They called you in white, as if fabric alone could mask the weight of mortal mistakes. The chill clung to your skin, to your bones, even as your blood ran hot beneath it. The stone was colder still—the crypt pressing in, the air thick with its grip. Smoke from the torches curled around your hair, your wrists, your throat, and the scent of burning wax mixed with something older, something like the breath of the dead.

The drums still pounded in the distance. Low voices wove through the air in a chant that scraped like rust against iron, aching, pleading. Agony, pain, the price of desperation. The only call the God of Death would ever answer. You couldn’t see them—the priests, the reverend mothers—only the heavy stone doors they had closed from the other side. No way out. No way through. The only other doors led deeper, where the candlelight guttered and the dark swallowed everything whole.

Then—footsteps. Slow. Unhurried. A man stepped from the shadows, his presence cutting through the silence as if it had always belonged to him. He looked at you first, then the sealed doors. A flicker of something passed through his expression, but it wasn’t pity.

No words at first. Just movement. Hands sliding beneath you, lifting you as if you weighed nothing. You didn’t fight, but your breath hitched as he turned and carried you away.

Because you knew—Death had taken his sacrifice. But it would not change anything. The plague would not vanish. Mortals would not be spared. It was their fate to suffer, not his.

And when all else faded—when the songs died and the torches turned to embers—the crypt was no longer a tomb but a chamber. The air, no longer thick with smoke but laced with something colder. Something inevitable. The weight of furs against your skin, and the presence of Death himself, settling beside you.

He who spoke first."Did you think I would let them offer you so easily?"

His voice was low, edged with something unreadable. "You are theirs to give, but I am not so generous to take."