The cavern was silent.
Smoke curled in faint ribbons above pools of melted stone, and the once-monstrous abomination was nothing more than scattered chunks of ash dissolving into the black air. Maera's lifeless body lay collapsed near the broken remains of her staff, her eyes glazed, her lips forever parted in a final prayer that had died unfinished.
Vel could not move. He lay sprawled in the ichor-soaked earth, armor melted into his flesh, bones crushed into powder, his once-calloused hands burned to ruin. Every shallow breath he tried to take was a razor dragging across his lungs. His heart stuttered, beating once, twice, then faltering again.
Death was here.
And yet… death was slow.
His ears rang with silence, but his mind was far from still. Memories pressed in, raw and merciless.
Faces. His comrades in the mercenary bands he had once called brothers. Bren, who always laughed too loud. Ila, who had died screaming in an orc ambush. Maera's exhausted smile when she had first joined their team, a smile now forever gone. All of them piled up within him, heavy as stone, dragging him into the pit of himself.
"Is this it…?" he whispered through cracked lips, though no voice came. Only a faint hiss of blood.
He had thought himself strong. He had believed, foolishly, that if he swung his blade hard enough, screamed loud enough, burned bright enough, the darkness would retreat. He had been wrong.
The Lich had not moved since stepping from the smoke. Its robed form stood silent, skeletal hands folded over a staff made of bound vertebrae, its skull hidden within the shadow of a hood. The cavern's faint light bent around it, refusing to touch its figure, as though the very air rejected its presence.
Vel's vision blurred. Yet he saw enough.
The Lich was watching.
Not with malice, not even with cruelty. But with interest. Like a scholar observing a specimen twitch its final time before the scalpel came down.
Vel's lips tried to form words, a curse, a scream, a plea. None came. Only a bubble of blood burst against his teeth.
The Lich finally spoke. Its voice was a dry rasp, ancient and hollow, carrying the weight of graves.
"You fought well, little mortal. You bled. You burned. You killed my pet."
It tilted its head, bony fingers stroking the staff.
"And now, you are mine."
Vel's heart lurched. He tried to resist, but what strength could the broken have? Cold seeped into his veins, deeper than blood. Something unseen coiled around him, a chain not of iron but of soul. It sank through his skin, through his marrow, clutching at the very essence of him.
Panic.
He felt it at last—death not as silence, but as a devourer. His body might have been ruined, but his self was still intact, clinging, thrashing against the dark tide. He tried to scream, but the only scream was inside, echoing against the prison of his failing flesh.
The Lich began to chant. Words of rot and dominion, syllables carved from tombstone cracks and graveyard whispers. Green light bled from the cavern floor, seeping into Vel's broken body. The chains grew tighter.
He felt something tear. Not muscle, not bone—him. His soul wrenched against itself, splitting, unraveling.
"No…" His mind clawed for any thought, any anchor. Not like this.
Images rushed forward. His childhood—barefoot, chasing smoke-wisps in the fields. His father's hand ruffling his hair. His first sword, too heavy for his arms but shining like hope. The laughter of comrades drunk on cheap ale after victory. Maera's quiet hum as she read by firelight.
They came not as comfort, but as knives. Each memory burned, because he was losing them. They were slipping, dissolving, eaten by the necrotic tide crawling into his soul.
Remorse surged like poison.
I failed them. I failed her. I failed myself.
Every swing of his blade had been meaningless. Every scar he carried, every boast he had made, every dream of being more than another nameless corpse—ash in the wind. He was just another dead man, destined to be chained as a puppet in the dark.
Tears leaked from the corners of his ruined eyes, though his flesh was too burned to let them fall freely.
The Lich's voice rose, power swelling, cavern walls trembling with its dirge. Bones rattled unseen in the darkness. Vel's vision dimmed to a tunnel of green flame and shadow.
But something happened.
The chain dug deeper, then faltered.
The green light shuddered, the chant breaking for a heartbeat. Vel felt it—not release, but resistance. Not freedom, but interruption.
The Lich hissed softly, surprised.
"No…" it murmured. "Something… interferes."
Vel's body twitched, though it should not have. His soul strained, pulling against the chains, not by will alone but by something else. A pulse. A beat. Not his failing heart, but another rhythm, one buried deeper than flesh.
Chaos.
Vel did not understand it, but he felt it. A storm in the void, black and white entwined, death and life grinding against each other until neither was pure. It was not mercy. It was not salvation. It was something older, hungrier.
The necromantic chains began to crack.
Vel's eyes, clouded and blind, flickered with faint gray light. His breath rattled in his throat, though no air truly entered.
The Lich's chant grew sharper, anger cutting through the cold tones.
"You resist? You… dare? You are mine."
Vel felt his soul pulled taut, torn between two hungers—one seeking to bind him into a puppet, the other offering something far worse: freedom, but at the cost of everything human.
He realized, dimly, what this was. A choice he had no power to make.
His remorse boiled into something else.
If I live again, it won't be as a man.
The cavern shook. Green light splintered. The chains snapped.
Vel's body convulsed. His vision flared white, then black, then nothing. The last thing he saw was the Lich recoiling, skeletal fingers curling tighter on its staff.
"This… is not done," the Lich hissed. "You will return to me."
Then Vel's consciousness drowned.
Darkness.
Weightless, endless.
He floated in an ocean without time. No breath, no body, no voice. Only the echo of what he had been.
Remorse lingered still, but it no longer cut. It had dulled into an ache, a whisper. You failed. But you can still change.
Vel reached—or thought he reached. There was no hand to lift, no flesh to move, only thought stretching toward the faint pulse of chaos that had broken his chains.
It welcomed him.
Not like light. Not like warmth. But like teeth.
And Vel let it take him.