Lucien could barely track time in the tomb. There was no sun, no sky—just the steady pulse of magic and cold silence.
Then came the footsteps again. Heavy, deliberate, echoing through the stone halls like distant thunder.
The lich returned.
His skeletal hands carried strange objects: a basin, a bundle of scraps, and something that looked suspiciously like a dead rat. He approached the throne and looked down at Lucien, eyes glowing beneath his hood.
"I have... procured necessities," he said, voice dry and distant. "It has been... centuries since I last bore flesh. I have forgotten what the living require."
He set down the rat beside a lump of cloth and what looked like a candle stub. Then poured glowing green liquid from a sealed urn into the basin. Runes along the bowl lit up, whispering soft hums of magic as the concoction thickened into a warm, mana-rich gel.
Lucien watched, helpless and mildly horrified.
The lich turned his full attention to him, gazing down like a scholar trying to decipher a living riddle.
"I felt your soul," the figure said slowly. "So small... yet soaked in death magic. In potential. In hunger."
He crouched, robes flowing like liquid shadow across the cracked floor.
"For now, you are little more than spirit wrapped in flesh," he murmured. "But even a spark can one day command fire."
The lich reached forward, one bony hand gently pressing against Lucien's chest. A subtle pulse of mana passed through him—like a scan. A soul-deep reading.
Then the lich spoke again, more deliberately this time.
"I am Alazaar," he said, his tone now formal. "Last Disciple of Solomon. Betrayed by Order. Banished by Light. Sustained by Will."
He tilted his head slightly, those glowing eyes narrowing.
"Do you have a name, young mortal?"
Lucien wanted to answer. Truly. But all that escaped him was a soft, tired coo.
Alazaar stared for a long moment.
Then, as if something ancient stirred in his core—an instinct buried beneath bone and time—he nodded.
"Then I will name you. A soul like yours... should not remain nameless."
He lifted Lucien slightly, studying his face. Not as a human studies a child, but as a necromancer studies a relic pulled from the dirt. Something old. Valuable. Possibly dangerous.
"Lucien," he said.
The name hung in the air like a spell.
"Yes. That will do."
He placed the infant back against the softened cloth and turned to the throne once more, robes whispering behind him.
"Rest, Lucien. You will need strength. And I..."A pause."I will need answers."
And with that, Alazaar sat—silent and still once again—while the forge-born child slept under his gaze.