incantation-laced smoke filling the chamber. The Circle of Unmaking was inscribed, silver-threaded sand forming an elaborate lattice beneath their feet. A dozen voices rose in harmony, reciting the spellwork that had sundered the Sky Vaults of Ysmir, that had silenced the Star-Caller’s Tomb.

  The seals began to break. The stone groaned. Not cracked, not shattered, but screamed, as if in pain.

  The runes upon its surface began to shift, writhing like serpents, unraveling and rewriting themselves even as the spellwork forced them apart. The torches guttered, their flames twisting unnaturally, bending as if drawn toward the door. Then, sudden silence. A hush so complete that the world itself seemed to hold its breath.

  The door began to open.

  A breath of air, colder than any winter in history, older than any time mortal hands could measure, spilled forth. The tethered staggered, some collapsing to their knees, hands pressed to their heads as if their skulls would split. Veylor clenched his teeth against the sound. The sound that was not a sound, but a weight pressing into the air itself. He had experienced worse in the past and would in the future. Or so he thought.

  And then, from the darkness beyond the threshold, a voice.

  “Fresh meat. Suitable”

  And the cavern was swallowed in black.