The dead don't speak in words. They echo.
Kairo Vale first heard them on a rainy Tuesday, under the flickering light of a broken mortuary bulb. He'd been alone, as always—gloved hands sorting toe tags, earbuds playing lo-fi beats, trying to pretend he wasn't thirty-three hours without sleep. The body on the table was charred, almost unrecognizable. Third-degree burns, total tissue loss, exposure to intense magical residue. Probably another back-alley ritual gone wrong. Not his business.
Until the corpse gripped his wrist.
That was new.
No twitch, no nerve spasm. A deliberate clutch—tight, cold, and absolutely wrong.
Kairo yanked his arm back. The corpse let go. He staggered, heart in his throat. The smell of scorched meat mixed with lavender formaldehyde, and the bulb above him hummed louder. He thought maybe he'd imagined it. Maybe he'd finally snapped. Sleep deprivation could do that.
Then he saw it: an object clutched in the corpse's other hand.
A dagger—no, a shard of obsidian, slick with something that didn't look like blood. The surface pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat. And carved into its jagged edge, in lines older than time, were three simple words:
"Take me back."
----------
Kairo should have called someone. His supervisor. The police. Anyone. But something about the shard called to him—not in sound, but in instinct. Like it knew him. Like it had been waiting.
His fingers moved before his brain gave permission.
The moment his skin brushed the blade, the world inverted.
Reality folded. The mortuary lights exploded into black flame. The coldness of death wasn't a chill anymore—it was a pressure, a scream without sound. The tables, the cadavers, the floor—all melted into ash. And in that endless void stood Kairo, trembling, blade in hand.
Then came the voice.
Not loud. Not human.
"Bearer found. Ashbrand awakened."
From the ash, shapes rose. Shadows wrapped in bone. Faces without names. Echoes, clawing forward.
Kairo backed away, but there was no escape. The void was endless. The figures surrounded him.
One stepped forward.
A child.
Eyes like black stars. Skin mottled with soot. A tiny smile that didn't belong on any living face.
"You hear us," it said. "Good. That means you can bind us."
Kairo dropped the dagger.
Except it didn't fall. It merged with him—sank into his palm like ink, like fire.
Pain exploded through his body. His skin cracked. His eyes burned. He screamed, but the void swallowed his voice.
When he awoke, he was lying on the mortuary floor. The body was gone. The dagger too. Only the scorch mark remained—ash in the shape of a perfect circle.
And standing in the doorway, head tilted, was the child from the void.
Real. Tangible.
"You summoned me," the boy said.
Kairo scrambled back. "W-who are you?"
The boy grinned. "You can call me Crowboy. I'm your first."
"First what?"
"First summon."
The boy's eyes flashed. Behind him, the lights in the hallway shorted out one by one.
"You'll need more," Crowboy whispered. "The dead are waking. And they remember you, Kairo Vale."
Then he vanished.
The next morning, five more bodies went missing from the morgue.
And Kairo wasn't alone anymore.
----------
The news called it a break-in. "Cult activity," the anchor said. "Possible biohazard." The cameras caught nothing but static. No fingerprints. No footprints. No evidence at all.
But Kairo knew the truth.
He didn't sleep that night. Instead, he sat in the dark, every light off, listening to the whispering behind the walls. The murmurs of the five things that now followed him—creatures he hadn't summoned, hadn't chosen, but were bound to him all the same.
He named them without meaning to. Like the names already existed in the marrow of his memory.
Dregg. The stitched brute that shambled in and out of the shadows, always hungry.
Whimsy. The doll that giggled in corners, rearranged furniture, and whispered secrets no one should know.
Thornspine. The skeletal beast that stalked his apartment's perimeter, claws clicking on tile.
Mother Rattles. Who sang lullabies in languages he couldn't translate.
And Crowboy, who didn't speak much anymore. But when he did, it was always with a warning.
"They're watching you."
Kairo didn't know who "they" were. He didn't want to. But when he stepped outside the next morning and saw the black-suited men watching from across the street, he understood.
He was marked. Tagged. Dangerous.
The Ashbrand hadn't just awakened power.
It had declared war.
----------
That day, Kairo walked into a bookstore and bought every occult text he could find. He read about soul resonance, summon binding, Veil theory, ghost-logic, and necrocartography. Ninety-nine percent of it was trash.
But the other one percent? It started making sense.
Crowboy helped. Sort of. He refused to answer questions directly, but when Kairo guessed right, he'd nod. When Kairo was wrong, he'd disappear until nightfall.
Bit by bit, Kairo began to understand:
Necromancy wasn't about control. It was about negotiation.
The dead had memories. Emotions. Desires. You didn't command them. You bargained. You offered purpose.
The strong came willingly. The weak tried to trick you.
And somewhere out there, in the layers beyond the Veil, there were beings powerful enough to challenge gods.
Creatures that wanted to be summoned.
Creatures that would fight to stand beside him.
And only four would be worthy.
The others?
They'd do whatever it took to claw their way into a throne.
Even if it meant killing the ones already there.
----------
A week later, the first one challenged Crowboy.
Kairo woke up to the sound of shrieking—metal against bone, shadow against fire. In the alley behind his apartment, two of his summons were locked in combat. Thornspine, the skeletal wolf, had snapped. Whether from instinct or ambition, it no longer mattered.
Crowboy didn't even flinch.
He moved like smoke and ash, vanishing, reappearing. A single swipe from his shadow-forged claws split Thornspine in half. The remains burst into cinders and dissolved.
When Kairo tried to resummon Thornspine, nothing answered. The slot was gone. Thornspine was... erased.
And Crowboy?
He glowed faintly with black-blue light. His body had changed—taller, leaner, with dark wings that folded behind his back like a crow's embrace. His smile was gone.
In its place was a crown of whispers.
Thronebound.
That was the word etched into Kairo's mind. A title. A rank. A warning.
Only four could stand at the top. The rest would fight for the right.
Summoning wasn't the endgame.
It was the beginning of a war.
----------
Kairo Vale, last son of no one, bearer of the Ashbrand, was now the master of ghosts, monsters, and memories.
And every soul he called would test his strength, his resolve, and his sanity.
Because the dead don't rest.
They evolve.