Chapter 1

Prologue A Ritual of Resurrection And then, my mind awakened. Slowly, I opened my eyes. I found myself in a room built of stone. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a bloodred magic circle was drawn on the ground. My vision was blurry, like I was in a haze. Still, having been an utterly blank slate, able to see nothing, sense nothing, and having no mind of my own until this very moment, the shift felt like I had just awoken from a dream. This, however, was much more vivid. It was almost like I’d been scooped out of the bottom of hell… Or like I’d been dragged from repose… The staggering amount of information coming to me through all five of my senses overloaded my mind. Amid the thrall of such intense confusion, a hoarse voice spoke to me. “I see you’ve awoken… You had the gift, then…flesh-man.” The voice entered my mind, seeming to permeate it. I slowly looked to my side. That was when I realized I was lying atop a raised platform. The voice’s owner was an old man who wore a black robe that seemed like night itself had taken solid form. His swarthy countenance was creased with innumerable wrinkles, and his eyes were dark and piercing. Strangely enough, he didn’t strike me as someone particularly advanced in years; while he had a thin frame, he didn’t seem weak. White hair. A bony physique. An odd mask. His hand gripped a bent, twisted staff etched with a terribly dreadful design. I didn’t understand what was happening. All I could do was watch him suspiciously as he continued—as if he’d already assumed he wouldn’t get an answer from me. “My name is Horos Kamen. A sorcerer, one who devotes himself to the mystic arts—and your lord. Come, flesh-man… Kneel.” The moment those words pricked my eardrums, an odd sensation washed over me. My body began to move of its own accord. I sat up on the platform, and with the sluggish movements of a toddling infant, I got to my feet. Then my body twisted, and my knee automatically bent. The next thing I knew, I was facing downward, kneeling before this man who called himself my lord. The scent of mold. Gray floor tiles. Finally, I realized something. …Though there was no light, I could see as clearly as if it was daytime. This wasn’t right. And with that sense of wrongness, the puzzle pieces started coming together little by little. My mind began shifting its resources—which until now had been entirely focused on processing external information—to sorting my memories. Suddenly, I felt a knocking on my skull. There was an impact but no pain. In fact, I couldn’t even feel the usual pulsation in my chest, either. Nor that churning, piercing headache that painkillers never abated—nor the sort of pain that made my insides feel like they were rotting away and melting. Without that endless agony, my mind, which had been trying to diffuse that pain for so long, was sharp, like a knife whetted only seconds ago. It might sound odd, but in that moment, after such a long time, I was normal again. And in that moment, for the first time… I felt what it was like to be human. The shock of it all left me dumbfounded. Meanwhile, the sorcerer Horos’s voice washed over me. “Flesh-man, O servant of mine. Returner from the netherworld. Unto you, nameless one, I shall bequeath a name.” …Nameless one.