Death - Builds house

Death stood, his hands raised before him, his mask shuddering slightly as his mouth formed constant, silent chants. The magics of the oldest Horseman swept through the winds, delving deep into the ash, and where nothing lived, ancient dead responded.
Bones, petrified by time and stained by soot, worked and wriggled like snakes on their way to the surface. They punched through to open air, rearing into a veritable thicket and slowly pressing themselves tightly together. They danced however briefly, to an orchestra that only Death could hear.
Long since dried to flecks of powder, the blood of a thousand corpses transformed once more to liquid, sluicing and bubbling from the depths. Where the bones did not fit perfectly together, that blood surged into the gap, mixing with ambient ash to form a thick, viscous mortar. And where the macabre construction required more meticulous handling than the raw materials could manage, there appeared Death's helpers. Ghouls—the desiccated corpses of beings never native to this world—materialized from the ether, reanimated and drawn through the walls between realms by the Horseman's will. With mindless obedience but impossible precision, they arranged the jagged bones just so.
With surprising rapidity, guided by Death's magic and servants both, a low building began to form over and around the smaller structure. Every so often, faces appeared briefly in the ash to study him as he worked his necromancies—phantoms, perhaps, of the world before, or maybe just tricks of the light.

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Chapter 1