
Death Bound (The Soulsworn Chronicles #1)
Prologue
Before time was measured, before kingdoms had names, the gods wove the fabric of existence with hands of divinity and will of iron. They shaped the land, carved the rivers, and hung the stars in the abyss of night. They crafted the first mortals, breathed life and magic into their lungs, and set them loose upon the earth.
But there was one thing they did not foresee.
Death.
At first, the souls of the fallen rose like embers caught in an unseen current, drifting beyond the veil to join their makers in the halls of eternity. But with each passing age, the dead became many, and the gods, once exalted, found themselves drowning in the weight of mortal souls. Their realm grew crowded, their divinity thinned, their power strained beneath the endless tide of the departed.
And so, the gods, in their boundless cruelty, decreed that no more souls would pass beyond the veil.
They forged the Frostweave, an unyielding magic of ice and sorrow, a barrier between the living and the afterlife. The dead would not ascend. Their souls would linger, ensnared in the frozen grasp of the Crypt of Silence, stripped of rest, stripped of peace, bound in servitude to the mortal world.
No golden afterlife awaited them. No great beyond. Only endless cold.
With the power of the Frostweave, kings carved their empires from the suffering of the lost. They harnessed the magic of the frozen dead to fuel their wars, to protect their thrones, to defy nature itself.
The living flourished.
And the dead paid the price.
But not all souls could be tamed.
On the longest night, when the cold lay thick upon the land and the stars hid their light in mourning, something ancient stirred beneath the ice.
A shadow moved where shadows should not be.
A beast neither god nor mortal rose from the heart of the forsaken dead, a thing of ash and ruin, fury and sorrow, born from the rage of a thousand stolen souls.
The Drakon Mortem.
It did not crawl from the womb of the living, nor descend from the heavens above. It was born in the moment the first soul was denied its rest, in the silent scream of the dead who would never know peace.
And when the forsaken called, the dragon answered.
With fire hotter than the gods’ own wrath and wings vast as the void between realms, it tore through the crypts, its molten breath melting the Frostweave’s grip, its claws rending apart the ice that had held the dead captive for centuries. Souls long imprisoned rose in luminous ascension, their suffering turned to song, their agony unshackled at last.
But the gods were not so easily undone.
They whispered into the ears of kings and warlords, turning fear into a weapon, calling the Drakon Mortem a beast of ruin, a bringer of chaos, a creature that would burn their kingdoms to cinders.
And so, the living betrayed their only savior.
The dragon fought, but even fire dims against the might of gods and men. As steel and sorcery closed in, its strength faltered, its flames waned.
But before it disappeared, it left behind a single promise, etched into ice, burned into the stone, whispered in the tongues of the dead:
"I will return when the frost grows too heavy, when the cries of the dead drown the silence. And this time, I will free them all."
Centuries have passed, and the Frostweave endures. The Crypt of Silence has grown vast, stretching deeper into the earth, its corridors lined with the frozen damned, their whispers stretching across the ages.
The gods have faded with time, their thrones long since crumbled, their wars turning upon themselves until divinity bled dry. They tore each other apart, vanishing into dust and forgotten echoes—but the Frostweave remains. The magic they wrought to keep the dead from their halls still clings to the world, its icy grip unbroken, its purpose twisted. And in the absence of gods, it is mortal kings who have become the jailers of the dead. Gods among men, wielding the Frostweave not to protect their realms, but to enslave the lost, to siphon the power of the forsaken, to turn the unquiet souls into fuel for their endless hunger. The gods may be gone, but their cruelty remains, and it is the living who now wear the chains.
But a prophecy lingers:
"The dragon will not rise alone.
One of ice and grief will summon it ? —
a soul bound not to the gods but to the dead.
The queen of frost will call the beast of ash,
and together, they will shatter the chains of death.
But liberation will come at a cost,
for the living cannot reign where the dead rise."
The myth is told as a warning, a tale whispered through generations to keep rulers clutching their thrones in fear.
But to the dead, it is a promise.
The Drakon Mortem is no monster. It is a reckoning. A savior forged in fire, bound by fate, waiting in the frozen dark for the queen who will rise to meet it.
And when the whispers of the dead swell to a mournful roar, when the Frostweave begins to crack beneath the weight of its own cruelty, the dragon will wake.