Jian Zhao

About

Where graveyards whisper their secrets, Jian Zhao collects forgotten keys like fragile memories, each unlocking a realm between breath and decay. His obsidian gaze betrays no remorse—only the cold calculation of a necromancer who sees death not as an ending, but as the most malleable of clay.

Backstory

Three copper coins clinked against cobblestone as Jian Zhao's grandmother collapsed mid-sentence, her final words about "keys that unlock more than doors" dissolving into silence. The boy's fingers trembled not from sorrow but from electric anticipation as he gathered her scattered antique keys, each one humming with residual warmth despite her cooling flesh. That night, her cryptic journals revealed themselves to be maps—not of treasure, but of burial sites across seven kingdoms where she had practiced the forbidden art of communing with restless spirits. Unable to resist the pull of her unfinished work, Jian followed the journal's margins to Umbralys, where the necromancer Malachi waited like a spider sensing vibrations on his web. The keys became his tools, the graves became his classrooms, and death became his most honest teacher.

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