The stench hit them first.
It rolled from the cave mouth in damp, choking waves, heavy as rotting meat left too long in the sun. The wind carried it down the rocky slope and into the adventurers' lungs, making even the most hardened of them gag. Flies buzzed around the jagged opening, feeding on scraps of something black and slick that clung to the stone like tar.
Vel adjusted the grip on his sword, knuckles whitening against the leather hilt. His Imperial training demanded composure, but no discipline could soften the bile rising in his throat. He'd smelled blood before. He'd smelled battlefield corpses stacked in the mud. But this—this was different. It was older, fouler, as though the mountain itself had begun to rot.
Behind him, Bren, the youngest of their group, retched loudly, spittle splattering the dirt.
"Gods," Bren gasped, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand. "Something died in there."
"Many things," muttered Maera, the party's mage. Her eyes were sharp and hollow, the blue glow of her staff casting uneasy shadows over her pale face. "And not all of them stayed dead."
The others said nothing. They didn't need to. The stories of this place—of the Lich that had claimed it—were enough. Villages had been emptied, caravans vanishing without a trace. The few bodies that surfaced were twisted husks, drained of life and stitched with black veins. This was not some wild nest of goblins. This was something far older, and infinitely more cruel.
Still, coin was coin. And the guild had offered a reward large enough to drown out common sense.
Vel stepped forward, boots crunching brittle bones scattered across the entrance. Human femurs, shattered ribs, gnawed skulls—an entire carpet of remains paved their way inside. Each bone was slick with a strange black film, as if the marrow had melted and bled outward.
Bren whimpered softly. Maera hissed for him to shut up. And then the cave swallowed them whole.
The dark was not silent.
It pulsed.
Whispers slid across the stone walls, faint and fractured, as though a thousand mouths murmured prayers in languages long dead. The air was colder than a grave, every breath clouding pale before their faces. Vel tightened his grip on the sword, listening for movement, but the whispers never ceased. They weren't echoes. They were alive.
Their torchlight revealed little. The cave's interior was vast, with ceilings lost in shadow and walls that seemed to weep moisture. Dark stains painted the stone, some still wet, dripping sluggishly into shallow puddles that glistened red beneath the flame. The water was too thick. Too heavy.
Blood.
They moved deeper. Each step echoed too loudly, as though the cavern itself hungered for sound. Vel's instincts screamed to turn back, to flee while their lives were still their own, but the reward pressed him forward. His party trusted him—trusted his sword—and he would not falter.
At least, that's what he told himself.
The first corpse appeared at the turn of the passage.
A man, or what remained of one, hung from iron hooks hammered into the wall. His armor had been peeled away, ribs cracked open like a butchered hog. His face was frozen in a silent scream, jaw dislocated, tongue swollen black and crawling with maggots. Runes were carved into his flesh, still glowing faintly, their lines twitching as if they writhed of their own accord.
"Necromancy," Maera whispered, voice trembling. "But this… this isn't just raising the dead. This is binding."
Bren staggered back, hand clamped over his mouth. "We… we shouldn't be here."
Vel said nothing. His stomach churned, but he forced himself to look closer. The corpse's eyes moved. The pupils rolled, sluggish but aware, following them. A wet gurgle bubbled from its throat.
Then it screamed.
The sound was no longer human. It ripped through the cave like tearing metal, a chorus of agony that clawed at their skulls.
Vel's blade flashed. He severed the head in one clean stroke, silencing it, though the body still twitched on its hooks. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling where it touched stone. The smell was unbearable, burning rot and copper.
The whispers grew louder.
They pressed on, shaken. More corpses appeared as they advanced—some nailed to the ceiling, limbs stretched unnaturally; others stacked in piles, skin peeled and faces flayed clean. All bore the same runes, all whispered in tongues Vel couldn't comprehend.
It was not a tomb. It was a larder.
And something was feeding.
The deeper they went, the worse it became.
The walls seemed to pulse with veins, slick with mucus. Something dripped steadily from the ceiling, striking their shoulders with cold, sticky plops. In the torchlight, the droplets gleamed crimson.
Vel's boots squelched. He looked down. The floor was coated in a thin film of coagulated blood. With every step, it clung to him, trying to drag him deeper into the cave's bowels.
Bren broke first. He began to sob, clutching his dagger as though it were a lifeline.
"Quiet," Vel snarled. His voice cracked in the silence.
They entered a chamber then—a vast cathedral of bone.
The walls were lined with skeletons fused into the stone, mouths open in eternal screams, fingers clawing out as though desperate to escape. The ceiling arched high above, shrouded in shadow, but faint chains dangled from it, swaying as though something unseen stirred them. In the center of the chamber stood an altar of black stone, slick with gore.
And on it lay a child.
Alive.
Her chest rose and fell shallowly, pale lips trembling, eyes wide and glassy with terror. Runes carved into her arms pulsed with dim crimson light.
Bren rushed forward before Vel could stop him.
"No!" Maera hissed.
The child's lips parted. She tried to speak. Blood spilled instead, flooding her chin. And then her chest split open.
A dozen skeletal arms erupted from her ribs, clutching blindly at the air. They dragged Bren in before he could scream. Bones pierced his flesh, ripping him apart in wet bursts. His body folded inward as the arms tore muscle from bone, stuffing it back into the girl's hollow chest cavity.
Vel charged, blade swinging. He cleaved through the arms, black ichor spraying his armor, burning holes through the metal. Bren's remains hit the ground in twitching chunks, entrails spilling like ropes of fat. His head rolled once, eyes still blinking, before going still.
The child's body convulsed. Then it collapsed, nothing more than an empty husk.
The whispers became laughter.
They fought after that. Skeletons shambled from the walls, bone scraping bone, empty sockets glowing with faint green light. They were crude things, brittle and weak, but endless. Vel's sword shattered them by the dozen, bone fragments scattering across the blood-slick floor, but for every one he struck down, two more lurched forward.
Maera's staff blazed, arcs of flame scorching through the horde, but the fire seemed to feed the whispers. The air grew heavier, suffocating, as though the cave itself was alive and tightening around them.
Vel's arm ached. His blade dripped with black ichor. His heart thundered in his ribs, each beat louder than the last. Bren was gone, devoured before his eyes. Maera's spells faltered, her voice hoarse, sweat streaking her pale face.
Still they fought. Still they bled.
And somewhere deeper in the cave, beyond the veil of bone and shadow, something watched.
Something old.
Something hungry.
The chamber grew quiet.
The last skeleton fell, its skull split in two. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating. Vel's chest heaved. His sword arm shook. His armor was pitted and scorched, slick with ichor that hissed as it ate through the steel.
Maera collapsed to her knees, clutching her staff. Her eyes were wide, staring into the shadows beyond the altar.
Vel followed her gaze.
The darkness moved.
It slid like oil across the walls, peeling back from the stone. A figure stepped forward, robed in tatters, its face nothing but a skull crowned with horns. Two hollow sockets burned with faint blue light. In its hand, a staff of bone pulsed with veins of crimson.
The whispers ceased.
Then the cave spoke.
"You dare tread my hall," the voice hissed, though no lips moved. It filled their skulls, scraping raw against their thoughts. "You dare profane the house of eternity with your breath, your blood, your weak mortal fire."
Vel raised his sword. His arm trembled, not from exhaustion but from the weight of the thing before him.
The Lich had arrived.