Chapter 1
Part I – Ember of Awareness
In utter dark, Velrona becomes conscious again—but without breath, body, or orientation. She registers thoughts, sensations of pressure, and an eerie, distant heartbeat. She hears the system announce itself, its voice eerily familiar.
There was no air in the tomb.
No breath to catch.
No lungs to draw it.
No wind to shape silence.
And yet silence throbbed.
It pressed in on her from all sides like fingers closing around a throat that was no longer there. At first, she mistook it for death's final sleep—a dissolving into nothingness. But the silence held something. Not peace. Not absence.
Tension.
Like breath held between lightning and the strike.
Somewhere in the deep coil of un-being, Velrona Azaeth remembered pain.
Not the searing kind. Not what they expected.
Something quieter, lonelier. The pain of realizing she was still aware.
Then came a flutter.
A splintered thought, followed by another—grains of sand rolling into shape, forming words inside her mind like hesitant raindrops falling into dry earth.
Who—?
It wasn't a voice. Not spoken. She had no throat. No tongue. But it was hers.
What… is this?
Her thoughts uncurled like fingers thawing from ice.
There was no time here, but the shape of thought returned slowly, like a ritual she'd once known by instinct. She became aware of her own awareness. Of self.
And the self was bound.
Tightly. Utterly. Not in chains or ropes, but in something deeper. She felt her limits like a coffin pressing in from all directions. She could not stretch. Could not move. Could not twitch. If she had eyelids, they were fused shut.
She existed, yes—but inside a cage of herself.
Then came the voice.
It was not hers.
It was inside her but did not belong to her.
"Dead Woman's System initializing."
Not a whisper. Not a dream. A statement, wrapped in warmth that made her skin crawl.
"Host: Velrona Azaeth — confirmed."
"Consciousness integrity: 72%."
"State: Sub-bound spectral override. Warning: No viable flesh."
The tone was feminine. Even affectionate. And that frightened her more than the tomb.
She hadn't heard her own name spoken aloud since—
No.
Not aloud. Not really. There was no sound here. The voice wasn't external. It spoke directly through the fold of thought.
Velrona tried to answer. To reject. To scream.
Nothing came.
Her tongue was gone. Her mouth was meat. Her lungs were ash.
But the name still echoed.
Velrona Azaeth.
So they remembered her, even here.
Or… perhaps only this thing remembered. This System.
"System?" she tried to think. "What… are you?"
"Daily Draw initializing."
It was like ice water pouring into her temples.
"Memory-match: Subject #447 – Isth. Male. Age: 63."
"Profession: Spirit Beggar."
"Cause of death: Asphyxiation. Mercy protocol. Executed by host."
"Date: Second Coldmonth, Year 2."
"Draw result: Spirit Threading — Minor Sensory Tether."
The name rattled something loose inside her. Isth.
He had been sick. Dying. Eyes filmy, voice thin as prayer-smoke. He'd clung to her wrist and begged for release. She had done it herself, hands wrapped around his throat until he stilled.
It was supposed to be an act of mercy.
Now, years later—or was it days?—she was given something from him.
A trade?
A curse?
Her consciousness twisted with the sensation of… expansion.
Not physical. Not pain.
More like… vision through fingertips.
She couldn't see with eyes. But she could feel now—presence.
Three sparks.
Dim. Small. Dead. But close.
One large, heavy.
One twisted—crumpled like a broken chair.
And one… faintly warm.
The warm one was moving. Slightly. Or had been, recently. The echoes of life hadn't fled fully.
She turned her awareness toward it.
A rodent.
No—not even that generous. A mouse. Small, twitchy, with bones like reeds and blood already drying.
It was the only thing in the tomb she could reach.
The only thing she might use.
Velrona focused. Or tried to. Focusing felt like reaching with hands bound behind her back. She brushed against the mouse's essence—a tangle of half-dormant nerves and the final memory of movement. Weak. Frightened.
She knew how to be that.
She had once taught fear to others. Now she would learn it from a mouse.
"Begin possession?" she thought.
"Do I even… know how?"
System: Spirit Threading enabled. Anchor soul-tether. Stabilize pulse-echo. Breath inheritance unnecessary. Begin overlay.
The instructions weren't helpful.
They were inevitable.
Velrona pulled.
Not with strength. With will.
She willed herself into the thing, knitting her presence across the gaps in its little corpse.
One thread at a time.
It was like threading her soul through a sewing needle made of pain.
The first twitch came suddenly—the right foreleg.
The second: the eyelid.
Then the jaw. The chest. The hind limbs.
It spasmed.
Then lay still.
Then shivered.
Velrona felt its ribcage collapse under her grip, and she adjusted—gingerly. She leaned into the body, as though slipping into an old glove, one that had been gnawed and forgotten in a drawer.
Light.
Blurry, grainy, but light.
Through pin-sized eyes, the world opened—shards of cracked stone, burnt bones, the warped shadows cast by half-rotted tapestries.
She had eyes.
Not hers. Not truly. But eyes.
The crypt.
Her crypt.
The walls were blackened from fire—her fire. The ceiling was half-caved. A bronze mask—hers, melted and curled—lay embedded in what had once been an altar. Bones scattered in arcs. The air shimmered with spirit residue—some hers, some stolen.
And there—on a stone dais, behind twisted bars of ritual iron—lay the corpse of Velrona Azaeth.
What remained of her.
The hair was scorched to thread. The skin was blistered beyond recognition. The hands were clutched in front of her chest in a binding gesture of finality.
And the eyes…
Gone.
The sockets were filled with obsidian beads—markings of a traitor-saint.
Velrona stared at herself from the mouse's eyes and felt nothing.
No grief. No anger. Only a vast detachment.
That wasn't her.
Not anymore.
She was this. Spirit stitched through a rodent's nerves. A memory leaking through an abandoned temple.
Something scraped above.
The mouse's ears twitched, and so did Velrona's consciousness.
Stone shifted. Footsteps.
Someone was prying open the tomb.
Not a disciple. She would recognize their rhythm.
No. These steps were eager. Greedy.
Grave robbers.
Velrona's awareness coiled tight. The system whispered nothing more, but she knew instinctively: if they breached the crypt and saw what was inside—if they took anything—the ritual bindings might be broken.
She might be cast into nothingness.
Or worse—trapped here, aware, forever.
She had one body. One tether. One chance.
And a fresh corpse was about to arrive.