A suffocating darkness pressed against Ezra Nacht's mind.

At first, there was nothing no sensation, no thought, just an empty void stretching into eternity. Then, a voice, cold and whispering, slithered into his consciousness.

"You do not belong here."

The words were neither heard nor spoken; they simply were, a presence settling inside his skull like a parasite.

Ezra's thoughts surged back, bringing a flood of fragmented memories. He had died. That much he was certain of. In his previous life, he had been an information broker, dealing in secrets too dangerous to exist. One moment he was decrypting a forbidden file, the next silence.

And now, he was here.

With a sharp gasp, his senses returned. The scent of damp stone, the distant hum of something unseen, and the faint, rhythmic dripping of water. He was lying on a freezing surface, his body not his own. His limbs were thinner, his skin clammy. His breathing was shallow, weak.

Ezra forced his eyes open. He was in a crypt.

Flickering lanterns cast elongated shadows across cracked stone walls. Rusting iron bars loomed over him, enclosing him in a cell.

He clenched his fists, suppressing the panic rising in his chest. Stay calm. Assess the situation.

A deep ache throbbed in his skull, and as he adjusted, knowledge that wasn't his own began to settle inside him.

This body was named Ezra Nacht. A Lamp Bearer. The weakest of all Sigil Users.

Memories surfaced fragments of a life lived in suffering. Lamp Bearers were the lowest caste, mere guides for those walking the true paths of power. They were given a single lantern, imbued with the ability to reveal paths in the dark, but possessed no combat abilities.

His breath quickened.

"I have transmigrated."

As the realization solidified, an overwhelming sense of unease washed over him. This was no ordinary world. The air itself hummed with unseen forces, and the flickering of the lanterns around him… were they moving by themselves?

No. Something else was moving in the dark.

A low, wet scratching sound echoed from beyond the iron bars. Ezra stiffened.

His instincts screamed he wasn't alone.

Slowly, he turned his head toward the source of the noise.

A figure stood just outside the cell.

No, not stood. Floated.

A man draped in tattered robes hovered inches above the ground. His face was blurred, shifting and distorting, as though the world refused to give him form. The smell of damp rot filled the cell.

And then, the figure spoke.

"You were not meant to awaken, Forsaken One."

Ezra's blood ran cold.

The crypt walls seemed to close in around him. Every instinct in his body screamed that he should not have heard those words.

And then a whisper in his mind.

"Run."

The lanterns flickered out.

Darkness swallowed the world.