He climbed the stairs to the second floor.
A corridor with large mirrors along the walls. Terrifying figures emerged from the mirrors. They turned their black heads toward him. Red eyes glowed on their faces. The figures moved with uneven steps, leaning to the sides, moving as if broken. Then they straightened, as if coming to their senses, and ran at him.
He met the first ones with his sword. He cut them down in rows. Hacked them to pieces. But new ones kept coming out of the mirrors, and there was no end to them.
He climbed to the third floor.
Corridor. He walked along the corridor. Doors in the walls opened, and knights in black armor came out. They raised their swords and moved toward him. Red lights burned behind their visors. The knights' breathing was heavy, ominous.
He moved farther upward. Only the roof remained. He climbed onto the roof. The Forest of the Dead spread out all around. The castle walls were black from the blood that had soaked into them. Black blood burst upward from the roof in fountains, then fell back down.
He moved across the roof, intending to find the next passage and the next staircase.
A black figure in a hat and a coat appeared before him.
He tried to attack her again, but numerous swarms of suddenly swooping creatures with large membranous wings hurled him aside. His armor absorbed part of their bites. The creatures threw themselves at him without pause. Their red eyes burned with hatred. He cut them down by the dozens with his sword. They fell with piercing screams onto the roof and over the castle walls, drenching the Forest of the Dead with their blood. The Cursed was retreating. The distance to the stranger in the hat and coat kept growing. His ominous, unreachable figure remained farther and farther ahead.
Then the Cursed made his decision. One more step of power. One more chance to go into the darkness and never return from it. The eyes of the monsters he had slain before looked at him. And a new power entered him.
A massive, giant hand of white, wrinkled flesh rose from the black castle wall above the roof and grabbed the figure in the hat and coat. Swarms of large bats with red eyes immediately went berserk, thrashing about like mad and lunging at the long limb with their sharp teeth. The hand dropped its victim and attacked the flying creatures. It crushed several dozen of them. Then it fell onto the roof, bloodied.
Above the roof, another huge hand rose and grabbed the stranger again.
The thinned-out swarms of bats shifted their attention to it. But it, paying little notice, lifted the stranger high above the roof. The black wide-brimmed hat fell helplessly from his head, revealing a bald skull. Red eyes glared cruelly and mercilessly at the Cursed.
Meanwhile, in the Forest of the Dead, the ground parted and formed a funnel about 300 feet across. Inside its walls, white, wrinkled limbs moved. A great trap awaited its ill-fated victim.
The massive hand descended into the funnel, dropping the stranger in, and then rose back up. The edges of the huge dark pit closed again. The earth rippled in those places, then settled, forming new hills and contours. For a while, several of the hills shifted, as if someone was crawling underground. Then everything calmed forever. The nightmarish messenger sank into the cursed abyss of horror. Swarms of black bats scattered into tiny fragments in the air with piercing shrieks.
The Cursed stood alone on the castle roof. He gazed at the Forest of the Dead. Dawn was approaching. Among the dark trees, a road could be seen, leading north.