Bones drifted beneath the soil like a thought trying to escape a dying mind.
He did not walk, nor crawl, nor slither—he contaminated. The earth grew sick around him. Roots withered. Worms curled in on themselves and rotted. The very memory of warmth fled before him, leaving the burrowing tunnels he passed through as hollow and dead as a grave that forgot it once held life.
And all the while, Bones laughed.
Faintly at first.
Then louder.
Then louder still.
Until the soil shook with the sound of him.
"Ahhh… this world," he purred. His voice reverberated like metal dragged over marrow. "So soft. So unprepared. So deliciously ignorant."
He pressed one skeletal hand—made of green light, impossible and shifting—against the underside of a thick tree root. The touch alone blackened it. Another touch splintered it. A third dissolved it into dust.
Bones sighed contentedly.
"How they must have weakened, the little apes," he mused, tilting his head within the nesting darkness. "So much time has passed. Their kind barely understands the taste of power now. Not like the old days."
The "apes" he spoke of were the Espearians.
Mortals.
Pathetic, predictable things.
He remembered the sorcerers who had bound him. Ancient folk with ancient laws. They had carved their runes deep into the starstone that had been his prison, sealing away his voice, his form, his hunger. For centuries—long enough for him to forget his own name—he had drifted in and out of consciousness inside that cold, hollowed meteor.
That beautiful, hateful cage.
He snarled softly at the memory. The starstone seals still burned against his ghostly skin, though he had shattered the shell. They were not meant to be broken from within.
Not by him.
But a fool had pried open the prison with his own hands.
A gullible, greedy little thief named Swift.
Bones chuckled again, remembering the moment Swift's arm tore away like paper. The sudden stillness in Swift's heart. The way his star-forged armor crumbled before Bones like dried leaves. Mortals always thought their toys made of fallen stars could protect them.
Fools. Every last one.
He stopped moving. The earth above him pulsed with heat—campfires, torches, dozens of footsteps. Soldiers. A search party.
Bones rose through the soil like smoke through cracks.
He emerged in the center of a merchant caravan that had stopped along the forest road. Tents scattered. Horses tethered. Guards playing dice around a fire. None noticed the green glow coalescing behind them until the air temperature plummeted.
One of the guards stood, rubbing his arms. "Anyone else feel that? Like winter just—"
Bones touched his shoulder.
The man froze mid-sentence, face twisted in confusion. His skin turned white as snow. His hair crackled into crystal. His breath became mist.
Then he collapsed, shattering like glass.
The camp erupted in screams.
Bones giggled.
"Oh, wonderful! You're awake. I was worried you'd all refuse to play."
He rose to full height—almost seven feet—and his form flickered like a lantern flame. His limbs were too long, his joints bending in ways no living creature's should. His face was a skull carved from vibrant emerald light, eyes deep wells of void. When he opened his mouth, rows and rows of teeth rotated like grinding gears.
A captain rushed at him, swinging a mace.
Bones tilted his head.
"Now, now. Weapons already?" He sighed theatrically. "Where is your sense of fun?"
The captain's mace struck his shoulder—
—and passed right through.
Bones reformed behind him. "Your weapons mean nothing."
Then his hand entered the captain's back as if dipping into water. The man screamed once before Bones pulled his soul free in a trembling, white vapor. The body fell instantly limp.
Bones inhaled the soul.
The screaming mist vanished down his throat, and he shuddered with pleasure.
"Ahhh. Warm."
The remaining guards ran.
Bones let them, savoring their terror like perfume. He drifted toward the merchant wagons where families huddled, children hiding beneath blankets. One girl, no older than ten, stared at him with wide, terrified eyes.
Bones crouched so his glowing skull was inches from her face.
"Oh little one," he whispered gently, "do not fear. I am not here for you."
He reached past the girl and plucked up a wooden idol she had dropped—a crude carving of a smiling shepherd.
The idol cracked. Then split. Then burst into blackened dust.
The girl screamed.
Bones patted her head. "This world still worships toys. Pathetic."
He stepped back, gazing at the burning remains of the camp.
He didn't kill everyone.
Only the ones who interested him.
The rest fled screaming into the forest.
He didn't care.
He had no desire to extinguish life indiscriminately—not yet. There were rules to things like him, ancient ones older than stars. He could kill. He could devour. But true destruction required purpose, intention, and ritual.
And right now, Bones desired one thing more than anything:
Power.
The kind that had been stolen from him when the sorcerers of old sealed him away.
He rose into the treetops as smoke curled up from the burning camp, his form shifting into strands of green vapor. The night sky stretched above him—deep, cold, uncaring.
The stars watched him.
He glared back.
"Do you remember me?" he asked the heavens. His voice echoed far beyond the forest, drifting through the darkness like a curse. "Do you remember what I am?"
No answer.
"Cowards," he spat. "You watched them seal me away. You watched me fall. And now you watch me rise."
He extended both arms.
Space warped at his fingertips.
A tear opened in the air—just a small one—revealing swirling cosmic blackness beyond. Something moved inside the rift, something massive and chained. It growled, shaking the void.
Bones hissed, slamming the rift shut before the chained entity could fully emerge. The tear sealed with a grinding shriek.
"Not yet," Bones whispered. "But soon."
He drifted downward again, settling atop a large boulder like a crow perched on a headstone. His fingers trailed along the runic markings engraved into his prison stones, which he had carried beneath the earth to examine.
Ancient sigils glowed faintly.
They were unbroken.
Unfaded.
Could not be harmed by mortal weapons.
Not even Swift's red star blade had scratched them.
Bones traced one rune with a clawed fingertip. "Sorcery," he murmured. "The oldest kind. The kind that binds gods."
He snarled and crushed the stone—
—but it did not break.
It merely hummed.
Mocking him.
Bones screamed, shaking the forest, birds dying mid-flight as the sound shattered their bones.
When his rage finally quieted, he laughed again—soft, bitter, hateful.
"There must be something on this world," he whispered, "strong enough to break these seals. A weapon. A Dragon. A relic. Something."
He crouched, placing both hands on the dirt.
His green glow seeped into the earth like venom.
"I will find it."
He rose.
"And I will repay every moment they stole from me."
His skeletal grin widened.
"And when I do… I will crack open the sky."
Bones dissolved into the soil.
Leaving behind nothing but ash, shattered bodies, and the faint, lingering echo of his laughter stretching into the night—
—hungry, maddened, and unstoppable.