The world snapped into focus with a sound like breaking chalk.
Clatter.
His jawbone hung loose. He forced it shut. The movement was stiff, wrong. He looked down. A lattice of yellowed bone. A cage where his heart should be.
Clatter-clatter.
That was his feet on the wet cobblestones. Fog curled around his ankles, cold and clammy. It didn't touch him. He felt no cold. He felt… nothing. Just a hollow, airy whistle where sensation should be. The wind was cutting right through him.
A name. He tried to grasp a name. A memory of warmth. It slipped away, leaving only the grit of stone beneath his feet and the script floating in the lower left of his vision.
[ Mob: Skeleton (Level 1) | HP: 1/1 ]
A roar, human and raw, tore through the fog. "Pull them one at a time! Don't aggro the whole group!"
He turned his skull. Three figures. Bright cloth, gleaming metal. A man with a wooden shield, a woman with a stick that glowed, another man nocking an arrow. Players.
The word surfaced from the void. It carried a weight of dread, of endless repetition.
His feet moved without his command. They carried him forward, a jerky, stumbling gait, toward the trio. His arm rose, a rusted short sword held in bony fingers. It was an extension of him, yet not. He didn't will the strike. It just happened.
The shield-bearer laughed. "Fresh meat!" The shield came up. Clang. The vibration traveled up his arm, a dull rattle in his elbow joint.
The glowing stick pointed. "[Minor Flame Dart]!"
A searing line of orange pierced the fog. It struck his ribcage.
There was no pain. Just a sudden, absolute severance.
[Critical Hit! - 15 Fire Damage Received.]
[HP: 1/1 -> 0/1]
[You have died.]
Then, the void. Not black. Not quiet. It was a silent, formless compression. A million fragments of clatter and clang and the ozone-tang of spellfire, all crushed into a single, weightless point. It lasted forever. It lasted an instant.
Clatter.
He was standing again. Same spot. The fog was exactly as it had been. The trio of players was gone. His jaw was loose. He clenched it.
[Respawn Complete. Mob: Skeleton (Level 1) | HP: 1/1]
A memory, sharp and clear: the flame dart. The void. He took a step back. His bones ground.
"This one's up!" A new voice. A single player, younger, in leather scraps. A rogue. The boy grinned, daggers out. "Easy XP."
He tried to run. His legs moved in their preset, shambling trot directly toward the threat. The rogue danced aside, blades flashing. One cut his femur. The other slid between his ribs.
[HP: 1/1 -> 0/1]
[You have died.]
Void.
Clatter.
[Respawn Complete.]
Again. And again.
Death was a constant. The void was his only respite. He stopped trying to remember a before. The now was an eternal cycle: clatter, fight, die, void, clatter.
He began to watch in the moments between spawn and death. He saw patterns. Players moved in groups, but sometimes one strayed. They talked loudly, bragging about loot, complaining about work. They treated this place, this graveyard of broken stones and his endless suffering, with a casual cruelty that settled into the hollow of his chest.
He saw a warrior, overconfident, pull three of his kind. The skeletons surrounded him, rusted swords hacking. The warrior's health bar, a green arc above his head, dipped into red. Panic twisted the man's face. He fumbled for a potion.
Another skeleton, mindless, predictable, lunged. Its sword took the last sliver of green.
[Player 'BruteForce11' has been slain by Skeleton.]
The warrior's body dissolved into motes of light. The skeleton that struck the killing blow didn't react. It just shuffled back to its patrol path.
But he saw. He noted.
An idea, fragile as a bone shard, formed in the silent place where his mind lived. It was not a scripted thought.
The next respawn, he didn't wait for the command to shamble forward. He fought the impulse, grinding his feet into the gravel. He stood behind a large, moss-covered tombstone, observing.
A party fought a skeleton five yards away. A mage, robe blue, health half-empty from a previous fight. The mage stood back, chanting, "[Ice Shard]!" The spell took the mob down.
