Chapter One: The Game Over Screen
It was a Tuesday, I think. Maybe a Thursday. I truly don't remember anymore. That was—what, nine hundred years ago? Give or take a century. Time doesn't hold shape here. It sags. It melts. It gets under your nails and starts whispering things.
I'm stuck here.
But this is my story.
I was in a hospital room when it happened. Standard-issue hellhole. Bleach stink. Beeping machines with the personality of a toaster. Tubes taped to my arm like I was a science experiment no one wanted to finish. I was sick. Terminal, they said. Twenty-four years old, give or take. Smart kid. Quiet. Liked books and games and things that didn't hurt to hold.
I remember it like a water-stained photograph. I had my laptop propped on a pillow, and I was deep in my favorite game. Dungeon-crawler. Pixel-art. Brutal as hell. I was on the third-hardest dungeon, a place known as the Skeleton Vault—bottom level, floor 99, no checkpoint, one shot at the boss.
I was proud. I'd earned that run. Learned all the little tricks. Spent weeks fine-tuning my build. Knew that damn map better than my own body.
Then came the numbness.
It started in my fingers. Crawled up my arms like frostbite. My heart did something weird—stumbled, like it tripped over its own shoelaces. The last thing I remember seeing was the words:
YOU DIED.
The boss killed me.
I guess that was fitting. I died too.
Not just in the game.
If you can call it "waking up," that's what happened next. But it didn't feel like waking. It felt like getting dragged. Slowly. Like my soul got caught on the loading screen.
First, there was nothing. No light. No sound. Not even blackness—just absence. But I was sitting. I knew I was sitting. I could feel cold stone beneath me. My joints ached in ways that weren't mine. I couldn't move at first. Couldn't breathe. But I didn't need to.
There was a smell.
Rot. Mold. Decay.
It settled in my skull like fog. I heard sounds—quiet and sharp. Clicking. Bone on bone. Something chittering in the distance. Like the universe was chewing on its nails.
Then came the light. Sort of.
It wasn't light in the normal sense. No torches. No fire. No source. It was like I suddenly understood the space around me. A faded awareness, almost like sonar. I could see outlines—like chalk drawings on a blackboard made of air. A throne behind me. Cobwebs overhead. Thick ones, layered. Dead spiders curled like punctuation marks in their own work.
I looked down at myself. Clothes I didn't recognize—ancient, ceremonial. Ornate robes with runes stitched into the fabric. Heavy. Formal. The kind of thing you wear when you're either royalty or cursed.
I moved my fingers.
Click. Clack.
My bones spoke to me.
My toes responded. My spine arched. My body moved like it wasn't mine, but it was. It was. Just... wrong. Off. Hollow. I stood slowly, like the world might break if I moved too fast.
There were steps ahead. Black stone. Moss-lined. Cracked from age and silence.
That's when the thought hit me.
Am I in hell?
Not shouted. Not even whispered. Just... known. A dry, flat thought in the back of my skull.
I began walking. The weight of each step didn't come from gravity, but from the wrongness of this place. The silence wasn't empty. It was watching me.
I made my way down a narrow hallway, passing archways etched with symbols I didn't recognize. Time was asleep here. Dust hung like mist. Books littered the floor—half-burned, chewed, melted from moisture.
At the far end, I saw it: a door. Iron-bound. Sealed shut with bands of bone. But I recognized it. I knew it. That door marked the boss room. My boss room.
I took a step toward it—and something snapped.
Not a sound. Not a sight. A feeling. Like a string tightening around my chest. I staggered backward, breathless from a body that didn't need to breathe. There was no pain, but there was... denial. A wall that wasn't there, but very much was. A boundary.
I wasn't allowed past it.
I turned. Looked back at the throne. It felt like mine, even if I didn't want it.
I tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
I stood there, staring through the door I couldn't pass. Not a crack in it, not a breeze. Just a barrier—invisible, unyielding, final. Like the world had drawn a chalk circle around my existence and said, "Stay."
That's when I heard it.
Click. Click. Click.
