The tunnels twisted downward, deeper into the veins of the underworld. Vel's skeletal feet scraped across stone slick with moisture, the sound echoing like whispers chasing him through the dark. The air grew heavier with each step, not simply damp but oppressive, as though the very rock pressed in upon him, urging him to turn back.
But the System pulsed faintly in his marrow, guiding him onward. The vibration that had led him through the Zombie Caverns now hummed differently—slower, heavier, as though something massive stirred in the shadows below.
Vel did not stumble often anymore. His skeletal form moved with balance alien to human muscle. Yet tonight, deeper in this cursed labyrinth, his bones shook in ways he could not control. Not from exhaustion, for that was lost to him. From memory.
The smell reached him first.
Burnt meat. Rotting fat. The stench of bodies boiled, stretched, and bound together by hands that had forgotten mercy. It clawed at his hollow skull, and for an instant he was no longer Vel the skeleton, nor Vel the evolving aberration. He was Vel the man—back in his flesh, hearing the scream of companions as something titanic tore them apart.
His sockets dimmed, then flared brighter as the cavern opened before him.
And there it was.
A silhouette vast as the chamber itself, hunched yet towering. Its body was a grotesque patchwork of stitched torsos and dangling arms, every seam glowing faintly with necrotic energy. Dozens of faces pressed against its skin from the inside, their mouths opening in silent agony, eyes rolling endlessly.
A Flesh Golem.
Not the one that had crushed his ribs and torn the breath from his lungs in that first life—but its brother, its twin, its kin in horror. The Lich's craft. The Lich's art.
Vel froze at the threshold, sockets locked on the creature. His bones vibrated. Not with the System's hum, but with something older: fear. The memory of dying at the hands of this very design, the memory of helplessness.
The Golem turned. Its stitched neck cracked as its head swiveled, too far, too unnatural, until its gaze fell upon him. Not a gaze in truth, but a convergence of eyes stitched into its bulk, rolling until they found the skeletal figure at the entrance.
It stopped. Then it spoke—not with one voice, but with a hundred. Mouths stitched into its body opened, and from them came a chorus of broken moans, wails layered atop each other until words formed through the agony.
"…Vel…"
The name scraped across the chamber walls.
Vel's sockets flared. The sound wasn't possible. Not unless—
The Lich. The experiments.
This construct was not a mere tool of necromancy. It was a vessel of fragments. Fragments of every failed creation, every corpse bound into its bulk, every soul warped and chained. And among them, memories of him.
The Golem knew him because they were the same project.
The skeletal warrior stepped forward, bones rattling faintly, sword stump at his side. He should have felt empty, but rage bubbled in his hollow chest like fire. Rage at the Lich. Rage at the grotesque parody of life before him. Rage at his own death replaying in the seams of flesh.
"You," Vel's voice echoed silently in his skull. "You wear my death."
The Flesh Golem's many mouths split into broken smiles, skin tearing as they stretched. Bloodless laughter wheezed from dozens of throats, all out of rhythm, all wrong.
"…little… experiment… broken bone… still walks…"
The words were mockery and recognition both, as though the Lich's design had left its mark deep within the creature's false mind.
Vel raised his skeletal hands, sockets blazing brighter, the memory of his sword's breaking echoing behind his resolve. His old weapon was gone. His humanity was gone. But his body was no longer frail. He was the weapon now.
And still, his bones rattled. He could not deny the truth: this was the same horror that had ended him once. He was afraid.
The Golem stepped forward. Each footfall was a thunderclap, the floor groaning beneath its weight. Stitched torsos flexed, arms that were not its own clawed the air as though begging release. Its jagged silhouette filled the chamber like a nightmare given mass.
Vel braced, sockets narrowing to cold slits of fire. His fingers twitched, skeletal claws flexing in readiness. His body was stronger than it had been when he died. He had killed ferals, knights, hordes. He had evolved.
But the Flesh Golem was no mindless feral. It was a testament to the Lich's genius and cruelty. It had killed him once. It could kill him again.
The thought clawed at him. Fear ground against fury. His bones trembled, not from weakness, but from the memory of flesh crushed and blood spilled.
The Golem stopped at the center of the chamber, hunching lower, its many mouths opening wide, the sound of screams filling the cavern. Not the screams of battle. The screams of prisoners, of the unwilling, trapped in a body not their own.
Vel staggered one step back before forcing himself still. His sockets burned hotter, brighter, until the cavern glowed faintly with their fire.
"This ends here," he whispered in his hollow voice, though there was no air to carry it.
The Flesh Golem raised one massive arm, stitched fingers curled into a grotesque parody of a fist. Its many mouths roared in unison.
The chamber shook.
Vel's body rattled, bones vibrating under the weight of memory and terror. But he did not turn. He did not run. He spread his arms, ready to fight, sockets locked on the monster that had haunted his death.
The second reckoning had come.
The Flesh Golem charged.
And Vel met it head on.