There’s a quiet kind of horror in knowing you’re going to die again.

  It’s not dramatic. No slow-mo, no orchestral crescendo. Just a stillness curling inward, cold and certain. The realization that whatever force brought you here has changed its mind—and you are the correction.

  Big Chief moved like that realization made flesh. Every step landed with the weight of inevitability. The kind of weight that doesn’t sprint. It simply arrives. His mace swung in slow, deliberate arcs.

  “You don’t belong here.” He didn't speak it as a threat. Just a truth.

  My staff buckled under the impact as I barely managed to block a hit from his mace, and pain rattled up through me like someone slapping out a bad rhythm on bone. Bone creaked. Metal groaned. I gritted my teeth and shoved back, which did exactly nothing.

  “Not warrior. Not king. Weak. Small.”

  “I never asked to be one.”

  He leaned closer, his presence blotting out the light like a thunderhead rolling in.

  “Big Chief can help with that. Just die.”

  The next swing came faster.

  I twisted aside, just barely, and the mace shattered the floor where I’d stood. Stone fractured like glass. The air rang with the sound of something old breaking. I staggered, staff shaking in my hands, trying to remember which direction was away.

  Movement flickered at the edge of vision.

  Grib.

  He shouldn’t have been moving that fast. Or that quietly. Or with that much purpose.

  He launched himself from the shadows, a blur of motion wrapped in bones and reckless devotion.

  “For the Bone King!” he howled. Giddy, triumphant, and definitely enjoying himself way too much.

  And then, God help us,he threw the slime.

  He hurled it like he was a goblin-shaped trebuchet and the blue blob hit a kobold square in the face with a noise like stepping into a wet sock. The kobold shrieked, arms flailing as it tried to peel the slime off, but the slime wasn’t going anywhere. It clung with the unshakeable determination of old gum under a diner table.

  Grib didn’t hesitate. He darted forward and drove his spear into the kobold’s gut with a cheerful grunt, then yanked it free like he was ringing a bell.

  I stared.

  Grib spun, already charging the next one, slime jiggling victoriously in one hand, spear in the other. His movements were disturbingly fluid. Fast. Focused. Wrong.

  Not in the usual goblin way. In a way that said: you built this.

  Because I had.

  I’d reforged him. Reassembled what was left. Given him something else. Something sharp.

  I didn’t know if it was a gift or a theft.

  Big Chief’s roar yanked me back to the present.

  I turned just in time to catch the mace with my staff again. The shock slammed through me—hard enough that I felt ribs I didn’t technically have. Bone splinters scattered across the floor. My grip faltered.

  “Not king,” Big Chief rumbled. “Pretender. Wrong shape.”

  The mace lifted again. I froze.

  There was no clever trick waiting in the back of my mind. No strategy. No next move.

  I wanted to scream, but even that felt like it would waste time I didn’t have. Big Chief was too close. Too strong.

  Grib was somewhere behind me, still fighting. And I was about to fail him again. I had nothing.

  Big Chief was going to kill me.

  I stopped thinking. Instinct reached out through the panic and grabbed hold of something sharp.

  Chilling Touch.

  My hand snapped up, fingers blazing with blue frost. I caught Big Chief’s wrist mid-swing.

  The ice spread instantly.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Fractal veins of frozen air raced up his arm—biting, seizing, cracking. Flesh froze and split. Bones popped like old wood in a fire.

  Big Chief screamed.

  The sound echoed off the walls, low and ragged, a thing pulled from somewhere deep and unwilling. He ripped his arm back, chunks of frozen meat flying in every direction.

  One eye locked onto me.

  Burning.

  “You—what you do?!”

  I didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t.

  I didn’t know.

  Big Chief lunged.

  I dove aside as the mace cleaved through empty air and obliterated the wall behind me. Stone burst like a blister. Light vanished. Dust filled the room like smoke from a funeral pyre.

  I was already pulling myself up.

  The system opened without me calling it. A quiet presence at the edge of panic. Waiting.

  Fireball.

  One word. Bright. Cold. I didn’t have time to ask why or how or what the collateral damage might be.

  I raised the staff.

  Let go.

  The world screamed.

