"The Elixir of the Undying"

In the crumbling tower of Viremont, Alric the Alchemist toiled for decades, obsessed with creating an elixir that could raise the dead and conquer mortality itself. He combined forbidden herbs, ancient necromantic runes, and a fragment of soulstone into a bubbling black serum he called Vitae Mortis. But in his moment of triumph, a single drop of the volatile brew sizzled onto his open wound, and Alric collapsed in agony. Days later, the tower door creaked open—not with the proud stride of a man who defied death, but with the dragging shuffle of the first of the undead, mindless and rotting, driven by a hunger he never intended to create. The plague began not in war or vengeance, but in the ambition of one man to live forever.