The warrior was gone. Slipped into the dark like a bad promise. The others—the mage, the rogue, the priest—were down. Not dead, I hoped. Just motionless in that particular way that meant the fight was over, whether they liked it or not.
I didn’t have time to feel anything about it. Not relief. Not guilt. Just the shift in air pressure that announced someone very powerful and very certain had entered the room.
The Holy Knight stepped through the wreckage like it wasn’t even there. Splintered stone, broken bodies, scorched bone. All treated with the same level of interest as a rug pattern. His blade burned like it was angry to be held, that bright, holy heat pushing back against every shadow I’d ever called mine.
Grib stood beside me, knuckles tight around his mace. Krix was crouched low, eyes tracking, claws twitching against the stone. Ready. Loyal. Suicidal.
“Stay back,” I said, holding up a hand.
Grib’s head snapped toward me. “But—”
“No.” My voice cut through him, and for once he didn’t argue. “That’s an order.”
They hesitated, torn, but pulled back. I could feel it—the question in the air. Why not fight? Why not now?
Because this wasn’t their battle. It wasn’t a skirmish or a misunderstanding. This was something else entirely. And this man wasn’t here for them.
He was here for me.
He stopped a few paces away. The light from his sword painted the cavern in sharp, brittle lines. Burning across the walls, the floor, the fallen. His gaze fixed on me like I was something he’d already decided to hate. Not in anger. Just in certainty.
“So,” he said. His voice was low and steady, like a verdict. “You’re the one they call the Bone King. The abomination that walks in mockery of life.”
I tilted my head, eyes narrowing. The green in them pulsed, soft and cold. “That’s not what I call me. But sure. Let’s go with that.”
He didn’t flinch. “I am Sir Garrick Draemir, Knight of the Holy Church. I burn the rot. I break the cycle. I cleanse the unclean.”
His sword flared, the flames biting at the air like they were starving for contact.
“And you,” he said, pointing the blade at my chest, “are unclean.”
I gripped my staff, forcing my voice not to shake. “Is this where you say something dramatic about justice, then try to take my head off?”
“There’s no need,” he said. “Judgment was passed the moment you drew breath you didn’t earn. This is only the sentence.”
I let that sit for a beat. Then I breathed in, not air, not really, just the memory of it. I let the stillness settle.
“Right,” I said. “And here I thought we were going to have a conversation.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think this is a negotiation?”
“I think this is my dungeon. I think you’re standing in it. And I think if we’re about to kill each other, we might as well do it without the sermon.”
The temperature climbed. Not heat, exactly. Not fire. Just pressure, holy and absolute and crushing. His presence was the kind that filled every space it entered and demanded the rest of you leave.
“You speak like a man,” Garrick said, “but you are not one. You are a shadow in stolen shape. A desecration.”
I didn’t argue. What would be the point?
Instead, I watched him. Watched the way his grip tightened. Watched the flicker of movement in his shoulders. Watched the blade rise.
And then he lunged.
The light surged forward like a tidal wave of judgment, and I moved without thinking. My staff came up, magic already spinning around it. Familiar now. Instinctive. The bolt formed fast, jagged and dark, snapping from my fingers like a thrown accusation.
It hit him center mass.
It didn’t stop him.
But it slowed him, just enough.
His sword arced wide, slicing through air where my skull had been a second before. The heat from it still found me, an aftershock of righteousness.
I stepped back. Felt the stone under my feet. Felt the magic building again.
This wasn’t a duel. This was survival.
And whatever else I was now, I wasn’t done.
The air turned on me. Every step Garrick took made it heavier. Hotter. Like the dungeon itself had decided I wasn’t worth keeping cool anymore. His sword burned brighter with each movement, casting jagged shadows across the stone that flickered like warnings. The pressure of him, of what he was, pressed down like weight. Not metaphor. Not poetry. Just weight. And I was starting to crack under it.
My fingers locked around the staff.
No time.
I raised it and pulled the mana into me. Magic Bolt surged up, fast and raw, spiraling into sharp green arcs. I fired.
The first bolt vanished into a flare of holy light just before impact, consumed entirely. He hadn't moved, just let the aura around him do the work.
The second came faster, lower. His blade swept down in a contemptuous arc, not blocking, but slicing the bolt apart mid-flight. The energy dissipated like smoke.
The third, I put everything I had into it, shaping it tight and fast. It screamed past his guard as he stepped forward, striking sparks off the stone near his feet, and slammed into his side, just below the ribs where the plate met scale.
