Rain thrashed the world in sheets.
Reid clawed his way through the wet, black earth. His fingers were raw, caked in rot and clay. The soil clung to him like a second skin, reluctant to let him go. When he emerged, gasping into the storm, he tasted metal on his tongue.
Blood?
He peered around. He was in a graveyard which was in a state of ruin. Graves, desecrated. Bones gnawed by time and vermin. Broken stones jutted like teeth from the mud. Thunder rolled above him, dragging shadows through the clouds. Lightning cracked, stark and vicious, exposing a world half-dead, half-forgotten.
Reid stood slowly, rain washing the dirt from his body, tracing the muscles along his arms, chest, back.
This was no prince reborn. No sleeping godchild. His body was made for war—or for running from it.
He didn't know his name. Not yet. But something in him was waiting to remember.
He staggered through the graveyard, slick with mud, toward the strange disturbance ahead. A circle of scorched earth. Black candles melted to nubs. At the center: a woven blanket soaked through, crusted with symbols drawn in brown ink. Or maybe not ink at all.
Reid crouched. The symbols stirred something in him—something ancient and animal. No memory. Just heat. He took the blanket, shook off the worst of the water, and wrapped it around his naked frame. It clung to him, smelling of smoke and something bitter, chemical. Not comforting, but sufficient.
He walked, barefoot, into the storm.
No one stopped him. The dead couldn't. The living didn't know yet.
A lone path emerged from the graveyard into a thicket of trees. There was a road, or more like a trail broken and crumbled, smothered in moss. A carriage track, long abandoned. He followed it.
Rain soaked the blanket. Cold bit into his bones. Still, he walked. His body felt capable—strong. His movements natural, efficient. Whatever he had been before the grave, it had not been soft.
The word came again, unbidden.
Vadi.
It echoed inside his skull like a drumbeat. A whisper. A memory without shape. He tasted it like iron in his mouth. Was it a place? A person? A name?
He pressed on.
Further down the road, just beyond the bend, he saw a shape hunched over another. Flickers of firelight reflected off the blade as it moved through flesh. The sound: wet and fast, too familiar.
A cut-throat. Busy at work.
The corpse beneath him was still fresh. Not even stiff yet. A merchant, maybe. Satchel torn open. Rings already gone.
Reid stepped lightly.
The thief looked up too late.
Reid's hand wrapped around the man's jaw, yanking him back with preternatural force. The man tried to scream. Reid smiled. He twisted. The neck snapped clean, the body slumped into the dirt beside the one he'd already robbed. There could never be any remorse in getting rid of the scum.
Reid knelt.
The thief's clothes were rough but intact—boots, shirt, trousers, a thick leather coat. He pulled them on quickly, the blanket discarded like a cocoon shed. The coat fit snugly, as if waiting for him. In the dead man's belt: a dagger, slightly curved, bone-handled, the edge still stained red.
He held it up.
The blade gleamed in the storm.
He tucked it into his coat. This was his now. His companion. His anchor in this strange rebirth.
He rummaged through the bodies, finding a pouch of coins—six copper, one silver—and a dried strip of meat he did not trust. Still, he kept it. Hunger would find him soon.
The road continued west. Or what he thought was west. Something told him to walk that way. Not a voice. A pressure. Like the word again.
Vadi.
He said it aloud this time. The syllables rolled over his tongue like gravel.
"Vadi."
No answer came. Not from the trees. Not from the storm. But his heartbeat quickened, like the word had pulled a thread in him taut.
What was a Vadi?
He walked faster.
The trees leaned in closer. He could feel their weight, their watchfulness. Not alive, not sentient, but aware. The whole forest felt like it was holding its breath.
Reid's boots squelched in the mud, but he moved like he'd done this before. Every shift of his shoulders, every step, calculated. Muscle remembered what the mind did not. He was trained. Or forged.
Lightning flashed again—and for a moment, he saw the outline of something in the trees. Not an animal. Too tall. Gone when he looked twice. Just a trick of the eyes, he told himself. But his fingers brushed the dagger's hilt.
The path widened into a clearing with a crumbling stone waypost. Moss obscured the letters. He wiped it clean with his sleeve.
Three names.
Thane. Lyesh. Dales.
He stared at the last one.
Dales. He didn't know why, but the word felt right. A direction with gravity.
He turned toward it.
In the distance, down the trail, something moved. Too far to see clearly, but he felt it: a presence. Watching.
Reid Tzeryn didn't know who he was. Didn't know who had buried him, or summoned him back. But he would find out.
First, he had to find out what Vadi is.
And then he will find whoever had dared to bring him back from the grave.