A soft tapping on stone. Bone? No, claws. Then came the breathing—ragged, wet, wrong. Like something dying, but refusing to go quietly. Broken wheezing. Gasping like its lungs were stuck together with tar.
It got louder. Closer. Slower.
Then I saw it.
Eyes. Glowing eyes.
A dim violet pair, drifting through the black like twin embers. My bones locked. I nearly shit myself—if I still could.
What the fuck…?
It stepped into the room with all the grace of a nightmare—joints clicking, flesh sloughing, sinew dangling like ribbons. A skeletal hound, built wrong and stitched together with black rot and instinct. And inside its ribcage? Organs, still clinging. Desiccated. Hanging like windchimes in a crypt.
It looked at me.
Didn't growl. Didn't lunge.
Just looked.
Then, as casually as it entered, it turned around... and walked back out.
I blinked. Or, at least, I thought I blinked. Couldn't tell anymore.
That was... That was a Shiver Dog.
From the game. From my game.
Level ninety monster. A rare spawn.
I'd seen hundreds of players get shredded by them in seconds.
What the fuck...?
The question looped. Over and over. Like my mind was stuck on repeat.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—
I turned slowly, legs stiff, mind buzzing like a short-circuited wire.
Made my way back up the stairs. Sat down. Hard.
Stone was cold under me. Felt real. Too real.
I clutched my head. My thoughts spun like a thousand bats in a jar. I was a skeleton. A lich. A boss in a dungeon I used to fight my way through with a keyboard and too much caffeine. Now I was in it. In him.
And then the voice came.
Rattling. Deep. Ancient.
Kill them all who enter.
A whisper. But not one I heard with ears.
It rattled in my skull. Like a centipede running over bone.
Kill them all who enter.
Where are you coming from? I thought.
No answer. Just static. Echoes.
The hall was silent again. Castle walls stared back at me—gray, wet, dripping. Moss clung to everything like old regret. The smell of mold was choking. Something sweet and foul, like corpses and wet paper.
I sat there for a while. Could've been minutes. Could've been hours. Time didn't work right here.
Then the Shiver Dog came back.
Same slow steps. Same glowing eyes.
It was repeating.
A patrol. A loop.
Like it was waiting for something.
It looked at me again. No sound. Just that long, unreadable stare.
And again—it turned and walked away.
Why isn't it attacking me?
Why?
Why?
No answer.
I sat there for what felt like forever. The stone steps were rough under me, worn smooth in places by time—or maybe by others before me. I don't know. I kept listening to the silence, trying to figure out where the voice in my head came from.
It didn't feel external. Didn't echo. It was like it grew from inside me, planted deep behind my skull, blooming like mold.
Was it me?
Was it part of this place?
Or was I just cracking already?
Then I felt it.
Not with my hands. Not with my mind. Something else.
A new sense.
Like an itch inside the soul. Not a tingle or a hum—more like knowing you have fingers even when you're not looking at them. But this was different. I could feel magic.
Like muscle memory that didn't belong to muscles anymore.
I could feel my cooldowns.
My timers.
The spells slotted into my essence.
Not displayed. Not labeled.
Felt.
One pulsed. Called to me.
Fireball.
Of course it was. The basic bitch of all spells.
But I wasn't feeling basic. I was feeling curious. And bored. And maybe just a little insane.
I raised my hand.
The bones clicked into position like I'd done it a thousand times. And then it happened: a tiny orb of heat and light formed in my palm. Flickering. Floating.
And real.
I aimed down the hall and let it go. Not with force—just a push. A suggestion.
The fireball drifted forward, humming quietly, casting orange shadows as it floated down the corridor. It was like watching a candle drift through fog.
Eventually it vanished into the dark.
This is the dungeon.
I could feel it now. The curves of the walls. The corners. The rooms. I remembered this hallway, even though it looked ancient and wrong.
I remembered the Shiver Dog's path—its eight-minute loop.
I could almost time it.
This time, I didn't fire. I held the spell, let it hover in my palm like a living torch. Turns out, you could shape it. Set behaviors. Float. Detonate. Orbit.
It was like configuring spell settings in a game—only the stakes were a lot higher now.