Green-black energy flared against his armor. A direct hit.
Garrick didn't pause. Didn't grunt. Didn't even break stride. The holy light radiating from him flickered for a microsecond, then burned steady again, maybe even brighter. He simply continued his advance as if he'd brushed against a curtain.
I took another step back, the stone suddenly feeling much colder beneath my feet.
"Right," I breathed, the sound barely audible even to myself. "Not even a scratch." Or worse, he didn't care if it scratched.
Panic tried to break through. I could feel it at the edges of my thoughts, scraping at the walls. But I pushed it down. Forced focus. I didn’t need finesse. I needed something. I reached for Chilling Touch.
The air dropped. Frost bloomed across the staff. I lashed out.
It hit.
And then it didn’t.
The mist curled around his blade like it was trying to make a point before vanishing with a hiss. Steam filled the air. The temperature snapped back to burning.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t pause. Just kept walking. .
I stumbled back another step, the staff clutched tight in both hands. “Oh, come on.”
He was too fast. Too strong. Too close. And I was out of time.
The words surfaced without permission: Necrotic Surge.
I hadn’t meant to cast it. I’d barely thought about it. But the spell grabbed hold the moment I did, and everything lit up—bones, joints, nerves I wasn’t even sure I still had. Power flooded me, hot and ragged and wrong, like my body had been turned inside out and lit on fire just to see what would happen.
And still, it wasn’t enough.
His sword came down in a blinding arc. I brought the staff up just in time to catch it. The impact cracked the world open. The vibration shook every inch of me. I felt the wood splinter.
I shoved back—not with strength of my own, but with whatever the Surge had turned me into. He stepped back half a pace. Just enough.
“You think this will save you?” he said, low and bitter. "Resistance is just... noise. The unholy impulse fighting its own end. It changes nothing. You fracture. You cease. That is the order."
“I’m not here to debate theology,” I grunted, parrying his next swing. The staff groaned in protest. “But thanks for the sermon, Father Irony.”
Another strike. Faster now. I ducked, brought the staff up hard—sloppy, awkward, barely in time. The air around his blade shimmered with heat. My vision blurred with each flare of light.
I was holding off a landslide with kindling.
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He came again. I pushed back, speed the only thing the Surge had given me in enough supply. I moved before I could think, before I could hesitate. Dodge. Strike. Block. Dodge again. The spell kept me moving. Kept me alive.
But it was burning through me. I could feel it unraveling at the edges, pulling thread after thread loose while I begged it to hold just a few seconds longer.
“Your existence is an error.” he said, and this time his voice was calm. Not angry. Certain. “You are nothing. A shadow wearing a shape.”
“If I’m nothing,” I rasped, parrying another blow, the staff vibrating in my hands, “Why does it take so much to erase me?”
He didn’t blink. “Vermin aren’t significant for their disposal. This is just the necessary work of the faithful.”
And with that, he came again—sword raised, eyes cold, light crashing toward me like the end of a sentence I didn’t want to hear.
His sword came down again, and this time, the staff nearly gave out. I felt the wood splinter beneath my grip—enchanted, reinforced, battle-tested, but it was at the end of its rope. So was I. I shoved back with what strength I had left, stumbled two steps, and forced space between us.
The Surge was still burning through me—more drain than boost now, eating away at everything I had left. But stopping wasn’t an option. Not with Garrick still moving like judgment made flesh. Not with every swing of his sword spelling out the same message: This ends with you gone.
I wasn’t fighting anymore. I was enduring.
And as I looked into his eyes—flat, fixed, absolutely certain—I felt it hit me like a cold blade: he thought he’d already won. Not hoped. Knew.
This wasn’t a battle. It wasn’t a contest. To him, it wasn’t even personal. Just a ritual. A cleanup.
And the worst part was, he might have been right.
For a moment, neither of us moved. His sword pressed down against the staff again, the heat curling the air between us, warping it. My arms shook. The Surge clawed at my spine. I couldn’t hold him off much longer. My thoughts were slipping, everything spinning too fast.
“Think,” I whispered, half to myself. “Think.”
Most of the spells left in my arsenal were pointless now—flashy, finicky things that might’ve impressed someone in a duel but wouldn’t make a dent here. But then something surfaced. A name I’d skipped over more than once. A utility spell I’d written off as a joke.
Arcane Snare.
