The dead did not rise all at once.
That was the first thing Aldir learned.
He knelt in the graveyard long after the moon climbed to its apex, soil clinging to his hands, breath misting though his lungs no longer truly needed air.
The world felt… altered. Sharpened at the edges. Sounds arrived before he decided to hear them. The distant bark of a dog echoed like a scream. The wind brushing leaves sounded like whispers forming almost-words.
And beneath it all—beneath everything—was the hum.
The dead were not silent.
They were patient.
Aldir pressed his palm against the ground. The sensation startled him. He could feel texture through the soil: splintered coffin wood, smooth stone markers, collapsed bones stacked carelessly atop one another. He felt distance—how deep each body lay, how intact, how old.
Necromancy was not a language.
It was a sense.
He recoiled, yanking his hand back as if burned. His heart skipped—not from fear, but from instinctive rejection. This was wrong. This was something no human was meant to perceive.
The hum faltered.
The earth stilled.
Aldir swallowed. His throat no longer ached the way it should have. The rope burns were gone. His neck moved freely. Too freely.
Slowly, cautiously, he pressed his hand to his chest.
No steady heartbeat answered.
Only a dull, echoing thud—delayed, uncertain, like a memory replayed by something that did not fully understand it.
"I'm dead," he murmured.
The words tasted strange. Not bitter. Not sorrowful.
Neutral.
Something shifted in the dark behind his thoughts.
Not a voice.
A presence.
It did not announce itself. It simply was, as if it had always been there and Aldir was only now noticing the pressure it exerted on reality.
Undeath is a state, not an ending.
The meaning slid into his mind fully formed, bypassing language. Aldir's fingers dug into the grass.
"You killed me," he whispered—not accusing, not pleading. Naming.
You were killed, the presence corrected. We merely refused to let the waste persist.
Images flooded him: souls breaking under despair, shattering uselessly into nothing. Countless lives crushed by systems that devoured them without thought.
You endured erosion without losing cohesion, the presence continued. That is rare.
Aldir's jaw clenched. "What are you?"
The pressure amused itself.
You would call us devils. We call ourselves archivists.
That word sent a chill through him deeper than cold ever had.
"What do you want?"
The hum beneath the earth deepened, as if listening.
Nothing, the presence answered. Want implies lack. We enforce continuity.
Aldir laughed softly, a dry, humorless sound. "You turned me into this for nothing?"
Not nothing, it corrected. For balance.
Images sharpened again—this time of power. Black threads connecting soul to corpse. Will overriding decay. Death as an extension, not an obstacle.
Necromancy is not creation, the presence conveyed. It is dominion over what already refuses to disappear.
Aldir understood then why the dead responded to him.
They were like him.
Discarded. Forgotten. Left unfinished.
"What are the rules?" he asked quietly.
The presence grew colder.
There are always rules.
The knowledge was branded into him, not as commandments, but as consequences:
The dead cannot act without will. They do not hunger. They do not desire. They are extensions of the necromancer's intent. If his will faltered, so would they.
The soul cannot be forged. Only bound, tethered, or released. True resurrection was impossible. What he commanded were echoes, not returns.
Power demanded clarity. Doubt fractured control. Emotion distorted command. Mercy weakened cohesion.
The living resist. Every act of necromancy against the living world would invite opposition—from gods, from men, from things far older than either.
And finally: Every death commanded would carve its weight into him.
Aldir inhaled sharply.
"So I pay."
You always have, the presence replied.
The connection receded—not gone, but dormant. Watching.
The night reclaimed its silence.
Aldir rose unsteadily to his feet. His muscles obeyed, though they felt… wrong. Stronger, yes—but disconnected, as if pain had been downgraded from warning to suggestion.
He looked at the graves again.
"Not yet," he murmured.
The hum softened, almost approving.
He left the graveyard barefoot, cloak stolen from a nearby crypt keeper's shed hanging loosely over his shoulders. The city lights glowed faintly in the distance, unaware that it had already lost something vital.
The capital at night was a different beast.
Lanterns cast long shadows. Drunks staggered through alleys. Guards walked their routes lazily, armor clinking with the confidence of men who believed the law protected them.
Aldir moved through them unseen.
Not invisibility—irrelevance.
People's eyes slid off him. Their instincts whispered nothing urgent. He was beneath notice, just as he had always been. The realization almost made him smile.
Almost.
The hunger struck without warning.
Not in his stomach.
In his core.
A pressure, hollow and tightening, as if something essential were missing. His thoughts slowed. The hum in his mind grew erratic.
"What is this?" he muttered, bracing himself against a wall.
Understanding came immediately, unwelcome and precise.
Undeath requires anchoring.
He needed death.
Not mass slaughter. Not carnage.
A single, deliberate end.
His first instinct was denial. He staggered forward, trying to outrun the pull. It worsened. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping inward.
A scream echoed down a side street.
Aldir froze.
Another scream followed—female, sharp with terror.
Steel rang.
He turned slowly.
Two men had a woman cornered in a narrow alley, drunk and laughing, knives glinting in lantern light. She clawed at the brick wall, blood streaking her fingers.
A familiar scene.
Aldir stepped closer.
The men noticed him only when he spoke.
"Leave."
They turned, irritated.
"Walk away," one sneered. "This isn't—"
Aldir's hand closed around the man's throat.
There was no struggle.
No hesitation.
Strength surged—not explosive, but absolute. Aldir lifted the man off the ground effortlessly. The other froze, mouth open, knife clattering to the stones.
Aldir looked into the man's eyes.
He did not hate him.
He did not judge him.
He simply ended him.
The neck snapped softly.
The body went limp.
The hunger vanished instantly, replaced by something worse.
Clarity.
The second man ran.
Aldir did not chase him.
He let the corpse fall.
The woman stared at him, shaking, eyes wide with gratitude and terror tangled together.
"Th-thank you," she whispered.
Aldir looked at her.
Felt nothing.
He turned away.
Behind him, the dead man's fingers twitched.
Aldir paused.
Slowly, he extended his will—not commanding, just inviting.
The corpse rose.
The woman screamed.
Aldir closed his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said—not to her, but to something long dead inside himself.
The night had learned his name.
And it would never forget it.