And that's when it hit me:
I'm a lich now.
Fire is my weakness.
That made me pause.
The fireball flickered. It knew. Or maybe I knew. The moment I made it too big or too bright, I'd be burning my own bones.
So I kept it soft. Controlled.
I moved down the hall slowly, letting the orb guide me. And now, with light—real light—I saw it all:
Dirt. Dust. Bones.
So many bones. All scattered like they'd never been respected. Broken swords. Rusted shields. Empty helmets with holes punched through them.
But ahead—fifteen feet down—there was a door. Not like the others. Smaller. Wooden. Swollen with age.
Inside was a mirror.
A big, cracked thing, framed in tarnished silver, sagging slightly from the wall like it wanted to die but didn't know how.
I stepped inside. Held up the fireball.
And saw my face.
Not the one from the hospital.
This one was dead.
Half the flesh was missing. What remained was a tapestry of rot—blackened skin, gray meat, torn ligaments. One eyeball dangled free, swaying gently with my movement like a cursed pendulum. The other stared back at me—milky, unblinking.
But the worst part?
When I looked down at myself...
I still saw me.
Not the monster. Not the corpse.
The me from the hospital bed. My skin. My hands. My hoodie with the sleeves pushed up.
I still felt human.
The illusion wasn't in the mirror. It was in my mind.
Something deep in me refused to let go of who I was. And maybe that's what the dungeon needed—to wear me down. To erase that last image of the boy who died on a Tuesday. Or Thursday.
Then I heard it.
Click. Click.
Panting.
The Shiver Dog.
I turned and walked back to the main hall. The barrier still thrummed behind the boss door.
Go no further.
Go no further.
A string pulling at my chest. Like a leash on a collar I didn't remember agreeing to.
The Shiver Dog stepped through the threshold. It stopped.
It looked at me again.
For the first time, I didn't flinch.
I knelt slowly—bones creaking, robes falling like curtains.
I reached out and touched its head.
It didn't move.
Didn't growl. Didn't bite.
It just stared.
And I felt something shift—not in the dog, but in me.
Why isn't it attacking me?
Why does it keep coming back?
Is it guarding me?
Watching?
Waiting for me to break?
I didn't know.
But I kept petting it anyway.
It had been a week.
At least, I think it had.
The only way I could tell was by counting the Shiver Dog's loop. Every eight minutes, like a cursed grandfather clock made of ribs and instinct, it would enter the room, stop, stare, and leave. Always the same. Never rushed. Never late.
I tracked it. Obsessively.
By the fiftieth pass, I had started scratching tick marks into the wall with a bit of shattered bone I found near the old mirror. I couldn't feel the days, but I could feel the cycles. And that's all that kept me tethered.
I named him Barlow.
Just... came to me.
That was the name of my dog when I was six. He was a big mutt—part shepherd, part something else. Dumb as a stump but loyal as hell. Died under my bed one winter night, tail thumping till the end.
Barlow.
Now here he was again.
Ribcage full of old meat. Glowing purple eyes. Tail like a barbed whip.
But he never barked. Never growled.
He just looked at me like he knew I was on the edge of something.
Every fifteenth cycle, I'd pet him.
He didn't respond.
Didn't pull away.
Didn't lean in.
But he let me do it.
And in this place, that meant everything.
By the hundredth cycle, I was talking to him. Or trying to.
"Hey there, boy..."
What came out of my mouth sounded like a rusted gate groaning open underwater.
My throat vibrated—wrong. Hollow. The sound didn't echo—it hissed and scattered, like dead leaves on stone.
It wasn't even words. Just... noise.
Death on a harmonica.
I kept trying.
Every hour. Every pass. Every Barlow.
Eventually, I learned I could feel the air.
Not like wind, but like... threads. Vibrations. Frequencies. I could pluck them with the right gesture, the right thought.
My first sentence took three days.
"He... llllll... oooh..."
It sounded like gravel being chewed through a flute. I scared myself with it. Even Barlow flinched.
But I got better. Tiny syllables.
Scraped vowels.
Cracked consonants.
I didn't sound human.
But I sounded like me.
