His instincts scread at him. Every nerve in his body snapped to high alert, muscles tightening as if preparing for a blow he couldn't see coming.
"Liora," he called sharply, stepping back toward the tunnel entrance. "We need to get out of here."
Liora was already moving. His fingers skimd over the carved sigils, eyes narrowing as he traced their jagged, overlapping patterns. "No shit," he muttered, his voice tense, layered with urgency. "The magic here isn't just lingering—it's growing. Spreading."
Kael turned his gaze back to the nearest corpse, the one that had whispered his na. Its mouth still hung slightly open, its lips frozen in a grotesque twist, like it had almost finished forming the final syllable but never quite got the chance. He could still hear the ghost of its voice slithering through the back of his mind, cold and insidious.
But it wasn't just that one.
A sick realization gripped him as his eyes flicked to the others—the bodies arranged across the stone slabs. They were beginning to twitch.
At first, it was small. A single finger curling, a foot jerking, a ribcage expanding slightly, as though the dead were rembering how to breathe again. Then, the spasms grew stronger. Joints popped as lifeless limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Shudders rippled through corpses, their heads lolling, mouths stretching open in silent, breathless gasps.
Then ca the sound.
A single, rasping inhale shattered the dead air.
Then another.
And another.
Kael's pulse pounded in his ears as a dozen voices overlapped in a fractured, discordant whisper. It wasn't speech—not exactly. More like a sound given shape, sothing ancient and cold pressing against his skull like fingers dragging through his thoughts.
It was his na.
Dozens of voices, murmuring, gasping, hissing—
"Kael… Kael… see… you…"
His breath hitched. It wasn't just voices. It was a presence. A weight in the air, stretching toward him, unseen but unmistakable. Watching.
Liora stiffened. His usual easy confidence had been stripped away, replaced with sothing sharp, sothing controlled. His fingers twitched near the hilt of his dagger as his gaze darted between the sigils and the corpses, calculating.
Kael clenched his jaw, forcing himself to move, to shove down the instinct to freeze. He turned toward the tunnel—the only exit. His fingers curled into fists as he slamd his shoulder against the stone slab that had shifted into place, blocking their way out.
Solid.
No give.
A trap.
"Liora!" he barked, his voice tight, strained. His heart slamd against his ribs like it was trying to break free. The whispering rose to a crescendo, the unnatural chorus tangling in his mind, burrowing deep.
"Whatever you're doing, do it faster!"
Liora cursed under his breath, tracing the sigils with a growing sense of urgency. "They're forming sothing new," he muttered, voice tight. "Not just control. Not just summoning." His fingers hovered over the symbols, barely an inch away, like he was trying to feel the pulse of their magic without touching it directly. His eyes narrowed, scanning the interlocking runes with a kind of frantic precision before he took a step back, tilting his head like he was trying to see the bigger picture.
Kael's breath ca short. He could feel it too—the shift in the air, the way the very walls of the chamber seed to hum with anticipation. A terrible realization settled into Liora's expression as he exhaled sharply.
"They're making a door."
Kael didn't have ti to ask what the hell that ant before the first corpse moved.
It was wrong.
It didn't lurch like so mindless undead. It didn't groan or shamble, didn't drag itself forward in stiff, clumsy movents. It simply shifted—fluid, smooth, deliberate. Like a puppet whose strings had just been pulled taut.
Then it vanished.
Kael barely had ti to register the blur of motion before a clawed hand shot toward his throat.
Instinct took over. He twisted, throwing himself back just in ti to avoid the grasping fingers. The thing—because it sure as hell wasn't human anymore—landed soundlessly on the cold stone where he had just stood, crouched low like a predator, its fingers splayed unnaturally wide. Its head twitched, its neck bending at an angle that should have broken it, the too-wide, glassy eyes gleaming with sothing more than death.
It was watching him. Studying him.
Then it lunged again.
