The Good Lich

Sixteen year old Gareth Wheatson runs from the only life he has ever known with a pack on his back and a single bright idea, become an adventurer, see the wider world, never return to the farm. His first quest should have been simple. Clear a cave. Earn coin. Prove himself. Instead he stumbles into a necromancer’s ritual and wakes as the thing every fireside story warns about, a lich. Now Gareth is starving for soul energy, terrified of what he might do if he slips, and hunted by the church that would rather burn him than ask how it happened. He clings to one stubborn hope, reach the eastern port, catch a boat to the mainland, and vanish into a bigger world where an unwanted monster might still find a place to exist. Getting there means surviving the road with his best friend James, dodging patrols and curfews, and hiding in plain sight among travellers who would panic if they knew what walked beside them. It means wolves in the dark, bandits on lonely tracks, and the constant risk of discovery every time Gareth’s hunger flares near living people. As the net tightens and the church closes in, Gareth is forced to use powers he never wanted, and to decide what matters more, keeping his secret, or keeping the people he cares about alive