Lying in my own coffin, I heard my sister-in-law dividing up the family estate.
The powerful millennium-old clan of the city had seized my ancestral home.
The academy, the city lord, former allies… everyone was watching, ready to pick the Blackwood family clean.
They laughed, thinking three years of coma had made me a cripple.
They didn't know--those three years, my soul was on the Extraplanar Battlefield, fighting alongside the greatest masters of the world, burying a million invading demons.
Now I'm back, carrying the legacies of nineteen fallen patriarchs, with a sword chart that seals nine infernal prisons etched in my palm.
When the coffin lid shattered, I wiped the blood from my face and smiled at the hall full of "kin".
"Who was it,"I asked, "that just volunteered to be the family's new young master?"
"Come. Let's… discuss this again."