Kael brought his dagger up in a sharp arc, slashing toward its ribs. The blade connected—but instead of slicing through flesh and bone, it cut through sothing that moved.
Not like muscle.
Not like sinew.
It was like stabbing into smoke. A thick, viscous mist that rippled and reford the mont his blade passed through it, shifting seamlessly back into solid form.
The thing didn't even flinch.
A wave of cold crashed over Kael like a physical force. This wasn't so reanimated corpse. This wasn't a soldier raised from the dead with lingering reflexes. This thing knew what it was doing. It had intelligence. Awareness.
Liora swore behind him, moving in a blur. His hand locked onto Kael's arm, yanking him back just as another corpse peeled itself from the slabs, slow and deliberate, its movents lacking the stiff awkwardness of the dead. Then another. And another.
The murmuring grew louder.
Not disjointed groans. Not aningless echoes of life lost.
A chorus.
Kael's stomach lurched.
They were whispering.
It wasn't just noise. It was words, dozens of voices overlapping, layering on top of one another in an eerie, hypnotic harmony. He couldn't make out what they were saying—not fully—but the cadence, the rhythm, it pulled at sothing in his mind. Like fingers trailing through the edges of his thoughts.
Liora stiffened beside him, his usual smirk nowhere to be found. His breathing was controlled, but tight, his fingers flexing near the hilt of his dagger like he was trying to shake sothing off.
Kael clenched his jaw, forcing himself to focus, to block out the voices crawling into his skull. He shifted his stance, dagger steady, breath even.
And then, one of the corpses turned its head toward him.
It didn't move the way a human would, the motion slow and asured, like it was savoring the mont.
Its mouth parted.
And in a voice that was too clear, too familiar, too damn wrong—
It whispered his na.
Kael's pulse stuttered.
Then another voice joined in. And another.
Dozens of them. Whispering his na.
His skin crawled.
The first of them stepped forward, its body rippling with unnatural movent.
Then it lunged.
Kael barely had ti to react before it was on him, its fingers like steel around his wrist, its grip burning cold. He shoved back hard, twisting out of its grasp, but the thing was fast. Too fast.
Liora's blade flashed.
The steel caught the creature in the neck—but again, there was no blood, no resistance. The flesh simply warped, the wound knitting itself back together in seconds.
Liora let out a sharp breath. "That's new."
Kael didn't waste ti responding. He drove his boot into the thing's knee, hard, throwing it off balance just long enough for him to wrench free and put so space between them. But it barely seed to register the impact.
It smiled.
A jagged, hollow expression that wasn't human.
The whispers rose, the air thick with sothing unseen, pressing, stretching—
Then—
A shadow moved at the far end of the chamber.
At first, Kael thought it was another corpse. Then he realized it was sothing else entirely.
The figure stepped forward, its presence swallowing the air in the chamber like a dying breath. The flickering sigils on the walls pulsed faster, their glow intensifying in rhythm with the symbols engraved into the figure's blackened armor. The tal was ancient, darkened with age and sothing deeper—sothing that felt wrong. Carved along the plates were runes, shifting like living ink beneath the surface, each one pulsating in eerie synchronization with the sigils that surrounded them.
A heavy hood draped over its shoulders, casting deep shadows over its form, but the shape of its helm was unmistakable—a raven's beak, elongated and sharp, giving it a grim, birdlike visage. Its eyes, if it had any, were hidden within the void of its mask, an abyss of unseeing darkness that sohow still felt like it was watching, analyzing, deciding.
The temperature in the room plumted.
It did not speak.
It only raised its glaive.
The weapon was massive, nearly the length of Kael himself, the blade wide and gleaming with runic inscriptions. The mont it lifted, the sigils etched into the steel flared to life, bleeding an ominous, dark red glow. The air itself trembled around the weapon, as if recoiling from the power contained within it.
Kael barely had ti to brace himself before the figure moved.
One mont, it was a statue of stillness. The next, it was upon them.
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