I stand in the center of the circular stone chamber with my bony fingers wrapped around the leather grip of my sword and the heavy iron shield resting against my ribs as I listen to the silence of the underground. The darkness around us stretches through the corridors to hide the remains of those who died before us in the countless battles fought over the stone tiles. I do not remember the beginning of this vigil or the life I might have lived before the flesh rotted away from my bones to leave me standing here in the cold drafts of the deep earth. Memory is an empty void that offers nothing but the singular drive pushing me to hold my ground in front of the stone sarcophagus in the middle of the room.

  I do not know what sleeps inside the heavy stone box with the carved lid that rests behind me. They call it the lich, but the word holds no shape or meaning in my mind, serving only as the title of the thing I must protect until my bones turn to dust and scatter across the floor. I do not know if the lich is a man or a beast or something that defies the rules of the living and the dead. I only know that my existence is tethered to the stone box and that my sword belongs to the shadows of this chamber.

  I am not alone in this task, and for that, I feel a sense of relief that settles in the hollow space of my chest where a heart used to beat. There are five of us left from a group that once filled the sprawling tunnels of the dungeon with the clatter of our footsteps and the shifting of our bodies. We do not have names to call each other, so we exist as a silent collective bound by the same invisible chain to the sarcophagus and the duty it commands.

  I turn my head to look at the corner where the slug rests against the damp stone wall. It is a massive mass of muscle and slime that dissolves any living flesh that touches its surface, leaving nothing but polished bones behind in the puddles of acid it generates. It does not speak with words, but it communicates through the slow shifting of its weight and the low vibrations that travel through the stone floor to reach the bones of my feet. It waits in the dark for the intruders to step blindly into its path so it can consume them without making a sound.

  Near the arched entrance of the chamber sits the mimic, taking the shape of a wooden treasure chest bound in iron and locked with a brass mechanism. It looks like a dead object waiting to be opened by greedy hands, but I know the terrifying mouth hidden beneath the wooden lid and the long arms folded tightly inside, ready to snap out of nowhere the moment an intruder steps close enough to touch the fake lock. It survives on the deception it projects into the minds of the invaders who cannot resist the promise of hidden wealth.

  The other two are skeletons like me, sitting on the ground with their backs pressed against the walls as they wait for the inevitable sound of footsteps echoing from the upper tunnels. We have stood together since the beginning of the memories we possess, fighting a war of attrition against the intruders who break into our home to take the treasure they believe lies inside the sarcophagus. We watched the numbers of our kin dwindle over the centuries as the invaders pushed deeper into the corridors with their weapons and their spells.

  They call themselves adventurers, but they act like plagues sweeping through the tunnels with fire and steel to butcher everyone in their path without hesitation or mercy. We have fought them for hundreds of years, watching them slaughter our friends and crush the skulls of our kin for the sake of the stone box behind me. I remember the smell of burning bone and the sound of iron smashing against the stone pillars when the last large group broke through our defenses in the antechamber. They pinned our brothers against the walls and shattered their spines while laughing at the sounds of the destruction they caused. They never stop coming, pouring from the tunnels with their screaming voices and their relentless drive to conquer the dark.

  The silence in the chamber stretches for a long time while the drops of water fall from the ceiling to hit the stone floor with a rhythmic sound that marks the passage of time we do not measure. The skeleton sitting to my left shifts his weight against the wall and breaks the quiet with the scraping sound of his jawbone moving against his skull.

  "I felt a draft of air coming from the upper tunnels today,"

  he says, with his voice echoing like dry leaves grinding together in the dark.

  "It smelled different than the damp stone and the old blood we are used to. It smelled like something vast that does not end at the walls."

  I do not answer him immediately, keeping my gaze fixed on the arched entrance while the mimic remains perfectly still in its deceptive shape near the threshold.

  "It makes me wonder about the place they come from," the second skeleton continues, tilting his skull upward to look at the ceiling hidden in the shadows of the chamber. "The outside. The place where the tunnels finally end and the air moves freely. We have been here for so long that I cannot imagine anything beyond the stone walls and the iron gates that cage us. Do you think it is a place of light?"

  The third skeleton, sitting on the opposite side of the chamber with a cracked skull and a missing arm from a battle he survived long ago, lets out a sound that resembles a bitter laugh.

  "You waste your thoughts on empty things that do not help us hold the line,"

  he says, pushing the hilt of his broken dagger against the ground to create a harsh scraping noise.

  "There is no light that matters to us in this place. There is only the tunnel, the intruders, and the dust we will become when they finally break our bones."

