Location: Crypt Sanctum Node
Core Stability: 27%
Directive: Investigation
Predator Tier Entity: Approaching
The runes on the wall didn’t shine—they breathed.
A slow, rhythmic pulse. Blue light, barely visible, throbbed like veins beneath the stone surface. The same pulse echoed behind my eye sockets.
I didn’t see the path. I felt it.
A call. Silent. Arcane.
【Echolocation Pulse – Active】
— Mapping Residual Rune Energy
— Detecting Spatial Distortion
Result: One passage hidden
Location: North wall, fracture 1.7m high, 0.5m wide
Entry Status: Passable
I approached the crack—more of a gash in the stone, narrow and jagged. Barely enough for me to slide through.
It wasn't meant for a body with flesh.
Lucky me.
My bones scraped the edges as I slipped inside, shoulder blades clinking softly against the cold stone. The air changed. The temperature dropped—but it wasn’t the chill of death.
It was the cool of presence.
Old.
Waiting.
Unblinking.
The chamber opened into a perfect circle.
Smooth. Symmetrical. Unlike the jagged tunnels and shattered tiles of the outer crypt.
Here… everything was intentional.
A monolith stood at the center—three meters high, sculpted from white bone and black rock, intertwined like lovers buried in battle. Runes crawled across its surface in looping patterns. They pulsed as I stepped forward.
A corpse sat before it—cross-legged, still, robed in tattered cloth that shimmered faintly with embedded glyphs. Time hadn’t consumed the body—it had preserved it.
And as I neared, it sensed me.
Or perhaps it had always been waiting for someone like me.
My fingers reached out—drawn, not guided.
And the moment I touched the corpse—
It broke.
Not with violence.
With relief.
Dust exploded silently into the sanctum like a soul finally exhaling.
【Bone Node Activated】
Crypt Sanctum Interface Online
Accessing Legacy Functions...
Welcome, Graveborn.
Syncing Necro-Script: 62%
Unsealing System Archives...
A whisper—not in sound, but in language older than language—flooded my mind.
Glyphs lit across the monolith. Symbols I’d never seen, but understood. Numbers. Histories. Echoes.
I stepped closer, drawn in.
The runes on the floor ignited beneath my feet, forming concentric rings.
Each ring pulsed with a different color.
Each pulse carried a new understanding.
I didn’t breathe.
I didn’t think.
I simply received.
The world outside faded.
The Gravehowl’s footsteps became distant thunder.
Because here… in this forgotten sanctum…
I was finally beginning to understand.
The monolith pulsed once.
Then again—slower, deeper.
Like a heartbeat wrapped in stone and memory.
Glyphs surged across its surface in tight spirals, then broke into floating shards of light. They hovered midair, slowly rotating, forming circles of translucent data.
I didn’t read them.
I understood them.
Not with language.
With inheritance.
【SYSTEM – CORE INTERFACE UNLOCKED】
Graveborn Signature Confirmed
Classification: Skeleton (Tier-0 Undead)
Core Sync: 22%
Bone Rank: Delta
Soul Integrity: Partial
Essence Capacity: 4 / 10
Level Visibility: Locked (Requires Sensory Tier II)
Mutation State: Stable
Memory Access: Fragmented
The data spiraled outward—expanding like a blooming ribcage.
【Core Functions Explained】
– Level System: All entities in this world are assigned evolutionary tiers and power levels, visible only to those with refined perception.
– Bone Rank: Determines how much raw energy your undead frame can contain before instability. You are currently Delta-Rank.
– Essence Capacity: Soul matter stored from defeated entities. Needed to unlock traits, skills, and mutate. Soul fragments can also fuse under specific catalysts.
– Devour Tree: The more varied your meals, the more hybrid mutations you unlock. Beast traits. Humanoid talents. Dragon bloodlines. Gods, even.
– Mutation Paths: Tiered evolution is not linear. Based on kills, memories absorbed, and soul type consumed.
Current Available Paths (Preview Mode):
— Bone Reaver – Weapon-Focused Predator
— Carrion Ghoul – Flesh-Eater Tank
— Wight Scholar – Necro-Magic Class (Locked – Memory Key Required)
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
The walls of the sanctum responded in kind.
Bone-etched murals lit up, showing skeletal forms in various stages of transformation—some humanoid, others grotesque, winged, armored, crowned. Kings and monsters. Liches and beasts.
I turned slowly in place, watching as potential futures burned themselves into my vision.
And through it all… one truth burned brighter than the rest:
“I’m not just leveling up.”
“I’m customizing what I become.”
