#macabre romance

He stood atop his pedestal and beheld me with the empty sockets where his eyes might have been. The ravens and crows continued to scream around me until he lifted a single, bony hand.  

His hand pressed against his sternum, and from his hand drifted black wisps of ghostly essence, which gathered and coalesced until they became the very clothes I’d seen on the statue moments before. Black brocade silk, blood red sash, epaulets of gold—and atop his head, a crown of obsidian and bone.  

King of bone, ruler of death. I didn’t need to ask to know what he was, for on a primal level I could recognize exactly the realm he came from.