  "But there must be something else out there,"

  the second skeleton insists, turning his hollow eye sockets toward me as if searching for an answer I do not possess and cannot give him.

  "They come from somewhere beyond the dirt and the rock. They bring things we have never seen in these halls. Cloth and metal and glass shaped into strange forms. They speak languages we do not understand and carry symbols of things that do not exist here. If they create such things, their world must be something more than this dark hole we defend."

  I adjust the shield on my arm and turn to face him, feeling the weight of the centuries pressing down on my spine as I consider the argument he presents in the quiet room.

  "You think of their world as a place of wonder because you do not understand the nature of the things they bring to us,"

  I say, keeping my voice low and steady.

  "But you judge them by the objects they carry instead of the actions they commit when they step into these halls to face us."

  I point my sword toward the dark corridor leading to the upper levels where the invaders always appear.

  "Think about the ones who come down here with their weapons drawn and their eyes wide with the fever of the hunt. Think about the way they scream when they drive their blades into our kin and the way they celebrate when they watch us fall apart. They do not come with peace or the curiosity you imagine exists in their world. They come with a hunger for destruction that cannot be satisfied by anything other than the death of everything that stands in their way. They burn the webs of the spiders, they smash the stones of our traps, and they laugh while they step over the remains of the ones they killed."

  The slug in the corner shifts its massive body against the wall, releasing a low gurgle that reverberates through the floorboards as a sign of agreement with the words I speak. It remembers the taste of the invaders and the violence they bring to the damp corners of the dungeon when they hack at its flesh with their axes before the acid claims their bodies and melts their armor into slag.

  "If their world is a place of light and wonder like you imagine,"

  I continue, stepping closer to the sarcophagus to maintain my proximity to the object of my purpose, "then why does it produce such monsters to send down into the dark? Why do they leave their world to come into the shadows and slaughter us for something they do not even understand and cannot use?"

  The mimic suddenly shifts its shape, the wooden lid cracking open just a fraction to reveal a row of jagged teeth gleaming in the dim light before closing again with a soft thud against the wooden rim. It speaks with a voice that sounds like multiple overlapping whispers stolen from the victims it has consumed over the years, blending the cries of the dying into a cohesive thought that fills the room.

  "They come because their world is empty despite the light you think exists there,"

  the mimic says, the stolen voices echoing off the stone walls to reach our ears.

  "They are driven by a void they cannot fill with the things they create or the languages they speak. I have felt their greed when they reach for my lid with their sweating hands. Their hearts beat with a frantic rhythm of wanting something they do not have and cannot earn. Their world must be a place of endless taking, a hell where everyone fights for the scraps left behind by others who took more than they needed. They come here because they have consumed their own world and now seek to consume ours to feed the hunger that controls them."

  The second skeleton lowers his head, resting his chin on his bony chest as the words settle into the silence of the chamber and mix with the sound of the dripping water. "A hell of their own making,"

  he mutters, the curiosity fading from his voice to leave nothing but the familiar resignation we all share in the depths of the earth.

  "I thought perhaps there was a place where existence was not defined by the waiting and the fighting and the dying."

  "Existence is the fight we wage in this room,"

  the third skeleton says, lifting his broken dagger to inspect the jagged edge that has spilled the blood of countless invaders over the years.

  "We exist to hold the line in front of the stone box. They exist to break the line and take what does not belong to them. There is no other truth to be found in the drafts of air from the upper tunnels or the objects they drop when they die."

  I turn my back to them and face the arched entrance again, raising my shield to rest it against my chest while the sword hangs ready at my side to strike the first thing that emerges from the darkness.

  "We are the lucky ones in this war,"

  I tell them, projecting my voice toward the dark corridor to let the words sink into the damp air.

  "We do not have to live in the nightmare that creates the adventurers and sends them to die in the dark. We do not have to feel the greed that pushes them to abandon their world and crawl into the earth. We only have to kill them when they step into our home and try to take the purpose that defines us."

  The slug settles back into the corner of the room, blending into the shadows until it looks like nothing more than a wet patch on the stone waiting for the flesh of the next invader to dissolve into nothing. The mimic locks its wooden lid and becomes a dead object resting near the entrance, preparing the trap for the next greedy hand that reaches for the fake lock. The other two skeletons pull their knees to their chests and lean against the walls to conserve their energy, joining me in the silent vigil that defines everything we are and everything we will ever be.

  The silence of the chamber shatters before we even have the time to settle back into our vigil against the cold stone walls. The vibrations travel through the uneven floorboards, carrying the heavy, rhythmic thud of boots scraping against the rock from the upper tunnels to warn us that the intruders are already here. I tighten my skeletal fingers around the leather grip of my sword and raise my heavy iron shield, feeling the familiar hollow ache in my ribs as I prepare to face the violence that always descends from the surface.

