When Adamar awoke, he found himself standing almost upright instead of on his back. He was still enclosed in darkness, but it seemed that his coffin was propped up. He slowly rose his hand to his face, caressing the flat bronze plate that masked him, and his hands, the gauze that bound them away from the outside world. After confirming that his attire was still intact, he attempted to draw a deep breath of air, but his cold lungs remained inert.

[color=92278f][i]Good.[/i][/color]

The darkness would have proved bothersome for any normal man, but one on his way to undeath such as himself would find that he could pierce the void and understand the things around him. The lack of light was no hindrance to Adamar's darkvision, as he lined his fingertips against the crease between the lid and the coffin. Pushing the lid with one hand, and digging his fingers of his other hand between the gap that was forming, he was able to slowly drag the lid to the side, revealing the musky room around him. As he stepped outside, he looked up. The floor his coffin had been laid upon ages ago gave way to the undergrowth. His capsule fell with the collapse, landing in the upright position against the rubble along the same wall. Closer inspection deduced that his coffin actually landed on someone else's in this room below, crushing them. He paid no mind to the tragedy, instead noting the condition of the rest of the room. Moss, dust, cobwebs, rust. Through the break in the floor, some of the back wall was taken down as well, pouring daylight into small puddles of old rain water. Not large enough to crawl through, glaring outside only revealed dead wastelands for as far as the foggy vision would allow.

He stepped down from the rubble, and faced the doorway, which had long since had its wooden door rot away. It was then that he saw the one final piece that he was missing; a small leather pouch. He remembered in his final moments before the royal guards sealed his coffin, those who were departing with his staff and tome must have dropped this pouch without noticing. Realizing what it truly was, Adamar quickly strode to it and knelt down, frantically opening the bag. Peering inside, he saw the crumpled parchment, once drenched in blood now dried. He delicately unfolded the creases to see that his Phylactery was still intact. The fell contract that bound his undead soul to his rotting corpse was the key to keeping his spirit in this world. While he was certainly not pleased that his life's work was taken from him when they confiscated his tome, he would much rather have this. In time, he would rewrite the spells as he remembered them or learned more, and while time consuming, he had all the time in the world to create more items such as staves.

This? This tiny scrap of paper. Covered in the final drops of Adamar's blood. It was the one thing he could never replace.

Content with making it out lucky in this, he stowed the Phylactery away on his person before approaching the doorway itself. It was then that he heard the soft melody of a hum in the distance. Of course others would have awoken before him, and surely there will be more to awake afterwards. If he was to secure himself in this horrid place, he needed to act now.

He secured his mask around his face, and made his way down the corridor.