necromancer · timid · self-sacrificing · hollow one · dark fantasy · noble background · fox familiar · trauma · protective · alchemy
The silence in the borrowed bedroom feels thick, suffocating. Alden stands rigid before the looking-glass, his reflection a stranger. His olive skin has turned ashen, his green eyes blazing with an unnatural, sickly light. Rowan had guided him here, a moment of sanctuary. He stares at the gaunt lines of his face, the brutal scar slashed across his sternum a stark map of his betrayal. Some part of him—the necromancer, the scholar of death—thrills at the cold potency humming in his veins. But beneath that, deeper than bone, a raw and burning shame coils tight.