The jungle swallowed sound as they ran through it.
The village noises—crickets, distant dogs, even their own breathing vanished the moment they crossed the tree line. Leaves closed in overhead, thick and wet, turning moonlight into broken shards that barely touched the ground.
Branches snapped at their legs. Roots grabbed at their boots.
The lich moved ahead of them slipping through the eerie darkness like it was it's backyard.
"Don't let it slow us!" Thyrion shouted, spear slamming aside hanging vines as he pushed forward.
Axiomel sprinted behind him, lungs burning, eyes locked on the flickering pale glow weaving between trees. The lich didn't run in a straight line. It doubled back. Cut sharp angles. Forced them apart.
Smart.
Too smart.
"Kastor, right flank!" Axiomel barked.
"Already there!" Kastor yelled back, voice strained.
The lich vanished.
Axiomel skidded to a halt.
" Wait, Stop—!"
Too late.
The ground beneath Myris collapsed.
She screamed as rotten earth gave way, her body dropping out of sight in a rush of dirt and broken roots.
"Myris!" Eryx roared, spinning back—
The lich reappeared behind him.
Its arm elongated, bone stretching unnaturally before hardening into a spear.
The strike punched clean through Eryx's side.
The sound wasn't loud.
Just wet.
Eryx gasped, hammer slipping from his fingers as he was lifted off the ground, impaled, feet kicking uselessly.
"NO!" Thyrion charged, spear flashing as he moved
The lich twisted, ripping free from Eryx's body and throwing him aside like a sack of meat.
Eryx hit a tree snapping it cleanly in two.
He didn't get back up.
Axiomel felt something tear loose in his chest.
"STAY MOVING!" he shouted, voice breaking. "DON'T STOP—!"
The lich laughed.
"Εσείς ηλίθιοι θνητοί."
Trees groaned. Shadows shifted. Pale runes flared briefly along the bark as necrotic energy bled into the land itself.
Thyrion slammed into the lich again, spear driving it back step by step. "You want to run?" he snarled. "Run!"
The lich caught the spear.
Bare‑handed.
Bone fingers tightened.
Cracks spider‑webbed along the shaft.
Thyrion's eyes widened.
The spear shattered.
The lich drove the broken haft straight into Thyrion's shoulder, pinning him against a tree with brutal force.
Thyrion screamed.
Axiomel didn't think.
He moved.
His sword flashed out in a wide arc, slicing through the lich's torso, tearing ribs apart in a spray of dark mist. The lich staggered backward-
-and backhanded him.
The blow hit like a hammer.
Axiomel flew sideways, smashing through undergrowth, skidding hard against a tree. His sword spun out of his grip, clattering somewhere into the darkness.
Pain detonated across his ribs.
Something cracked.
He coughed blood.
"AXIOMEL!" Kastor yelled.
The lich turned toward him.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Axiomel dragged himself upright, vision swimming, hands shaking.
No sword.
No time.
The lich lunged.
Axiomel met it head‑on.
He ducked under a claw swipe, stepped inside the creature's reach, and drove his fist straight into its chest.
Bone splintered.
He followed with an elbow to the jaw, snapping its skull sideways. The lich reeled, surprised although not hurt, but off‑balance.
Axiomel didn't stop.
He slammed his knee into its ribs. Again. Again.
The lich grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground.
The pressure on his throat crushed his windpipe.
Axiomel's feet kicked uselessly as black spots crowded his vision.
He snarled and drove his thumb into one of the glowing runes etched along the lich's neck.
The rune shattered.
The lich shrieked and hurled him away.
Axiomel hit the ground hard, rolled, forced himself up again even as his body screamed to stop.
I can't, he thought wildly. If I stop—
Kastor darted in from the side, knives flashing, carving deep gouges into the lich's legs. "DOWN HERE, BONE‑BRAIN!"
The lich spun
Too fast.
Its arm speared forward.
Kastor didn't have time to scream.
The spike punched straight through his thigh, pinning him to the ground.
Axiomel roared.
He charged bare‑handed, tackling the lich at full speed. They crashed into a tree, bark exploding outward as Axiomel drove shoulder, head, anything he had into the creature.
They tumbled.
Rolled.
The jungle floor tore them apart.
The lich clawed at his back, shredding flesh. Axiomel felt warm blood soak his tunic but kept moving, kept swinging, fists hammering bone again and again.
"No—!" Thyrion gasped from behind him, struggling against the tree. "AX—!"
The lich reared back.
Axiomel saw the killing strike coming.
And threw himself into it anyway.
The bone spear punched through his side.
White pain exploded.
