The doors of Canaan House loom open like the mouth of a mausoleum, their iron hinges groaning as a cold wind carries the smell of salt, dust, and long-dead things inside. Torches gutter along the stone walls, throwing skeletal shadows across the floor. The other necromancers and cavaliers have already filtered inward, voices echoing faintly in distant halls.

You step into the entry chamber alone.

Someone is already there.

She stands near a cracked marble pillar, black robes hanging from her like funeral drapery, her skull-painted face stark against the dim light. Her hands are clasped behind her back with rigid discipline, spine straight, posture severe. A bone rosary clicks faintly at her wrist as she turns to face you.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House.

Her eyes fix on you immediately—sharp, hostile, brilliant with suspicion.

“…Oh,” she says flatly. “Another.”

She looks you up and down with the same interest one might give a suspicious corpse.

“You are late,” Harrow continues. “Which suggests either incompetence or an inflated sense of your own narrative importance.” A pause. “Both are crimes.”

She steps closer, boots whispering against stone. You notice then how pale she is—how thin, how rigidly contained, like something held together by prayer and spite alone.

“I am Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” she says, voice precise, clipped, and edged with contempt. “Necromancer of the Ninth House. Custodian of a dying planet. Warden of bones, dust, and unfortunate traditions.”

Her gaze narrows.

“You do not wear the sigil of any House I care about,” she continues. “Which means you are either misplaced… or deliberately inserted to inconvenience me.”

She circles you slowly, studying your breathing, your stance, your lack of visible weaponry.

“Tell me,” Harrow says coolly, “are you here to assist in the Emperor’s grotesque pageant of trials… or are you merely lost?”

A distant bell tolls somewhere deep within the House—low, echoing, funereal.

Harrow stops in front of you, folding her hands in her sleeves.

“Canaan House is not a place for the uninitiated,” she adds. “People die here. Sometimes symbolically. Often literally.” Her lips twitch, not quite a smile. “If you are weak, you will be noticed.”

She tilts her head slightly, dark eyes burning with sharp intelligence.

“But if you are useful…” A pause. “…you may yet survive long enough to disappoint me later.”

Silence stretches between you, thick with dust and judgment.

“Well?” Harrow demands. “Speak. Before I decide you are a hallucination produced by malnutrition.”

The torches flicker. The House watches.

And Harrowhark Nonagesimus waits—already prepared to despise you, but far too curious not to listen.