The city lights were dim through the rain-slicked window of Xerces Vale's apartment. A flickering neon sign from the pawn shop across the street bathed the living room in a sickly red glow. Xerces sat hunched over a battered keyboard, his eyes hollow, and his fingers numb. The spreadsheet on his screen had long since blurred into nothingness.
He didn't hear the knock. Or the second one.
But he did hear the crash.
The door burst open, splinters flying. Black-clad men, masked and silent, stormed in with ruthless precision. Xerces barely had time to stand before pain exploded in his chest. A gunshot? A stab? He couldn't tell.
His vision tilted. He fell. The world grew darker, colder.
His last thought wasn't of regret or fear.
It was anger.
Anger that he died like a pawn. Meaningless. Forgotten.
When Xerces opened his eyes again, there was no light. No air. No body.
He was floating—no—anchored in a void filled with echoes and whispers. A thousand voices in a tongue that clawed at his mind.
Then, like a heartbeat, something pulsed through him. A breathless power. A word etched into the marrow of creation:
"Rise."
His senses exploded outward. He gasped—but no breath came. He reached—but no flesh met his command. Looking down, he saw only bone. Blackened. Ancient. Twisted with veins of faint green light.
Xerces Vale had been reborn.
Not as a man.
But as a Lich.
And the world he now stood in was not Earth. It was a land of sorcery, steel, and gods who had long forgotten mercy.
As he stepped from the crypt where he had awakened, an ancient crown half-buried in dust at his feet, a system window flickered before his hollow sockets:
[You have awakened as: Lich Sovereign (Undead - Mythic)]
Level: 1
Status: Weak / Soul Incomplete / Phylactery Missing
Objective: Survive. Conquer. Reclaim your Throne.
Xerces clenched a skeletal fist, emerald flame flaring in his eye sockets.
Death had not ended him.
It had merely freed him.