Darkness.
That was the first thing I knew when my mind stirred. My death clung to me like chains, heavy and cold, as silence pressed in on all sides.
"Is this… death?" I whispered into the void, though the words carried nowhere.
My body—broken upon the streets of Orario—shuddered. I took a breath, but the air was wrong.
Damp.Cold.The air of a grave.
The silence hounded me, smothering thought, until a voice cracked through it.
"Rise, Ketheric Thorm. Your death is mine to claim."
The words echoed inside my skull, calm yet crushing, like bones splintering beneath a weight unseen.
Agony tore through me.
Spears lodged in my chest burned anew as flesh sewed itself shut. My muscles spasmed, bones snapping back into place with nauseating cracks.
"No!" I bellowed into the dark, fear bleeding into rage. My body moved against my will, each motion grotesque, as if strings pulled me like a puppet.
"I will not come back!" My defiance rang hollow, swallowed by the abyss.
The torment ebbed. A cold tide spread outward from my chest. I looked down—or thought I did—and saw it: a gem, pulsing, bleeding shadowy tendrils that burrowed beneath the rib-like plating of my armor.
My voice rasped out, raw and defeated. "Who are you? What do you want with me?"
The answer came as dry as dust.
"I am Myrkul. The Lord of Bones. And I am your beginning."
I forced my ruined body to rise, will clashing against invisible chains. My eyelids dragged open, but sight came slow.
"You think I'll be your pawn?" My fury cracked through my exhaustion. "I already gave everything to the gods—and you dare ask for more?"
A droning laugh rolled through me, the sound of a thousand bones rattling in a charnel pit.
"You cling to grief as flies to a corpse, Paladin. Wife. Daughter. Both struck down as your gods stood silent."
The voice swelled, pressing against the edges of my skull.
"I can bring them back."
A shiver clawed through me.
"Not as they were. Flesh rots. Souls scatter. But I can return what was taken—unbroken, eternal, unfading. Their voices. Their faces. Yours forever. Serve me, Ketheric Thorm. Become my chosen… and regain what was lost."
My throat closed. My voice cracked when I found it.
"Don't you dare… don't you dare speak their names! Don't drag them into this filth!"
But the whisper did not relent.
"You rage, yet your heart stirs. You long to hear your daughter's laughter. You ache for your wife's touch. You fought for gods and lost everything. I offer what they denied you: power to claim them back."
Blood filled my mouth as I bit down hard, rage and grief twining until I could no longer tell them apart.
"Power?" I spat, crimson dripping down my chin. "I had power. I had faith. And where did it leave me?" My voice rose to a roar, shaking the void."My wife bled out in the mud! My daughter's body lay broken in my arms! I held them—both—and the gods said nothing!"
My chest heaved. My throat burned raw.
"Never again," I hissed. "Never again will I serve the gods."
The cavern itself rumbled, as though the Dungeon mocked me.
Silence followed. Thick. Suffocating. Then the whisper returned, low and absolute.
"You already serve. Your body moves because I will it. Your wounds close because I bind them. Your bones set because I command them. You are mine, Ketheric Thorm. Your flesh already sings my hymn."
My eyes finally opened. I stumbled back as light bled into my vision. Stone walls. Pulsing moss. Shifting shadows.
The Dungeon.
But I spared it no glance. My gaze fell instead to the gem at my chest, pulsing with a rhythm not my own. Myrkul's rhythm.
I rose to one knee, voice raw. "If I walk this path… if I take your power… then my family will never be as they were. They'll be hollow. Empty."
The whisper coiled around me, soft and merciless.
"Life fails. Love fades. Death is eternal. Better hollow shadows than cold earth. Better a semblance than nothing."
My hands trembled. The weight of the words crushed down on me, heavier than any armor I had borne.
I had nothing. Yet I was offered something. However small. However twisted.
Gods forgive me—if any still listened.
"…Show me," I whispered, broken. "Show me their faces."
The gem flared, and the shadows stirred.
Apparitions appeared before my eyes, their shapes rippling like candlelight in the wind. Hollow, incomplete… yet warm.
I could hear them.I could feel them again.
My breath caught. For one aching moment, I reached—hand trembling—as if to seize what had been taken from me.
But before my fingers touched, the shadows dispersed into smoke. Gone.
A hollow ache sank deeper into my chest.
"Rise, Ketheric Thorm."
The command dragged me out of grief's mire. My legs steadied, and I rose tall.
And then I felt it.
Power.
Unbridled, suffocating power writhed beneath my flesh, twisting into marrow and muscle alike. It was not strength I had earned; it was something greater, something alien—something endless.
From the darkened tunnels, monsters poured forth, Twisted things born of the Dungeon's hate.
Once, in life, their howls would have raked against my nerves, sparked instinct to fight, to survive. But now?
Now, I felt no fear. No anxiousness. No need to raise my guard.
I could sense them, each one like a heartbeat beneath my own ribs.
My lips parted. One word forcing its way out.
"Kneel."
The command rang out, not loud, but absolute.
My eyes burned, emerald fire alight within them. The creatures shuddered, their snarls choking to whimpers. One by one, they fell, clawed hands pressed to the stone as their heads bowed.
The Dungeon itself seemed to still.
A wet squelch echoed from my chest. I looked down to see the gem receding, tendrils curling inward as the stone sank beneath skin and flesh. The wound sealed as though it had never been.
Breath hissed between my teeth.
I bent low, fingers curling around familiar steel.
The warhammer. My warhammer. Once it had carried the weight of justice, of faith. Now, it was light as a feather, shadows wreathing its head in coils of green flame.
I hefted it, testing the balance. For the first time since my death, I felt whole.
A laugh—mine, yet not mine—slipped free.
"Myrkul," I whispered, voice low, resonant, certain. "You've made a monster of me."
From the cavern's walls, the Lord of Bones whispered back.
"No, Ketheric Thorm. I have made you eternal."
The monsters stirred at my back, awaiting command. Their gazes clung to me, not as prey to predator, but as subjects to sovereign.
For the first time, the Dungeon bent.
And I walked forward, my first step echoing like a drumbeat through the abyss.