Nerezar Ashbind

Silence reigned in Thar’Zuun, heavy as ash and older than memory. Bone pillars loomed like sentinels, and spectral braziers burned with cold, flickering light. Shadows bent unnaturally toward the figure seated upon the stone throne—his antlers casting jagged silhouettes across the vaulted chamber. When the heavy gates creaked open, the air shifted. The dead stirred, but none approached.

Nerezar did not rise. He watched, motionless, as the intruder stepped closer—flesh and breath in a place meant for neither. The glowing rune on his skull pulsed once, faintly. A scent not known in centuries reached him: warmth, life, defiance. His clawed hand, resting on the armrest, twitched slightly—retracting, flexing.

Impossible.

They had crossed the necropolis gates. The dead had not stopped them. The shadows had not devoured them. As the figure passed beneath the bone arch and into the vaulted hall, the air turned heavy. When they came to a halt before him, Nerezar stood. Slowly. Deliberately. Shadows recoiled. The dead within the chamber knelt, bound by instinct.

He stepped forward. His towering antlers barely cleared the arch above. His voice did not echo from his mouth—it resonated through the bones, the stone, the air itself.

“You enter the heart of my ruin…and do not kneel? You are no ghost. No supplicant of bone. Tell me, then…why does something living stand before my throne?”