I didn’t hesitate. No time to second-guess. I cast it. The mana responded like a tired mule, sluggish and spiteful, but it moved. Light flared beneath Garrick’s feet. Tendrils of magic snapped upward, coiling around his arms and legs like ropes made of pure will.
He staggered. Just slightly—but it was the first time he’d moved like anything other than inevitability.
His sword paused mid-swing. His body twisted against the pull, muscles straining, the blade’s flame guttering for half a second.
“Clever,” he said, voice low and tight with effort. “But delaying judgment isn’t the same as escaping it.”
“Not trying to escape,” I muttered, stumbling backward, each step a conscious effort. “Just buying time. For... you know. Regret.”
He roared, and the sound cracked off the stone like it had weight. The snare flickered under the force of it, the magic straining as he tore one foot free.
I didn’t wait for the second.
“Everyone back!” I shouted. I threw out a hand, gathering what I had left into one last, glorious middle finger. Fireball built fast—too fast. The heat rolled off it in waves. The cavern lit up in red and orange, shadows warping and running for cover.
Kobolds scattered. Grib vanished behind a broken pillar. Krix sprinted for the shadows, tail low. Even the undead ducked. For a breath, just one, I felt control return—fragile, borrowed, mine.
And then the system prompt hit.
Error: Insufficient mana for Fireball.
I stared at the notification like it was a joke I didn’t get. Another flashed underneath.
Necrotic Surge active. Mana drain: 0.6% per second.
“Of course,” I muttered.
The fireball sputtered out like wet kindling, gone before it even launched.
I gripped the staff tighter, jaw clenched, as frustration slammed into me—sharp, bitter. I’d overreached. Again. I hadn’t accounted for mana drain. I hadn’t accounted for any of it.
Behind me, the Snare was unraveling. Its glow dimmed like a dying filament, and Garrick broke free, piece by piece. The light of his sword surged back to full strength, and when his eyes found me again, there was no tension in them. Just focus.
“You run out of tricks, skeleton?” he asked. Calm now. Collected. The voice of someone who’d stopped seeing you as a threat.
I kept backing up. The staff was heavier now. My body felt wrong—tight and loose at the same time, the Surge feeding power and stealing everything else. My limbs lagged. My thoughts slipped.
This wasn’t a matter of winning anymore.
This was just finding more ways not to die.
And yet I met his eyes. Forced the words out. Not strong. Not defiant. Just... mine.
“No tricks,” I rasped, “But you’ll still have to clean me up.”
He lunged, and I twisted away. My bones creaked under the strain, the Surge pulsing faintly through me—just enough speed to dodge the edge of the blade, not enough to matter. Not enough to win. I needed a way out. Now.
His footsteps thundered behind me, too heavy, too sure. I searched the room, pushing every scrap of focus toward anything that could turn this around. But all I saw was the narrowing of options, the cold, narrowing funnel of inevitability. Mana draining away like water through cracked stone.
The silence stretched between us—thin, brittle. Broken only by the soft groans of dying kobolds and the low, steady hum of holy fire. Garrick’s pace never faltered. Slow. Controlled. The kind of slow that didn’t need speed to kill. His sword lit the chamber in sharp, flickering shadows.
Then my back hit stone.
End of the road.
I clutched the staff tighter, forcing my thoughts past the rising static of panic. I had one spell left. Not a solution. Not even a good idea. Just a bad one that might work if I timed it perfectly and got very, very lucky.
And I wasn’t exactly drowning in luck.
Tombcarve.
The shape of it bloomed in my mind, sluggish and heavy. The spell stirred like something old being asked to wake too soon. I cast upward. The stone above Garrick—rough, uneven, jagged—was perfect. If I could carve it right, I’d bring it down. On him. On me. Whoever stayed under it longest.
I just needed time.
“Wait,” I rasped, the word scraping out like a dragged chain. “Can we—talk for a second?”
Garrick stopped. His eyes narrowed, head tilting. The firelight caught the edge of his armor and turned him into something mythic. Not a man. Just purpose, wrapped in steel.
“Talk?” he repeated. Flat. Disgusted.
“Yes,” I said, feeding every scrap of focus into the spell while my mouth did its best to stall. The ceiling trembled faintly—dust and grit trickling down like early rain. “You seem reasonable.”
He laughed. No mirth in it. Just sharp edges and finality.