I think I cried once. Or the memory of crying surfaced. That weird breathless chest-tight feeling you get when grief comes around uninvited.
Barlow didn't mind.
He just sat there. Silent. Watching me like he knew I wasn't just losing time—I was losing shape.
"How long do I last?" I rasped once, more to the walls than to him.
"Before I'm just another monster behind a door."
The voice hadn't come back since that first time.
Kill them all who enter.
But I could feel it waiting. Like it knew it didn't have to speak again. It would just... outwait me.
Everything down here does.
Time crawled. Barlow came and went. The voice stayed silent.
And I got bored.
That's the thing no one tells you about undeath.
It's boring.
Endless hours of nothing. No hunger. No sleep. No dreams.
Just thought. Raw and constant.
So I turned back to the one thing I could control:
Magic.
I started experimenting—little spells at first. Light. Sound. Vibration. I tried not to touch fire again. Not after the last time when the flames curled a little too close and the bones in my wrist began to smoke.
Then I found another feeling in the spell-menu my soul seemed to carry.
Summon Skeleton.
It pulsed. Old. Familiar. Something about it whispered home.
I called it up.
No incantation. Just intention.
The bones nearby rattled. They rose, clicked together like magnets remembering their shapes. In seconds, a figure stood before me—lopsided, but whole. Holding a rusted sword and a cracked shield.
Its jaw hung open like it wanted to ask something, but had forgotten how.
"Well, hey there," I muttered, voice still cracked and wrong. "Guess I'm not the only dead guy in here."
It didn't respond. Just stood at attention.
I called him Clatter.
Fifteen hours later—on the two hundred and seventy-first Barlow pass—Clatter collapsed. Just dropped like a puppet with cut strings. His bones rolled into the corner, exactly where I'd found them.
And that's when I realized:
Fifteen hours.
That's how long they last.
So I made another.
And another.
One at a time. Never more than one. I didn't want an army. I just wanted... something.
A clock.
I carved tally marks on the wall behind the throne with each skeleton raised and lost. I gave them names.
Clatter
Dogbone
Marrow
Tibbs
Lefty (his arm never worked right)
Scribs (dragged a quill around for no reason)
They didn't speak. They didn't fight.
But they moved.
They responded.
They watched.
And that was enough to keep me from unraveling completely.
Then, on the fourteenth skeleton's shift—Splitjaw, I think—I found it.
There were old pews in front of my throne. Long, cracked benches of stone and rotted wood. Dust had blanketed them so thick they looked like graves.
And between two of them, tucked beneath a warped plank, was something oddly clean.
A book.
Wrapped in black cloth. Bound in something that might've once been leather. Smelled like the back end of time.
It had no title. Just symbols etched deep into the cover—curved, sharp, unfamiliar.
I didn't open it.
Not yet.
First, I just stared at it.
Then I touched it.
Then I placed it on the steps and sat beside it, like it might speak first.
Eventually, I realized I couldn't read it.
Not because I'd forgotten how—but because this wasn't any language I knew. Runes, maybe. Glyphs.
Whatever it was, it felt old. Older than the dungeon. Older than my bones.
So I began decoding it the only way I could think of:
With bones.
I snapped femurs into slivers. Sharpened them into quills.
Scraped dust and ash from the corners of the hall. Mixed it with old blood.
Ink. Ugly and brown.
And I began to copy what I saw—one rune at a time—onto the stone wall beside the throne.
Every day. Every skeleton.
One symbol. Then another.
Repeating them.
Saying them aloud, as best I could with a mouth that never truly closed.
"Clatter, what do you think this one means?"
Clatter didn't answer.
"Yeah. Me neither."
It became my ritual.
Barlow. Summon. Study.
Talk to the bones. Talk to myself.
Try not to forget my name.
Seven months.
Roughly.
I stopped scratching tally marks into the wall a while ago. Stone only has so much real estate. And after a while, it starts to feel more like carving headstones.
I'd deciphered most of the runes from the book. Or thought I had.
It wasn't a grimoire.
It was a journal.
A story.
A man's slow descent into something monstrous.
