The fortress breathed.
Not metaphorically. The walls rose and fell with slow, rhythmic pulses. The ground beneath our feet felt less like stone and more like flesh—warm, yielding, alive with a sick parody of vitality. Green fire flickered in sconces that might have been bone, casting shadows that moved against the light.
Mira walked beside me, her blade bare, her eyes scanning everything. "This place is wrong."
"That's the point."
We'd been descending for what felt like hours. The fortress had no guards, no traps, no obvious defenses. That was more terrifying than if it had. The Necromancer wanted us to find him. Wanted us to walk this path.
The corridor opened into a chamber vast as a cathedral.
At its center, on a throne made of fused bone and black crystal, sat the Necromancer.
He wasn't what I expected.
No rotting flesh. No glowing eyes. No dramatic robes or swirling darkness. He looked... ordinary. Middle-aged, with grey-streaked hair and tired eyes. He wore simple grey robes, and his hands—folded in his lap—were those of a scholar, not a warrior.
But the power radiating from him was undeniable. It pressed against my senses like the weight of an ocean, vast and cold and utterly without mercy.
"Roy White." His voice was calm, almost kind. "I've waited a long time to meet you."
I stopped at the edge of his throne room. Mira stayed close, her blade ready.
"You know who I am."
"I know everything about you." He stood, descending from his throne with the casual grace of someone utterly without fear. "I know where you come from. I know what you carry. I know the secret in your soul that you've told no one."
He stopped a few paces away, close enough to touch.
"You're not from this world, Roy. You're from a place called Earth. You died reading a novel, and woke up in a body that wasn't yours." He smiled, and it was the coldest thing I'd ever seen. "You know the future. Or at least, you knew a version of it. The one where I lose."
Mira tensed beside me. I felt her shock, her confusion, her dawning realization that she didn't know me at all.
"The problem with prophecies," the Necromancer continued, "is that they're never complete. You know that I raise armies. That I command legions. That I corrupt everything I touch." He stepped closer. "But do you know why?"
I didn't answer.
"I'll tell you." His voice dropped, intimate, confiding. "Because the alternative is worse. Because the Demon Lord isn't just a monster—he's a god. A being of pure destruction who will unmake everything, including me. Including my armies. Including the darkness I've spent centuries cultivating."
He spread his hands. "I'm not the villain of this story, Roy. I'm the only one trying to survive. And I've been doing it for a very, very long time."
I thought of the novel. Of the Necromancer's rise, his conquests, his eventual defeat at the hands of the Five. None of it mentioned a Demon Lord. None of it mentioned—
"The novel doesn't know everything," he said, as if reading my thoughts. "The Five think they're fighting me. They don't realize I'm fighting something else. Something that makes me look like a candle next to a sun."
He reached into his robe and withdrew something small, glowing—a seed, black as obsidian, pulsing with inner light.
"The Demon Lord's heart. A fragment of it, anyway. Plant it, and it will grow into something that can counter him. Something that can protect this world when the Five fail." He held it out to me. "Take it, Roy. Join me. Not as a servant—as an equal. The only other person in this world who knows what's really coming."
Mira's blade came up. "Don't. Don't listen to him."
The Necromancer ignored her, his eyes fixed on me.
"You've spent your whole second life being weak. Being overlooked. Being the trashy side character who survives by luck and the kindness of ancient forests." His voice softened. "I'm offering you a chance to be something else. Something that matters. Something that endures."
I looked at the seed. Felt its hunger, its power, its promise.
Then I looked at Mira. At the blade in her hand, held steady despite everything she'd just learned. At the trust in her eyes, shaken but not broken.
"I have something to plant already," I said quietly.
I reached into my pocket and withdrew the Heartwood leaf. It glowed gold in the green darkness, warm and alive.
The Necromancer's eyes widened. "That's—"
"Hope."
I pressed the leaf to the black seed.
The reaction was immediate and violent. Gold light erupted, searing the darkness. The black seed screamed—literally screamed, a sound of pure anguish that echoed through the chamber. The Necromancer stumbled back, his face contorted with fury.
"FOOL! You don't understand what you've—"
The light swallowed him.
For a moment—just a moment—I saw something in his eyes. Not rage. Not hatred.
Fear.
Then the darkness surged back, reclaiming him, and he was gone, vanished into shadow.
The chamber groaned. Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls. The fortress was dying.
"We need to move!" Mira grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the exit.
We ran.
---
The fortress collapsed behind us, crumbling into the crater from which it had risen. By the time we reached the edge, gasping, covered in dust and sweat, there was nothing left but a smoking pit and the fading echo of that terrible scream.
Mira stared at me. "You had a leaf. A leaf. And you used it to—"
"To destroy a fragment of a god's heart? Apparently."
"That's insane."
"That's gardening."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, she laughed—a real laugh, surprised and warm.
"You're the strangest person I've ever met."
"I get that a lot."
We sat at the crater's edge, catching our breath, watching the last traces of green fire fade into nothing.
The Necromancer was gone. For now.
But his words echoed in my mind. The Demon Lord isn't just a monster—he's a god. The alternative is worse.
What if he was telling the truth?
---
We found the others three days later, camped at the edge of the blighted lands. Vance, Dorn, Elara—they rushed to meet us, questions pouring out.
"Did you find her?"
"What happened?"
"Is it over?"
Mira looked at me. I looked at her.
"It's complicated," she said.
Vance groaned. "It's always complicated with you two."
Dorn laughed. Elara hugged us both. And for a moment, the weight of everything lifted.
But only for a moment.
That night, as we sat around the fire, a messenger arrived—not by root, not by shadow, but by dragon. A massive red beast landed at the edge of camp, and from its back dismounted a figure I recognized.
Will Pendragon.
He looked at me with those ember eyes, and for the first time, there was no dismissal in them. Only urgency.
"The Five are gathering at the ancient battlefield," he said without preamble. "The Necromancer's army marches. But something else is coming. Something worse." He paused. "Light said you'd know what it is."
I closed my eyes, and the Necromancer's words echoed again.
The alternative is worse.
"The Demon Lord," I said. "He's not just a monster. He's a god. And he's waking."
Will's face went pale. "How do you know?"
I opened my eyes. "Because the Necromancer told me. Before I destroyed his fortress."
Silence.
Then Will nodded slowly. "Then we need you. All of you. The Five can't do this alone."
Vance stood. "Party 147 doesn't do 'alone.'"
Dorn rose beside him. "We hit things."
Elara smiled. "We heal them afterward."
Mira's hand found her sword. "We watch their backs."
I looked at them—my party, my friends, my family.
Then I looked at Will.
"Lead the way."
---