I didn't go to class that morning. I couldn't. The dark veins had crept past my elbow overnight, twisting like ivy beneath my skin, pulsing in time with a rhythm that wasn't quite my own heartbeat. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the cemetery—the withered flowers, the disturbed earth, the silence that felt heavy enough to crush bones.
Instead, I went to the library. If something was choosing me, marking me, dragging me into a world I didn't understand… I needed answers. And answers were what I was hunting for.
I started with the university archives—old books, bound in leather, pages yellowed with age. I searched for anything: necromancy, dark marks, rose sigils, ancient pacts. Most of it was nonsense, folklore, fairy tales. But then, tucked away in a dusty section marked Restricted — Occult Studies, I found it.
A book bound in what looked like black leather that felt strangely warm to the touch. No author. No title. Just a single symbol embossed on the cover: a black rose with thorns wrapped around a wrist.
My breath caught. That was my mark. Exactly.
I opened it with trembling hands. The pages smelled of rain and old earth. And there, written in ink that seemed to shift color as I read—sometimes black, sometimes deep blood-red—were the words that turned my blood to ice:
The Bringer of Death walks unseen until the seal is set. One chosen in the rain, marked by the shadow, bound by the rose. The vessel does not choose the master—the master chooses the vessel. When the thorns reach the heart, the transformation is complete. The dead shall answer. The living shall fear.
I slammed the book shut, shoving it back onto the shelf as if it had burned me. But it was too late. The knowledge was already there, settling into my mind like a second memory. I wasn't being hunted. I wasn't being haunted.
I was being prepared.
That afternoon, I couldn't stay inside anymore. The walls felt too close, the air too thin. I needed to walk, to breathe, to pretend I was still just Gerie—the girl who walked home in the rain, who studied too much, who had a normal life. So I headed toward the old university cemetery. If this was where it was leading me… I would meet it halfway.
The cemetery was quiet. Too quiet. No birds sang. No wind moved through the trees. The air hung still and heavy, as if the world itself was holding its breath. I walked past row after row of weathered crosses and faded headstones until I found the fresh grave Mia had mentioned—the one where all the flowers had died.
It was worse than she'd said. The blooms were black, crumbing into dust at the slightest touch. The soil was turned over, loose and raw, as if something had clawed its way up from below. And in the center of the disturbed earth… there was a single black rose growing. Perfectly formed. Thorns sharp. Alive.
I took a step closer, drawn against my will. And then I heard it—a voice, faint and hollow, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Gerie…"
I froze. That wasn't the Necromancer. That voice… I knew that voice.
"Help us… it's so cold down here…"
My knees went weak. It was my father's voice. The one I hadn't heard since he died three years ago in that car accident.
"Don't let him use you… don't let him bring us back wrong…"
Tears blurred my vision. "Dad?" I whispered, reaching out.
"Gerie, don't—"
The voice cut off sharply. And from the shadows between the mausoleums, the cloaked figure stepped forward. It didn't run. It didn't rush. It just stood there, towering and silent, the empty hood fixed on me.
"You hear them now," it spoke inside my head, the voice deeper, older, colder than before. "The dead call to you, Gerie. They always have. You just didn't know how to listen. And soon… you will be the one who answers."
The black rose on the grave began to tremble. The soil around it cracked. And beneath the ground, something moved.
I turned and ran—not away this time, but back toward the gate, toward the light, toward anywhere that wasn't here. But as I fled, I felt it: the pull growing stronger, the thorns on my wrist burning, the voices of the dead rising up in a chorus that would follow me home.
The Necromancer wasn't just marking me. It was training me. And the dead were already waiting.