Will moved quietly through the meadow, a cheap bow in hand and his steps soft with focus. The grass swayed around his legs as he scanned for movement, eyes narrowed, breath slow. The late light bled through the trees, draping everything in a moonlit haze.
He paused.
Ahead, the forest thinned into a small clearing. And there, at the edge of a silver pool, stood something unearthly.
An elder deer.
Its hide shimmered like dusklight through frost. Antlers rose from its skull in a twisted, crystalline bloom â branches of colored glass or some type of earthly mineral. It drank from the pond with a grace that silenced the world around it.
Will froze.
The creature lifted its head. Their eyes met.
A groan â not from fear or anger, but deep and mournful â escaped the beastâs throat. And suddenly, the ground beneath Will gave way.
He dropped into darkness.
----------------------------------------
He landed hard on stone.
His cheek scraped against something slick. As he pushed himself up, the damp air filled his lungs â and brought with it the stench of decay. Bones littered the cave floor: cracked femurs, twisted ribs, skulls split and blackened with time.
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A voice whispered from behind.
âFight.â
Will turned, but saw nothing. The cave â or corridor â stretched ahead in a slow slope downward. Walls of dark crystal pulsed faintly, like veins beneath skin.
He moved forward. Careful. Silent.
At the corridorâs end, the space opened into a wide chamber, lit only by a pale, sickly light from above. In its center: a hill.
Not of earth. Of bones and petrified flesh.
A mound of human remains, piled like offerings. Skulls stacked on skulls, limbs woven together, ribs like broken cages. At its peak stood a sword â tall, ancient, glowing with a moonlit shimmer that called to him.
Will climbed.
As he ascended, so did the making of the bones beneath his feet. Tattered tunics gave way to silks. Crude boots became gilded greaves. Crowns, jewels, rings â all scattered in death, the remains of nobles and kings. Warriors. Priests. Rulers.
All dead, all equal now.
At the top, just beneath the sword, lay something smaller. Two tiny skeletons. Infants, curled together atop a folded cloth of silver chainmail.
Will stopped breathing.
The whisper returned.
âFight.â
A sudden noise â cracking, shifting. Bone against bone.
Hands â skeletal, gnarled â erupted from the hill, clawing at his legs, dragging him down into the mound. He screamed, kicking free for only a second before another hand gripped his ankle, another latched onto his wrist.
The sword glowed brighter.
He reached. He screamed.
Darkness.