The Devour Tree branched across the monolith now—each limb representing a kill type, a trait gained, a path expanded. Rats. Hounds. Humanoids. The more varied the prey, the richer the evolution. Like alchemy made of corpses.
A single node pulsed brighter than the others.
Crypt Rat — Fully Integrated.
Trait: Echolocation.
Status: Stable.
Class Influence: None.
The next node? A silhouette of something bigger. Hulking. Quadruped. Violent.
The Gravehowl.
The system flared again.
【Directive Updated】
Seek Higher Essence.
Devour with Intent.
Define Your Class.
The path is yours—but the cost is everything.
I stared at the spinning glyphs.
For the first time since waking in this dead world… I felt something like wonder.
And underneath it?
Greed.
The glyphs shifted again.
Not into new shapes—but into compartments.
Circles divided. Lines of code segmented themselves across the monolith like veins branching into a bone. Columns formed. Data organized itself into labeled rows.
A new interface had appeared.
But this wasn’t for evolution.
This was inventory.
【Bone Bank Interface – Active】
Classification: Tier-0 Undead
Soul State: Semi-Coherent
Archive Access: GRANTED
Stored Skill Fragments:
– Echolocation Lv.1 [Stable]
– Shadow Skitter (Fragmented)
Physical Residue Stored:
– 3x Crypt Rat Skulls
– 1x Crypt Rat Spine (Splintered)
– Femur Shard (Basic Quality)
Soul Mass: Low
Core Drift: Nominal
→ Combine Fragmented Skills? Y/N
I stared at the display. The information wasn’t static—it breathed. Echoes of the creatures I’d killed drifted within each row, like ghostly fingerprints lingering in data.
Their essence hadn’t just become mine.
It had been filed.
Cataloged.
Weaponized.
“This isn’t a system.”
“It’s a library of the dead.”
The Bone Bank had two primary branches:
- Skill Archive: Catalog of soul-acquired traits, skills, and abilities. Some stable. Others broken, awaiting fusion or repair.
- Physical Remnants: Bones, marrow chunks, enchanted fragments. Components that could be used to forge, consume, or mutate.
I hovered—mentally—over Shadow Skitter.
A fragment. Incomplete. Taken from one of the Crypt Rats. It gave no description, only a glyph shaped like a rat’s skeletal outline mid-leap.
Likely a movement skill. But fragmented. Unusable.
Unless…
I turned to Echolocation—the only skill I’d fully stabilized.
The interface blinked again.
【Upgrade Path Available】
Fusion Suggestion:
Shadow Skitter (Fragmented) + Echolocation (Stable)
Result:
– Echolocation Lv.2
– Trait Gain: Sonic Step (10% Dodge Chance in Shadowed Environments)
Warning: Consumes Fragment Permanently.
Irreversible. Proceed?
I hesitated.
Just for a moment.
Then:
→ [Y]
The interface pulsed red.
Then white.
Then everything shook.
Not the chamber.
Me.
My legs locked. My head jerked back. Somewhere in my core, the skill wasn’t just updating—it was breaking, reforming, knitting through the lattice of my bones.
For a moment, I saw nothing.
Then sound returned.
Brighter. Sharper.
I didn’t just hear anymore.
I felt where things should be.
【Skill Fusion Complete】
Echolocation Lv.2 [Enhanced]
Passive Trait Gained: Sonic Step
– Effect: Slight shift in position during movement allows for minor evasion in low-light scenarios.
Bone Bank Updated
I stepped away from the monolith.
The room hadn’t changed.
But I had.
My balance felt... lighter. More reactive.
My foot pressed to the floor with near-silent grace, the echo bending in the stone, predicting how it would bounce.
“I just dodged reality.”
I smiled—dry and hollow.
But real.
One more skill. One more step closer to domination.
“How many fragments before I become a god of bones?”
The Bone Bank interface faded, its light folding into itself like bone dust caught in a breeze.
But the monolith didn’t go dark.
It changed.
Glyphs bled across its surface—no longer static data columns, but motion. Ghost-light moved through the runes like blood vessels. Scenes began to form. Not flat. Not symbolic.
Three-dimensional projections, flickering like smoke caught in ritual fire.
A war.
Or something worse.
Skeletons clad in obsidian armor marched in perfect silence, flanked by hulking bone-beasts with too many jaws. They trampled across fields of flame, facing an army of flesh-wrapped giants who burned alive and didn’t stop walking.
Above them, dragons made of ash circled a black sun.
No one screamed.
They were all already dead.
The image shifted.
