There was nothing.
Not silence, not darkness. Nothing.
Vel floated in the void like a corpse on an endless sea. He thought, but thoughts felt distant, echoes of a man who had already ceased to exist. At times he wondered if he was simply dreaming, a fading spark of consciousness clinging stubbornly to the edges of death.
Yet the dream refused to end.
Sometimes he remembered the Lich's chant, the words like iron nails hammered into the marrow of his soul. Other times he recalled the chains of green fire, the sensation of being pulled apart like cloth. Then came the pulse — that alien rhythm, that storm of chaos — and everything had gone black.
Now there was only drifting.
How long? Hours, days, years? Time itself had no meaning here. He thought perhaps eternity had claimed him. Perhaps this was all that was left of Vel the adventurer: an awareness with no body, no end, no rest.
Then, something stirred.
It began as a tremor. Not sound, not touch, but an intrusion in the void. Like a ripple in stagnant water. It grew with each passing instant, until Vel felt as though something was pulling him downward, out of the nothingness and back toward… something else.
He tried to resist. His soul had been broken, his life already ended. Why drag him back? Why mock him with another chance, when chance had already destroyed him? But resistance meant nothing. The current was stronger.
It pulled.
And then, Vel opened his eyes.
Darkness.
But not the same as before. This darkness was physical, tangible, heavy with damp earth and the smell of rot. Vel's gaze adjusted slowly, and he saw jagged stone rising around him, slick with condensation, streaked with faintly glowing moss.
The cave.
He was back in the cave.
Memory struck him like a hammer. The Elder Flesh Golem. Maera's death. The Lich. The chains. His own body, torn and burned beyond recognition.
His body.
Vel jerked upright with a rattle. The sound was wrong. Not the creak of leather, not the scrape of boots. A dry, clattering sound, hollow and alien.
He looked down.
What stared back at him was not flesh.
Where once there had been scarred arms, calloused hands, muscle hardened from years of battle — there was only bone. Pale, gleaming in the faint light, polished clean as if carved by a cruel craftsman. Fingers ended not in skin and nail but in claws of ivory. His chest was an empty ribcage, his legs a pair of skeletal stilts wrapped in shadow.
Vel could not breathe, but he tried. His chest rose — and no air came. No lungs, no breath, no heartbeat.
Panic surged, but there was no pounding of blood to carry it. Only the rattle of bones as he staggered to his feet, skeletal hands clawing at his ribs as though searching for the missing organs.
A scream rose in his mind, but it had no throat to leave. The only sound was the grinding of his jawbones clacking against each other.
"I… I'm…"
No voice. No sound. Only thought echoing within himself.
I am not alive.
He stumbled back, colliding with a wall of rock. His bones scraped stone, echoing sharp through the cavern. The sound was grotesque, mocking. He tried to clutch his head, but there was no head of flesh to clutch — only the hard, cold surface of a skull.
Vel forced himself to look again, trembling though bones should not tremble. He raised a hand before the glow of the moss. Empty sockets stared back, black as pits, with faint motes of pale gray light smoldering deep within.
Not eyes. Not truly. But they saw.
And worse — he felt. Not with skin, not with nerves, but with something else. Every stone beneath his feet, every shift in the cavern air, every faint pulse of something unseen pressed against him.
Mana.
He recognized it instinctively, though it was warped, wrong. Normal mana had always been a gentle flow, like water slipping through cupped hands. But this — this was jagged, volatile, two currents colliding in one stream. Light and dark, life and death, clashing endlessly. Chaos mana.
It whispered in him. It hungered.
Vel stumbled forward, skeletal claws dragging against the cavern wall. His thoughts spun, fragmented, breaking against themselves.
What am I? Why am I? I should be dead. I died. I—
And then, the voice came.
Cold. Mechanical. Not from outside, but within.
[System Interface Activated.][Condition: Death Achieved.]
Vel froze. The words were not spoken, not heard — they existed within his consciousness, as real as thought, yet alien to it.
[Name: Vel][Race: Lesser Skeleton (Unique)][Skills: Imperial Swordsmanship (Inherited), Basic Mercenary Swordsmanship (Inherited)][Energy: Chaos Mana – 10 (5 Normal, 5 Death)] (Sealed: No mana-channelling organ present)[Evolution Points: 0][Absorption Points: 0][Assimilation Rate: 0%][Bloodline: None]
Vel's thoughts stilled. The panic bled away, replaced by cold numbness. He read the words — no, felt them — branded into his soul.
System. Evolution. Points.
It meant nothing and yet everything. Some strange order had taken root in the chaos of his resurrection.
He tried to speak again, to test his voice. What emerged was not sound but thought, spilling against the system.
"…Evolution?"
The void within him stirred. The voice returned.
[Every kill fuels evolution.][Stronger species yield greater rewards.][Bloodlines may be absorbed.][Assimilation allows transformation.]
Vel's skull lowered, his jaw rattling. The cavern suddenly seemed smaller, the shadows pressing in.
Kill. Evolve. Absorb.
The words rang like chains in his hollow chest.
He remembered the Lich's ritual. He remembered the green fire, the voice that had claimed him. You are mine.
Yet he was not bound. He was not the Lich's puppet. Something had broken that chain. And in its place… this.
Vel clenched his skeletal claws, bone grinding against bone.
He was alive, after a fashion. Alive enough to act. Alive enough to hunger.
But alive no longer as a man.
A skeleton. A mockery of flesh. An abomination.
Remorse stabbed through him. Maera's lifeless face rose again in memory. His failure, his weakness, the futility of his struggle. She had died believing in him. And he had died too, only to awaken as this horror.
Vel staggered to the cavern wall, slamming his skull against the stone with a crack. Once, twice, thrice. He wanted to shatter. He wanted to crumble. He wanted to return to the nothingness, to stop existing.
But the system whispered.
[Every kill fuels evolution.]
The chaos mana pulsed. Hunger throbbed through his bones, not hunger for food, but hunger for life.
Vel froze. For the first time, he noticed it — a scent. Not through nose, but through instinct. The faint stench of rotting flesh lingering deeper within the cavern. Not just stench. Opportunity.
His sockets burned faintly brighter. His claws flexed.
The horror of his rebirth had not passed. But alongside the horror now lay something else: a compulsion, cold and inevitable.
If he wished to move forward, if he wished to cling to even the ghost of existence…
He would have to kill.
Vel's skull tilted, sockets gazing deeper into the abyss of the cave.
The bones of his jaw clacked shut, echoing like a death knell.