The silence after the battle was worse than the clash of steel.
The arena stank of rot and dust, the corpse-throne looming in mockery. The Greater Zombie Knight's body sat slumped, its cracked helm still split by Vel's final strike. Its bloodless bulk reeked of necrotic fumes, its jagged sword abandoned beside it like a monument to futility.
Vel stood hunched, sockets flaring weakly, leaning on his own blade. His bones were fractured, ribs hairline split, his arm warped from the Knight's crushing grip. But none of that mattered. He would heal. He always healed, given time.
What did not heal was the steel.
His sword.
He lowered his gaze to it.
The weapon that had followed him from life into death was no longer whole. The edge was jagged, teeth of broken steel catching faint glimmers of the corpse-fires that lit the chamber. The blade was bent slightly off true, and along its spine, a crack ran nearly to the hilt. It was a ruin masquerading as a weapon, fit more for a tomb than a battlefield.
For the first time, Vel felt something he had thought impossible for his hollow chest to hold. Loss.
He lifted the weapon, turning it in skeletal hands, inspecting its ruined edge. Memories came with it, unbidden. Memories of when the sword had sung against steel in tavern duels, when its polished blade had reflected torchlight in adventuring halls. Memories of flesh hands gripping it, of breath misting in cold dawns before a raid. Memories of when he had been Vel the adventurer, the man who trusted his steel more than his own heart.
Now, the steel was broken.
He lifted the blade in both skeletal hands, assuming a guard stance. His bones creaked faintly, but his balance was firm. He swung once, twice, thrice. The motions were precise, sharper than when he had lived. His new body allowed for perfection. No fatigue, no trembling.
But the sword…
On the fourth cut, the blade shuddered, cracks spreading like veins. On the fifth, with a hollow snap, it gave way.
The steel split. The top half clattered against stone, ringing like a bell tolling for the dead. Vel was left holding only the jagged stump of the blade.
For a long moment, he stared at the broken weapon in silence. The arena's corpse-fires flickered against the steel fragments, as if mocking him with dying light.
He had always thought of himself as a swordsman. A man defined by the weapon in his grip. Without the blade, what was he?
The realization came with terrible clarity.
He was no longer a man at all.
The System had already told him the truth: he was bone, death, and evolution. The sword had not carried him through the battle with the Knight—it had failed. It had bent and broken where his body had endured.
Vel lowered his sockets to his skeletal hands, flexing bony fingers. They were weapons themselves—harder, sharper, stronger than they had been at his awakening. His bones had cracked under strain, yes, but they had not shattered as the steel did. They had healed. They would evolve.
The truth settled in him like ash: he was no longer the man who wielded a sword. He was the sword.
The broken weapon lay in two pieces at his feet. He knelt and picked up the shattered tip, weighing it in his palm. Its edge was useless now, but the shard caught the corpse-light in a way that reminded him of something final, something funereal.
"This," Vel thought, the hollow echo of his mind carrying in the silence, "is the death of Vel, the adventurer. The swordsman. The man."
He let the shard fall. The clatter rang like a knell, echoing through the ruined arena until it faded into silence.
When it was gone, he straightened. His sockets burned brighter. The despair of loss twisted into something harder. Resolve.
He would not mourn the weapon. He would become it.
Vel lingered in the chamber, practicing with the jagged stump of the blade until even that act felt absurd. His swings were perfect, but each time the ruined steel bent further, threatening to snap again. At last, he stopped.
He pressed his skeletal hand against the fractured weapon, and for the first time since death, he let go. He placed the weapon against the corpse-throne, leaving it upright like a tombstone.
A grave marker for what he had once been.
Then he turned away. His sockets burned into the tunnels beyond, deeper into the Lich's domain, where the System's vibrations pulsed faintly in the stone. His path was not behind him, not tied to broken steel. It lay ahead, in blood, in bone, in evolution.
His hollow voice echoed in his skull, calm, final:
"I am not the man with a sword. I am the weapon that kills men."
And with that, Vel stepped forward into the dark.
System Notification:Milestone Reached: Identity Shift— Weapon dependency reduced.— Evolution pathways widened.
Assimilation Rate: 39%
Evolution Points Remaining: 6Absorption Points Remaining: 1
Vel no longer looked back at the corpse-throne, or at the weapon that had defined him. Its ghost would remain, but he had been remade. His bones cracked faintly as he flexed his arm, sockets flaring with something close to hunger.
The next time he fought, it would not be the steel that broke.