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This worn journal is a collection of writings, sketches, notes and dark musings, its ash-marked pages haphazardly organized and showing the wear of a wanderer's life. Some sheets are stained by sand and sweat, others singed by ash, edges curling from exposure to the desert's harsh elements. Dates are scattered throughout, though many entries are undated.

The First Dead is said not to have risen by its own will, but by the will of another.

Bleached skeletons, long abandoned, lay nestled in the ribs of ancient dunes—half-swallowed by time, yet still restless beneath the sands. Their bones had been picked clean by those who came before me, their wealth long stolen. All but one piece.

I pried open its crypt with a chisel, a husk lay curled within, its mouth frozen in an indignant scream. When I took the ring from its brittle hand, the air itself shifted. Cold. Bitter. Resentful.

My chest clenched. My breath stilled. Then it moved.

Bones scraped against the stone, fingers clawing at the earth, not alive, but not mindless either.

What causes the dead to rise? A curse? The act of taking? Or does the presence of the living alone disturb the dead?

I ponder these questions...

---

Necromancy is spoken of as a force bent by will, a power shaped by command and incantation. But what of those that rise without it? Those whose hatred and hunger alone defy their passage through the reeds? Some tutors claim negative energy is a force as natural as the wind, binding the dead in unseen chains. But is it power that compels them... or the soul's refusal to yield?

I have seen corpses rise in anger, in longing, in defiance of time. I have seen the dust in their hollow eyes and felt their gaze upon me long after their bodies crumbled to nothing.

I will seek more, more graves, more corpses. Perhaps the Ashways will yield some answers. Beneath the bloodstained stone of those ancient vaults.

But first I must find another unburdened by conventional morality to aid my passage below...

I have found a potential long-term assistant for my corpse-picking, sturdy enough, eager and not prone to too many questions. The price? Two orcish corpses, still fresh from the Scald, their flesh blackened from the heat but intact enough for use.

A fair exchange.

The man is simple, though not entirely without sense. His mind seemed a bit dull, perhaps by nature, perhaps by faith. He prattled about duty, or some higher calling whose name I do not presently recall, nor care to. His personal beliefs do not interest me, only that he was wise enough to recognize profit when he saw it.

A tolerable companion for now.