A cathedral, upside-down, carved beneath a mountain. Inside, a pale king without a face floated in prayer, surrounded by orbs of soul fire. Chains bound his limbs, but they led inward—wrapped around his own ribs.
He opened his mouth.
And thousands of lesser undead collapsed in synchronized worship.
Then the vision flared again—
A cavern flooded in molten bone.
A skeletal colossus pulled itself free from the marrow, screeching through three mouths stacked on top of each other.
An armored knight—half-metal, half-withered angel—charged into the thing’s throat and detonated in light.
The images blurred.
Collapsed.
Reformed.
The monolith pulsed—once.
And then I felt it.
Not a system prompt.
Not an AI script.
Not code.
A presence.
Vast.
Ancient.
Cold not like death—but like calculation beyond comprehension.
It didn’t speak.
It didn’t need to.
But I understood it anyway.
This system wasn’t made for me.
I was not the first.
Not the chosen.
Not the designed.
I was simply eligible.
A piece that fit the mold.
A spare rib in a cathedral of forgotten gods.
My fingers curled against my will. My spine arched.
And then a voice—not mine, not even the system’s—whispered into my mind like a name half-forgotten:
“Reclaim the Throne of Bone.”
【??? Connection Detected】
Host Compatibility: 0.00071%
Identity: Fragmented Divine Echo
Interaction Unsafe – Severing link…
…
…
Failed.
The monolith dimmed.
The air thickened again, grounded.
The silence returned.
But now it felt different.
Less like a pause.
More like a reset.
“Something ancient built this.”
I spoke without breath.
Without soul.
Only clarity.
“Not for me…”
“But for something like me.”
I turned toward the still-burning glyphs.
One last flicker shimmered across the stone:
【Legacy State: Dormant】
Awaiting Heirloom Directive…
Status: Undefined
Candidate Evaluation: Inconclusive
I didn’t know what that meant.
But I would.
“I’m just the next skeleton in line.”
But if this world was full of kings, gods, and monsters long buried—
I wouldn’t stay at the bottom of the grave.
I’d climb the bones to the top.
The last light faded from the monolith.
Not extinguished.
Just… waiting.
I turned away, the air behind me still humming with echoes of gods and kings and monsters whose names were buried deeper than the crypt itself.
The stone beneath my feet hissed as I stepped off the final runic ring. The sanctum didn’t close, didn’t seal behind me—but it felt like it did.
Like whatever watched me inside had turned its back.
Or moved on to the next candidate.
I re-entered the crypt tunnel, ducking through the narrow fracture in the wall where I’d first squeezed into the node.
The ambient glow dimmed as I passed through.
The light outside was different now.
More... urgent.
The tremor hit just as I emerged.
Stone groaned beneath my feet.
Dust rained down in slow cascades from the ceiling.
Somewhere in the depths—something roared. Not the high screech of the rats. Not the deep bark of the Gravehowl.
This was heavier.
A sound that didn’t belong in tunnels.
A sound that shouldn’t be contained by stone.
【Warning: Crypt Boss Detected】
Entity Class: Gravehowl Prime
Tier: 1 (Predator-Class Mutation)
Location: Lower Vault Access – Breached
Threat Radius: Expanding
Estimated Encounter in: 11 minutes
【Recommended Status: Tier-1 or Higher】
Current Status: Tier-0 Incomplete
Evolution Readiness: Delayed
Engagement Discouraged.
I froze in place.
Not in fear.
In calculation.
Tier-1.
That wasn’t just a level bump.
It was a threshold.
A line in the bone.
Cross it, and I would no longer be some shambling skeleton wandering the crypt.
I’d be a Reaver. A Ghoul. A Wight. Or something worse. Or better.
Or both.
I opened the list again—my list. The system overlay flickered once more in the edge of my vision, now cleaner, clearer. Options still locked. But the preview was enough.
Paths glowed faintly in red and gray.
Bone Reaver – 83% Sync.
Carrion Ghoul – 69% Sync.
Wight Scholar – Inaccessible (Memory Seal Fragmented)
“If I’m going to survive…”
I looked down at my hands.
Bone. Clean. Hard. Scarred by system glyphs and instinct. Once mine. Then lost.
Now rebuilt.
The floor shook again.
The cry from below rattled the ribs in my chest.
I clenched my fist. The phalanges groaned. I felt a low vibration through the marrow—something distant approaching fast.
I focused on the interface.
Not to panic.
To prepare.
To choose.
Because evolution wasn’t optional anymore.
It was the only path forward.
“...I’ll have to become something else.”