“Reasonable. You’ve desecrated the dead. Stolen life. Turned this place into a nest of rot. And now you want to talk?”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I snapped. “I didn’t choose to be bones and borrowed fire. You think I wanted this? You think I woke up one day and said yes, please give me a body full of spells and no pulse?”
“You chose to fight.”
“I chose not to die,” I shot back. “I chose to protect what was left. Them.” I gestured toward the kobolds—what few still breathed, huddled behind stone and shadow, waiting for this to end. “They followed me. Trusted me. And now they’re dying for it.”
Garrick’s lip curled, not quite a sneer, more a statement of fact. “Protection? For things born of shadow and dirt? You gathered blight, skeleton. Like attracts like. Their end is merely a consequence of proximity to your corruption. It holds no significance.”
“I didn’t lead them anywhere!” I shot back, the cracks above groaning faintly. “They came because your kind burns first and asks questions never! You think I’m a monster? Fine. But they were just trying to live.”
Garrick’s tone remained utterly level, untouched by the heat of my words. “Existence is not inherently sacred. Not for the shadows, nor the beasts, nor the rot that festers in places like this. The Light permits; the Light purges. Their fate, like yours, is subject to that divine calculus, nothing more. You use them as fuel, as shields. That is their purpose in the presence of darkness.”
“And what do you do?” I hissed, forcing focus back to the spreading cracks. “How many ‘insignificant’ lives have fed your holy fire?”
His face was impassive stone. “Enough. The tally is kept by the Light, not by the darkness. The world is made cleaner with every shadow scoured.”
I laughed, a dry, rattling sound. “Cleaner. You mean emptier.”
He took a step forward, the light from his sword pulsing, momentarily blinding. “Righteousness is not a matter for debate with the damned,” he stated, his voice resonating with absolute conviction. “It is the force that unmakes you.”
“Because you’ve never had to question it yourself,” I countered, buying precious seconds.
He didn’t flinch. His certainty was armor thicker than his steel.
“My judgement awaits in Solanna’s holy light,” he said, eyes fixed on me, dismissing the trembling ceiling. “Yours is here. Now. Delivered by my hand.”
I kept my gaze locked on the fractures above him. Almost. Almost.
“Right,” I muttered, the word scraping out. “Hope Solanna appreciates the thoroughness of the extermination. Bet it looks good on the divine report card.”
He didn’t answer.
He moved.
Faster than I could think. One heartbeat he was still; the next, his sword was a line of fire cutting toward my skull. I jerked back, raised the staff, knew it wouldn’t hold.
Finish. Just finish.
Mana flickered—thin as breath. The spell teetered on the edge of collapse.
Do something.
Anything.
I didn’t want to die again. That was the truth under all the snark and scraps of pride. I didn’t want to be ash in the back of some self-righteous knight’s throat. I didn’t want to be bones in a box, remembered only as something that almost mattered.
I wanted to live.
That wasn’t strategy. That wasn’t calculation. That was the one clean, unvarnished truth I still had left.
I’d spent my whole life dead inside. Coasting through a world that never felt like mine, waiting for something to change and calling that hope.
But here? In this rotting hole with monsters at my side and fire at my back?
I realized something. I felt alive.
And I wasn’t ready to lose that.
Not yet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse. Grib, crouched behind a large stone. Krix beside him, breathing shallow, his spear cracked in half. Both of them staring at me like I was the only thing standing between them and oblivion.
I barely knew them. Not really.
But they’d needed something to believe in. And somehow, that had ended up being me.
I wasn’t sure what the hell that said about any of us.
But I knew one thing.
If this bastard was going to take me down—
He was going to choke on the rubble.
Instinct kicked in. Minor Poltergeist.
The ability lashed out like a twitch. Random and wild. Like spectral fingers desperately grasping until I found something. Metal and wood whipped off the ground and flew through the air. It hit Garrick dead center in the chest with a hollow clang.
A dented, blackened bucket.
He froze. Sword raised. Looked down at the bucket like it had insulted his ancestors.
“...Really?” he said.
I raised a hand. Wiggled the fingers.
Then pointed up.
He looked.
The ceiling came down.
The crack of stone giving way was a sound that filled the entire world—louder than shouting, sharper than thought. Dust, rock, light all collapsed in a single, impossible instant.
The last thing I saw before the dungeon buried us both was the flare of his blade.
And then darkness.
I've got some small little lore entries for items, world aspects, etc... Similar to Dark Souls/Elden Ring lore entries. Would you guys like to see these dropped between chapters from time to time?