The original Lich, I think. The one I replaced.
His name was Luke Marness. A miner.
Not the kind with a pickaxe—but with magic.
Him and a crew had discovered this place—this buried cathedral of stone—and carved it open with force spells and displacement glyphs. The plan, it seemed, was to make a refuge. A hidden sanctuary.
Instead, they dug into something deeper.
And only Luke stayed.
The rest of them...
Well. I have a thousand bones to ask.
Then, one day, something changed.
A sound like thunder and meat and failure.
THUD.
A body slammed into the stone just outside my barrier. Dust kicked up. Something crunched.
Barlow was there first—tail high, ribs rattling. He lunged at the corpse and began twisting it around, like he expected it to get up and fight.
It didn't.
"Barlow! Easy... bring him here. Gently, if you know what that means."
He paused. That was new. A flicker of hesitation. He understood me.
Eventually, he dragged the body to the edge of the throne room, dropped it like a chew toy, and stepped back.
It was a kid, really. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Dressed in patchwork armor too big for him. Blood pooled under his back, leaking from his mouth and the tear in his leg where the fall had done its work.
His bag had burst open. Potions rolled like spilled marbles across the stone. Most were shattered. He'd fallen at least ten stories—maybe more.
"What the hell were you thinking, kid?"
I opened the pack. Inside: dried meat, a cracked compass, and a Beginner's Book of Magic.
I stared at it.
You came here with this?
This dungeon eats people with twenty years of experience and top-tier loot—and you brought a tutorial?
I sat down, pulled the book into my lap. The corners were bent. The cover smelled like wet dog and moldy parchment.
Still, I flipped it open.
And I learned something.
Even after nearly a year—I could still learn.
I unlocked three spells.
Lightning Bolt. Basic, but precise.
Water Wall.
Shield. A real one. Not like the junk spell I tried to make when I first got here.
Even I was surprised. A Level 100 Lich learning Beginner magic. It shouldn't be possible. But maybe this world worked on different rules than the game did.
Maybe being dead meant unlearning what I thought I knew.
Or maybe I was never really at level 100.
The kid had a photo, too. Stuffed between the pages of the spellbook.
A girl. Mid-twenties, maybe. Silver hair, black armor, a small smile that didn't quite reach the eyes. Her name was scribbled on the back in messy charcoal:
Drowling.
I didn't know her. Didn't know him.
But now they were both part of me.
I pinned the picture near the mirror with an old knife. Something to look at when I passed by. Something to break the stone.
And then, routine returned.
Summon skeleton.
Fifteen hours.
Count Barlow's passes.
Repeat.
But I needed more.
So I started using the skeletons for entertainment.
"You—Clatter. You're the Hero. And you—Lefty—you're the Dragon. Don't ask questions, just roar."
They played out scenes from old games, old dramas, old sitcoms I could barely remember. One time I had them reenact a memory from when I was ten, pretending to be a wizard in my mom's backyard with a broomstick.
Barlow sat near the doorway and watched. He didn't understand, but he didn't leave either.
It wasn't much.
But it kept me from going hollow.
I was starting to feel like this place wasn't a dungeon anymore.
It was a stage.
A tomb with an audience of one.
And maybe, just maybe...
I wasn't the prisoner.
Maybe I was the only thing down here that still had a soul.
It started a few hours after the fall.
At first, the kid's body just laid there—limp, broken, staring at the stone ceiling with wide, unseeing eyes.
But then... something changed.
His flesh began to melt.
Not like fire or acid. No bubbling, no screams—just... dissolving. Like candle wax under invisible heat.
His skin pulled inward. Muscle fibers shrank. The color left him.
It wasn't decay.
It was absorption.
The dungeon was taking him.
And that's when I saw it.
For just a moment—as the last bits of marrow and memory bled into the stone—a light flared inside the corpse.
A flicker.
Dim.
Soft.
Pure.
And it flowed—into the floor. Into the walls. Into me.
"No..."
I staggered back. Barlow growled, low and uncertain.
That light wasn't magic.
It wasn't soul energy.
It was purpose.
And now I understood. All of it.
