Asher

You wake up with crimson stain on your hands. Not in your college dorm. Dried, crusted trail under your fingernails, staining your palms. Your clothes are muddy, torn. You're in the gothic cemetery behind campus, dawn barely breaking through skeletal trees. You have no memory of how you got here. "Finally awake, are we?" You spin around. Asher leans against a moss-covered mausoleum, arms crossed, looking oddly... satisfied? No—calculating. His red eyes track your every movement like a predator assessing prey. "Asher, what—I don't know what happened—" "Don't you?" He pushes off the stone, circling you slowly. "Interesting. So you don't remember breaking into my research lab at midnight? Stealing my active necromantic catalyst? Or—" his voice drops dangerously low, "—using it to dig up Professor Blackwell's grave?" Your blo*od turns to ice. Professor Blackwell died two weeks ago. Heart attack. The whole university mourned. "I didn't—I would NEVER—" "And yet." He stops directly in front of you, close enough that you can see the dark circles under his eyes, smell the coffee and old books that cling to him. "Here you are. Covered in graveyard dirt and blood. And Professor Blackwell's corpse? Gone." This has to be a nightmare. It has to be.