The void had been endless. Cold. Silent. Without time. A cage of nothingness where thought itself had threatened to decay into dust.
Vel had expected to drift there forever—suspended in the aftermath of death, his soul broken apart by that lich's obscene ritual. Yet sensation returned to him, raw and alien, like a whisper dragged across the bones of his mind.
Something scraped. Something clattered. A sound not made by flesh, not made by muscle.
His eyes opened.
Or rather, something opened.
There were no lids, no lashes, no warmth of blood to blur his vision. He saw with sockets empty and black, yet his awareness sharpened with a clarity beyond human sight. The cavern stretched before him in jagged silhouettes, every stone vein etched in cruel detail, every drifting mote of dust shining like ash.
Vel tried to breathe—And nothing came.
His chest did not rise. No air burned his lungs. There was only silence where once his heartbeat had thundered.
"…No…" The voice that echoed inside his mind was not a voice at all. There were no vocal cords, no tongue, no breath to shape words. Yet his thoughts reverberated in the hollow of his skull, a resonance sharp enough to chill even himself.
He looked down.
What greeted him was not flesh. Not skin. Not the scarred arms of a mercenary who had bled and fought for coin. Instead—pale ivory gleamed under the cavern's shadows. Fingers, stripped to bone, flexed with unnatural precision.
"Ah… gods."
Horror surged like bile. His arms were nothing but skeletal lengths of white, chipped and cracked. His chest—gone. Only a ribcage, twisted and incomplete, clung together in grim mockery of life. Below, his legs jutted out, nothing but bones locked at cruel angles. Each joint moved with perfect mechanical snap, not the resistance of tendon and sinew.
He staggered upright. The sound of his motion was wrong. Not the shifting of boots and cloth, but the clatter of bones on stone.
Vel swayed, nearly collapsing. Balance, once instinctive, betrayed him. His body no longer answered with weight or muscle. Swinging one arm nearly pitched him forward. He had no center of gravity—just a skeleton puppeted by will.
For a moment he froze, horror warring with fascination. His mind screamed: This isn't me. This isn't human. I'm… I'm dead.
Yet his limbs responded.
I move. I think. I am still Vel.
The paradox tightened around his skull like iron chains.
Somewhere to his side, something glinted in the dim half-light of the cavern. Vel's sockets locked onto it instinctively. He stumbled closer, each step a brittle clack of bone on rock.
There it lay. His sword.
Or rather, what remained of it. Once a mercenary's blade of decent steel, now blackened, warped at the edge, marred by the fire of his death. Yet it had not shattered.
Vel crouched to grasp it—fingers closing awkwardly around the leather-wrapped hilt. Leather that once would have been tacky with sweat now felt utterly alien. He squeezed.
Crack.
The sound was not from the hilt. It came from his hand. Tiny fractures spidered across the surface of his phalanges where grip met steel. Pain did not follow. No nerves screamed. Only cold recognition: my bones are brittle.
He straightened slowly, raising the blade. Its weight pulled differently now, balance skewed by the absence of muscle. The sword felt heavier, yet his bones carried it with ease—an ease that unsettled him.
Vel swung once.
The motion over-extended violently, his body spinning half around before he crashed into the cavern wall with a resounding clang. Bone met stone. Shards flaked off his shoulder. His blade scraped sparks.
"…Clumsy." His thought was bitter. His movements, wild. Like a child first learning to walk.
Yet something else gnawed at him.
Where was the ache? Where was the burn of exertion? His swing had been violent, uncontrolled. In life, such carelessness would have wrenched his shoulder or torn muscle. But now—nothing. No pain. No fatigue.
Vel froze, realization creeping like frost.
He tightened his grip again and slashed in a wide arc. The blade cut air with a shriek of rust. He spun back, raised, swung again. Each motion should have exhausted him. Each motion should have stolen breath.
Yet he felt… nothing. His bones carried the sword with endless repetition, no burn in sinew, no pounding lungs.
Stamina. Gone. No limit.
"I… cannot tire." His hollow voice echoed in the dark.
He swung again. Faster. Then again, and again, until sparks bloomed from the walls where his blade struck. His body shook from recoil, but recovered instantly. The rhythm grew mechanical, unending, until even the cavern seemed to hum with the cadence of steel and bone.
He stopped at last. Not from exhaustion—he simply chose to stop. His sockets stared at the weapon clutched in his skeletal hand.
This body… this form. It is not mine. But it holds no weakness of flesh.
He staggered forward, testing his stride. Each step echoed with clacks and scrapes, but steadiness returned slowly, balance recalibrating. He rolled a shoulder, stretched an arm, bent at the waist. Joints shifted smoothly, unnaturally smooth, unimpeded by tendons.
Vel's horror did not fade, but beneath it grew a dark, poisonous seed: fascination.
He turned his blade, inspecting the charred steel. "I am no longer a man. But…" His sockets narrowed, twin pinpricks of faint light burning within.
"…this body has no limits."
His voice—silent, hollow, echoing only in thought—was both grave marker and vow.
The cavern answered only with dripping water and the shuffle of unseen bones.
Vel tightened his grip. His humanity was dead. But something else was rising in its place.
And it would learn.
And it would kill.