The trinkets. The loot drops. The shiny promises placed deeper and deeper into this pit.
They were bait.
The dungeon—this entire place—it wasn't just a labyrinth.
It was a feeding system.
And we...
Barlow.
Me.
Even the skeletons—
We were the lures. The guardians. The sentinels.
Gatekeepers of a false challenge designed to harvest hope.
They came looking for glory.
They left as fuel.
A year passed.
Three hundred and sixty agonizing days.
I counted every single one. Not with calendars or clocks, but with the fall of skeletons.
Fifteen hours apiece.
Three per day.
Over a thousand little plays.
Over a thousand deaths.
My actors were growing in number.
Clatter.
Tibbs.
Lefty.
Splitjaw.
Stitch.
Echo.
Mimic.
Gallop. (he walked funny)
Three summoned at a time now.
Three little echoes of madness, miming out sitcoms and soliloquies from a world I could barely remember.
One acted out my mother once.
I cried.
Or, I think I did.
I sat still.
I trembled.
My ribs hurt.
That was the closest thing I had left to grief.
I had them move the boy—what remained of him—to the corner near the forgotten pews.
He didn't look like a person anymore.
Just a sack of bone-stain and memory.
I still didn't know his name.
But I gave him one anyway:
Hopeful.
Barlow started sitting closer to the throne.
Not always. Not every pass. But more and more, he'd stop beside me and rest.
He didn't speak—never had.
But there was something in his stare now.
Something that said:
"I remember too."
Or maybe:
"I won't leave you."
I found myself petting him without thinking. Sometimes just leaving a hand on his spine.
It was comforting. Even if he was a corpse held together by dread and duty.
I read Luke's journal every day now.
Not to learn.
I already knew every word.
Every rune. Every diagram.
I read it because it was the last story I had.
The last human thing.
I didn't remember what my mother's voice sounded like anymore.
Couldn't picture my father's face.
Couldn't recall the taste of food.
The feel of sun.
The color of the sky.
Sometimes I dreamt of beds.
Blankets.
Cereal.
A cracked phone screen.
My hospital room.
But it all felt like someone else's life.
I think I died that day.
But not when my heart stopped.
Not when I woke up here.
Not even when I saw my reflection in the mirror and realized my face had fallen apart.
No.
I died when I forgot the sound of laughter.
And now I sit.
On a throne that isn't mine.
In a kingdom that feeds on sorrow.
Ruling nothing.
But never allowed to leave.
Five years.
That's how long I've been sitting in this mausoleum of madness. Five years since the fall. Since I watched the kid's soul bleed into the walls. Since I started tasting my own rot.
It's in my mouth now. Always. Like spoiled meat and grave dirt. Every morning—if you can call it that—I wake up gagging on the stench of my own existence.
Pluck the worms.
Toss the beetles.
Scrape the maggots off the roof of your mouth.
Little rituals. That's all that kept me from going hollow.
And Barlow—my tether. My heartbeat. My shadow.
He kept pacing like always, but lately, I'd begun to notice something new. A shimmer.
A thread.
Thin as hair. Glowing faintly. It trailed from Barlow's spine like a leash—vanishing into the darkness above.
I could see it, but I couldn't touch it.
He was tethered, just like me.
But he was pulling. Slowly. Every day. A little farther from his path. A little closer to me.
And that's when I realized:
So was I.
Every day for five years, I'd tested the leash that bound me to the throne room. And every day, I stretched it just a little farther. Twenty-five feet now. Maybe thirty. Enough to walk half the length of the hall.
Why?
Why do I remember?
Why me?
Why not just erase my name, burn out my soul, and make me another puppet in this goddamn play?
Why do I still have a mind?
All I ever knew was sickness. Tubes in my arm. Beeping machines. Nurses whispering like I was already gone.
That was hell.
Wasn't that enough?
Apparently not.
Because now I'm here.
A conscious corpse.
A thinking, rotting god trapped in a stone sarcophagus.
And then...
It happened.
I felt them first.
Like floodlights in the dark.
Warm. Naive. Alive.
A party. Adventurers. Heroes. Idiots.