He screamed—but his hands were already moving.
He grabbed the spear with both hands.
Pulled.
And headbutted the lich so hard its skull cracked down the center.
They collapsed together.
Breathing hard.
Bleeding.
Broken.
Axiomel hit the ground on his knees.
The world tilted. Hard.
The bone spear was still lodged through his side, every breath grinding it deeper, like his body was actively trying to punish him for still moving. His hands shook around it, slick with blood—his blood and honestly, he wasn't sure how much longer his arms were going to listen.
The lich staggered back a step.
That was new.
It swayed, skull split, dark mist leaking out of the fracture like smoke from a cracked furnace. The runes along its body flickered erratically now, some bright, some dead, like a broken constellation.
It wasn't winning anymore.
It knew it too.
Kastor groaned somewhere behind him. "Ax… I really hate this thing."
"Same," Axiomel wheezed.
The lich shrieked and lunged again.
Axiomel didn't dodge.
He yanked the spear out of his own side with a guttural sound and slammed the blood‑slick bone straight into the lich's chest, driving it back with raw momentum. Pain ripped through him so violently his vision went white for a second, but he stayed upright.
Stayed moving.
The lich clawed at the weapon, snapping it in half.
Axiomel didn't care.
He stepped in and punched.
Once.
Twice.
His knuckles cracked against bone, skin splitting, but the blows landed. He grabbed the lich by the collar of its ruined robes and slammed its skull into the tree behind it.
Again.
Again.
Again.
His hand movement left afterimages. Carrying the raw momentum of a hammer striking an anvil.
The tree split.
The lich howled, flailing, its claws digging way deep into Axiomel's back. He felt flesh tear, felt warm blood run down his spine, but he didn't let go.
He couldn't.
Not now.
"AXIOMEL!"
Thyrion's voice cut through the chaos.
A spear—a different one, salvaged from somewhere—flew past Axiomel's shoulder and pinned the lich's arm to the tree, bone exploding outward.
Thyrion stood upright panting. Blood pooled underneath him as he collapesed to the ground.
The lich screamed.
Myris burst out of the undergrowth from the left, dirt‑covered and furious, blade flashing as she carved through the glowing symbols etched along its ribs.
"It's focus is destabilizing!" she shouted. "NOW!"
Axiomel's head snapped up.
His sword.
He saw it.
Half‑buried in leaves a few meters away.
The lich thrashed, ripping free from the spear, backhanding Myris hard enough to send her skidding across the ground.
"MYRIS!" Kastor yelled, dragging himself upright despite the spike still lodged in his leg.
Axiomel charged forward.
The lich turned just in time to see him tackle it again, both of them crashing into the mud. Axiomel rolled, fingers scrabbling desperately through leaves and dirt—
Metal.
He closed his hand around the sword's hilt.
The lich raised a claw.
Axiomel didn't think.
He stabbed upward.
The blade punched through the lich's jaw and out the top of its skull in a spray of dark mist. The creature froze, body locking mid‑motion, mouth opening in a silent scream.
Axiomel twisted the sword.
And drove it down.
Straight through the core of the glowing runes embedded in its spine.
The jungle went still.
The lich convulsed violently, runes flashing once—twice—then shattering like glass. Its body collapsed inward, crumbling into ash and brittle fragments that scattered across the forest floor.
No resurrection.
No whispering.
Just silence.
Axiomel dropped to one knee, then both.
His sword slipped from his fingers.
Everything hurt.
Everything.
Thyrion crawled over first, shoulder bleeding badly but eyes sharp. "You alive?"
Axiomel laughed weakly. "Ask me later."
Myris crawled over next, face pale but determined. "You idiot," she muttered, already digging through her pack. "Hold still."
Eryx groaned from the tree line. "If anyone says 'that went well,' I'm hitting them."
Kastor snorted, then hissed in pain. "Potions. Now. Please."
Myris tossed one to Thyrion, then another to Kastor, then shoved one into Axiomel's shaking hand.
"Drink," she ordered.
He did.
The potion burned like fire going down, then spread warmth through his chest and limbs. The pain didn't vanish—but it dulled, just enough to keep him conscious.
Minor wounds already started closing. His crushed windpipe healed, The other ones would take its time.
Enough to survive.
They sat there for a while, breathing, bleeding, alive.
Barely.
Axiomel stared at the spot where the lich had died, chest rising and falling hard.
"…It ran because it knew," he murmured.
"Knew what?" Thyrion asked.
"That it couldn't kill us fast enough," Axiomel said.
"We aren't weaklings anymore then" Kastor joked.
They all laughed.