The mage's guard was down. He was scrolling through a translucent menu, laughing at something in chat.
Now.
He didn't charge. He walked. His gait was still a clattering shamble, but he aimed it. He circled wide, using the fog and the tombstones. The gritty grind of his footfall was the only sound. The hollow whistle in his chest was a drumbeat.
Ten feet. The mage didn't look up.
Five feet. He could see the stubble on the man's chin, the tired look in his eyes. Just a person. In another world, maybe they'd have been friends.
Here, they were predator and prey. The roles were just misassigned.
He raised his rusted sword. It was a pitiful weapon. Damage: 1-2.
The mage finished with his menu. He turned, his eyes going wide. "Huh? Aggro from where—?"
The sword came down. Not a scripted lunge. A chop. Aimed.
It hit the mage's shoulder. A tiny sliver of red vanished from the green health bar.
[Hit! - 1 Damage to Player 'FrostyWizard'.]
"Pfft. Got a sneaky one!" The mage smirked, raising his hand. "[Ice Sh—]"
He didn't let him finish. He chopped again. Clang. Another 1 damage. The health bar was still over half. The mage's chant completed. Frost coalesced.
He did the only thing his broken logic could suggest. He dropped his sword. His bony fingers closed around the mage's wrist, yanking the aiming hand off-target. The spell fired wild, shattering a tombstone.
The mage yelped, more in surprise than pain. He tried to pull away. But a Level 1 Skeleton had a Strength stat. It was a 1. But it was more than the robed mage's.
For three seconds, they struggled. The mage beat at his skull with a free fist. [-0 Damage.] The hollow tok-tok-tok echoed in his head.
Then, from the fog, a stray arrow. It was meant for a different fight. It thudded into the mage's back.
[Critical Hit! - Player 'FrostyWizard' HP: 32/65 -> 5/65.]
The mage gasped. His eyes, wide with new fear, met the empty sockets of the skeleton.
He didn't have a weapon. He had a hand. He released the wrist and drove his bony fingers into the mage's throat.
It wasn't a damage calculation. It was a panic move.
[Hit! - 1 Damage to Player 'FrostyWizard'.]
[Hit! - 1 Damage to Player 'FrostyWizard'.]
[Player 'FrostyWizard' HP: 5/65 -> 3/65.]
The mage was gagging, stumbling back. One more. He needed one more.
He lunged, off-balance. His foot caught on a root. He fell forward, his entire skeletal weight driving the pointed tip of his ulna bone into the mage's chest.
[Hit! - 2 Damage to Player 'FrostyWizard'.]
[Player 'FrostyWizard' has been slain by Skeleton.]
The mage's body went rigid, then dissolved. The familiar motes of light began to rise.
But something else happened.
A torrent of blue, shimmering data strands erupted from the dissolving motes. They bypassed the other skeletons. They ignored the world. They arrowed straight into his chest, into the hollow whistle.
The world stuttered.
[ ͟D҉a̛ţà ̀A̧b̕s̸o͢r̶p͝t̸i͜ǫņ ̕:̛ ̀A͡c͡t͡i̧v͡a̸t̶e̵d͡ ]
[Killing Blow secured on Player Entity: 'FrostyWizard' (Level 7 Human Mage).]
[Stat Assimilation: 5% of Base Totals.]
[Calculating...]
[+0.35 STR] [+0.30 AGI] [+0.70 INT] [+0.25 VIT]
[Total Absorbed Stats: 1.6]
[Evolution Threshold to [Skeleton Warrior]: 50.0]
The blue light faded. The fog returned.
He lay in the gravel, his bones splayed. The other skeletons shambled past, oblivious.
He pushed himself up. The movement was… different. Less grinding. A fraction smoother. He looked at his hand. The bone seemed a shade less yellow.
In the silence of his mind, a voice that was his own, yet had been silent for a hundred deaths, spoke.
One point six.
He looked toward the distant, glowing spires of the player starting city, just visible over the graveyard wall.
Forty-eight point four to go.