  A ball of fire ripped from the tip of the staff: pure force, pure heat, pure system. It tore through the chamber, hit Big Chief square in the chest, and swallowed him whole.

  There was no sound. There was only light. And then… nothing.

  Silence poured into the space the fire left behind.

  When the smoke cleared, Big Chief was still standing. Technically.

  His body was blackened, split open in places where the heat had been worst. His good eye was gone, melted to a hollow socket. What remained of his chest rose once, then gave up. He swayed—then dropped.

  And that was it.

  The silence afterward didn’t feel earned. Just… present. Like it had stepped in to clean up.

  Big Chief lay where he’d fallen, collapsed into himself, smaller than he had any right to be. The fire had taken his size, his weight, the myth of him—and left behind something brittle.

  I knew this was supposed to be a victory.

  It didn’t feel like one.

  Just a consequence.

  Grib broke the stillness with a yell. “The Bone King wins!” he howled, triumph fizzing out of him like shaken soda. The slime in his hand jiggled helpfully, as if offering moral support.

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him. I was still staring at Big Chief.

  At the ruined shape of someone who had once filled the whole room just by existing.

  His mace was nearby, cracked and twisted, its jagged head half-buried in scorched stone. I found myself staring at the grooves it left behind. Not because they meant anything. Just because they were still there.

  “Big Chief no match for us!” Grib crowed, turning to the kobolds still lurking in the shadows. He lifted the slime like it was a battle standard. “See? Bone King strongest! No one stop us now!”

  No one stop us.

  The words echoed, hollow and off-key. I didn’t move. My eyes stayed locked on what was left. The heat in the room shimmered slightly, but there was nothing behind it anymore. No threat. No force. Just ash and motionless limbs.

  Gone.

  The air was heavy. Dry. Thick with smoke. But under it, something worse. The kind of smell that clings. Burnt hair. Open blood. Heat-warped metal.

  The kobolds hadn’t moved. Their weapons hung limp in their hands. A few of them were staring at me. Most were staring at Big Chief.

  Three of them were dead.

  One still had Grib’s spear lodged in its chest. Another had fallen face-first, head cracked open where Grib must’ve hit it.

  I hadn’t seen it happen. But I didn’t need to.

  The staff slipped from my hands and clattered to the stone.

  Loud. Too loud. It sounded like punctuation.

  Grib turned to me. His grin flickered a little, like he was trying to read my face.

  “You all right, Boss?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure how.

  What do you say when you realize the fire didn’t feel like casting a spell—it felt like flipping a switch?

  My hands still buzzed. The heat was fading, but not gone. I looked down at them like they might explain something.

  They didn’t.

  Grib stepped closer, smile snapping back into place. “Big Chief never had chance,” he said, practically glowing. “Bone King too strong! We unstoppable now!”

  I finally looked at him. At the pride in his eyes. The way he lifted the slime like it had done something brave.

  He believed it. He thought we’d won.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Unstoppable.”

  Grib laughed, sharp and bright, and the slime jiggled along with him.

  I tried to stand. My legs didn’t like that idea. One gave out. Something in my side shifted the wrong way. My grip on the staff had already gone; I hadn’t noticed when.

  A few loose bone fragments scattered across the floor like I was shedding.

  I looked down.

  My arm was cracked from shoulder to wrist. The bone was slowly pulling itself back together, but not with any urgency. A jagged edge slid into place by millimeters, paused, then started again like it had forgotten what it was doing halfway through.

  Even the knuckles were doing it—each one twitching gently, reshaping, like a time-lapse of erosion played in reverse.

  It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t impressive. It just... was.

  And it hurt.

  Not a sharp pain. Not something useful like a warning. Just this deep, ambient throb that settled into every corner of me and refused to leave. Which raised a question. If the system could build me without blood, or nerves, or anything remotely squishy...

  Why the hell did it think pain was essential?

  There was no answer.

  Just the slow, steady scrape of bone trying to remember how to be whole. Like watching something die in reverse.

  I looked over one last time.

  No magical mending for Big Chief. No coming back.

  The fire was gone. But I could still feel where it had been.

  Big Chief was dead.

  And I wasn’t sure how to feel about the person who had killed him.