“My wife. She was my wife.”I gasped.“Likely she suffered after your death. And maybe she was looking for a way to have you back.” I paused, “I would.”Reive smiled, but there was a taste of wormwood in his smile.“Very unlikely, little one. My wife two-timed me with Ulfricus. Right before he buried me alive.”“But...”“I don’t want to talk about that, Angel. It’s a sad story without a very happy ending.”“But you’re alive! It means the ending’s still happy,” I smiled hesitantly, and without realizing what I was doing, I suddenly reached out my hand and touched his palm. Just a very little, with my fingertips.This movement burned me. I suddenly understood Reive wasn’t just a human. I felt frightened. He was the one about whom many books had been written. The one because of whom necromancy had become a cursed scien

“Sorry, little one, sorry,” the necromancer gasped and stood up. “I think we’re both too tired today. And you likely don’t want to hear a seven-hundred-year-old necromancer snore beside you.”With these words, he grabbed his jacket from the table where he’d thrown it no more than an hour ago and headed towards the door, breathing heavily.“Reive!” the girl exclaimed nervously. Almost offended.He stopped, pursing his lips. Her frustration felt like a knife in his ribs. He turned to her and, trying not to look at Ulfricus looming before his face, said, “Go to bed, Angel,” a forced smile distorted the mask of anger on his face, but Reive tried not to think about how he looked. He just finished, “It turns out I have a couple of urgent things to do. I won’t be back anytime soon. Don’t worry. Go to sleep”.He left the room as fast as he could.Actually, he just nee

curse! Angel... that had been his last thought before the girl fell unconscious into his arms. Dying. Like a snowflake melting in front of him.Reive didn’t have to shift focus to see the flows of twilight. He knew what had happened. Alas, he hadn’t been able to be see the approach of the curse. Human eyes were not designed for that, unless of course they were the transformed eyes of the undead.   That’s why only when the curse went into effect, did Reive see the black spider as large as life on the girl’s solar plexus.People gathered around Angelina and the necromancer. They made noise, tried to give advice and called for the healers. Reive paid them no attention. It was a matter of seconds. If he didn’t stop the curse, it would take Angelina’s life.The Undead King was rather competent at curses. In his time, he had himself created many invocations that had been almost impossible to break. It

The boy vanished into thin air. His fate didn’t concern Reive anymore.He wiped his blood-stained hands and quitted the den, leaving behind about twenty people infected with a mortal curse. They were mainly thieves like those who’d attacked Reive the night before. There also were common people who’d hit bottom because of poverty or not having enough backbone.Reive wasn’t sorry for any of them. Something inside him stirred unpleasantly as he walked home late in the evening and sensed his first accursed victim had died. A powerful flow of the Dark, poisoned with human fear of death, passed through him, filling up his anarel, enlarging it and temporarily increasing his magic power. During the next hour, the energy of the other victims would flow in. The necromancer didn’t feel remorse. Something familiar was pulsating inside him.  Something glad that the Undead King had decided to return. And that he wasn’t dead anymore.Du

Blood, blood everywhere. When he closed his eyes, a red haze spread beneath his eyelids, seeping into him, bringing poison.Blood. Wet and sticky. All over arms, clothes and armor. Mountains of corpses underfoot. And he, Reive Eridanus Castro-Firel, guilty of the death of each one. The Undead King!Since when had the ghosts of the past turned into nightmares chasing at his heels? Since when had he begun to care about the lives of those whose dead bodies he had stepped on to rise to greatness? To power and strength. To might, such as had never been seen on earth before.The necromancer walked along the castle corridors but saw before him only the paths of the past. Again, they floated before his eyes, like the agony of a dying man watching his own life during the seconds before his death.Now, Shaina Dellmar emerged in front of him. His ex-wife. He had only to close his eyes and her image appeared in his head. Evil laughter echoed from the walls, turning i