I saw the fireballs first—bright flickers flashing through the lower corridors. Heard the clang of boots, the laughter. The joy.
"Barlow—"
"Get your ass over here!"
He didn't move fast enough.
The leash snapped. He collapsed mid-step—ribs cracking, tail spasming. Just dropped like someone yanked his strings too hard.
Something inside me broke.
My rage wasn't fire. It was ice.
Freezing, silent, brutal.
The adventurers reached the barrier and stopped. I stood at the far end of the hall, on the dais, in shadow.
They didn't fear me.
They laughed.
"Look at this dumb motherfucker," one said, smirking.
"He can't pass the door," the woman giggled.
"Just shoot him from here."
"No," one said. "It won't count unless we go in."
"Fuck it," the older one said. "Let's do this."
They stepped across the threshold.
And I let go.
Twelve skeletons rose behind me.
Smooth. Swift. Perfect.
Practice makes perfect.
The voice screamed in my head—louder than it ever had:
KILL THEM.
KILL THEM ALL.
MAKE THEM SUFFER.
And for the first time, I didn't resist.
Fire.
Lightning.
Hatred.
A bolt of raw plasma arced from my hand and struck the woman mid-laugh. She screamed as her armor caught fire.
The others turned, wide-eyed.
"You said he wouldn't attack—"
"You said—"
"What the hell is this?!"
Too late.
Skeletons fell upon them like sharks in a blood tide. Blades slashed. Bones shattered. Screams echoed.
Their spells were bright, but mine were eternal.
And when the last one fell...
When the last soul bled its last breath into the floor...
The dungeon fed.
I didn't care.
"Barlow."
I crossed the threshold. The leash burned against my throat—but I didn't stop.
I scooped his bones—careful. Reverent.
Brought him to the dais.
Laid him beside the throne.
"You were my friend."
I didn't know if tears fell from my face. Maybe I imagined them. Maybe they were just maggots.
But my heart—what was left of it—was a storm.
A graveyard of fury and loss.
And I would make this dungeon choke on it.
A couple of minutes passed.
The room was quiet again.
Just bone. Blood. Silence.
I sat back on the throne. I didn't move. I didn't think.
And then the dungeon... took its part.
I felt it happen.
First, a whisper of heat—like a fire being lit deep inside my sternum.
Then—the flood.
Memories.
Their memories.
All of them.
They hit me like a wave breaking in reverse. Slamming into the back of my mind, yanking me forward.
I saw…
A mother smiling over stew.
A brother burying a pet.
A drunk kiss at the edge of a cliff.
Theft.
Regret.
Laughter.
Pain.
Love.
Lust.
Rage.
It was like being alive again.
Like breathing air after drowning for a decade.
Their emotions became mine—pure, hot, raw. I could taste them. Feel them. Even the smallest flicker of their joy lit my insides like fireworks in a ruined sky.
It was like a drug.
No.
Worse.
It was like home.
"Holy shit…"
I slumped forward, gripping the arms of the throne as the light entered me.
Tiny white threads. Like the one I saw on Barlow.
Only now they came into me.
Each one a tether.
A soul-string.
A piece of someone I never met—and now knew better than my own parents.
And I wanted more.
God help me—I wanted more.
But then I looked down.
And remembered.
Barlow.
His bones laid at the foot of the dais.
Still.
Silent.
Gone.
The warmth inside me soured into something hollow and sharp.
I sat there for hours.
Staring.
Remembering.
Suffering.
And then…
They moved.
Just a twitch at first.
A femur sliding an inch.
A jaw clacking shut.
I blinked.
Watched.
And there it was—
The tether.
That faint white thread reappeared—glowing softly, winding back into the bones, tugging at them like invisible fingers.
Rib by rib.
Vertebra by vertebra.
Tooth by tooth.
They came together.
"Barlow…"
He stood.
Shaky.
Tired.
Alive?
No. But... here.
Back.
I knelt in front of him.
He tilted his head. His purple eyes dim but present.
I didn't speak. Couldn't.
There was nothing to say.
But the moment was real.
And for the first time in what felt like forever—
I wasn't alone again.