  But the darkness of the corridor does not yield to the usual flickering orange glow of burning torches. A piercing, unnatural blue light bleeds out from the mouth of the tunnel to wash over the damp stones and banish the shadows we have guarded for centuries. I watch as the figures emerge from the blinding glare, bringing with them a casual arrogance that sickens the empty space inside my chest.

  They are not like the desperate, frantic scavengers we have slaughtered in the past. At the front walks a girl with pale skin and pointed ears jutting through her hair, holding a wooden staff in one hand while a glowing blue orb hovers effortlessly above the palm of the other to illuminate the corridor. Beside her strides a massive man with short yellow hair, his broad frame completely encased in thick steel armor as he carries a heavy battleaxe resting over his shoulder and a tower shield strapped to his back. Moving silently through the blue light is another man sharing the same pointed ears as the girl, his eyes darting across the walls while his hands play casually with the hilts of two curved daggers. Behind them steps a heavy-set black woman with thick dreadlocks tied back from her face, wearing no armor except for the massive, spiked iron gloves covering her hands and forearms. A small gnome with sharp, calculating eyes brings up the rear, casually twirling a polished wooden wand between his fingers.

  Their voices echo through the burial chamber, filled with the careless laughter of those who do not respect the dead.

  "I cannot believe we walked for three days through the mud just for this,"

  the yellow-haired man says, his voice booming inside his metal helmet.

  "You promised me a challenge, Alys. You said this crypt was a death trap, but we have barely swung our weapons since we breached the iron gates."

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  The girl with the floating orb rolls her eyes and lets out a soft laugh that cuts through the damp air.

  "I only read the guild reports, Kalen. The locals swear no one who enters this dungeon ever returns to see the sun. They talk about the traps as if the devil himself carved them into the stone."

  The gnome points his wand toward the corridor they just left behind, a smirk stretching across his small face.

  "The traps are a joke designed for peasants with no eyes in their heads. Poison darts triggered by pressure plates you can spot from ten paces away, and pit falls covered with rotting wood. It is one of the easiest holes we have ever walked through, though I must admit the amount of corpses littering the tunnels is surprisingly high. Perhaps there is a true challenge waiting by the end of it."

  "It does not matter what waits at the end of the dungeon,"

  the elf girl says, stepping deeper into our chamber and raising the blue orb higher to cast its harsh light over the sarcophagus.

  "Nothing down here has a chance against the Deadly Five. Let the dead try to stop us."

  The rogue with the daggers snorts and shakes his head. "We really need to stop calling ourselves the Deadly Five. It sounds like a name a group of drunken bards would invent in a cheap tavern."

  The woman with the iron gloves laughs loudly, the sound bouncing off the arched ceiling.

  "Let her have her fun, Firrol. She paid for the guild registration, so she gets to pick the name."

  I listen to their mocking words and feel a sudden, violent surge of anger radiating through my hollow bones. They dismiss the centuries of blood and ash we have spilled in these halls, treating our existence as a minor inconvenience on their path to the stone box I am sworn to protect. I look toward my companions, communicating our strategy through the silent shifting of our stances. We will not charge them in the open. I lower my shield and collapse onto the cold stone floor among the scattered remains of our fallen brothers, signaling the other two skeletons to do the same. We lie perfectly still in the piles of old bones, playing dead while the mimic maintains its deceptive shape near the entrance and the slug waits patiently in the shadows of the nearest corner. We will let them walk into the center of the room, and then we will make them pay for their audacity.

  The adventurers step across the threshold, their boots crushing the fragile ribs of the dead scattered across the floor. They move toward the sarcophagus with their guard lowered, blinded by their own confidence. But as the girl with the blue light sweeps her gaze across the room, she stops abruptly and stares directly at the wooden treasure chest resting against the wall.

  "Wait,"

  she says, lowering her staff and narrowing her eyes at the mimic.

  "That chest is breathing."

  Before the mimic can react, she thrusts her staff forward and mutters a sharp incantation. A burst of violet energy shoots from the wood and strikes the chest, forcefully unraveling the illusion to reveal the terrifying, jagged mouth and the long, pale arms folded tightly inside the monstrous creature. The mimic hisses and prepares to lunge, but it is too late.

  The big man in the heavy armor steps forward with terrifying speed, bringing his heavy battleaxe down in a brutal, sweeping arc. The steel blade bites deep into the center of the mimic, splitting the creature entirely in half with a sickening crunch of wood and tearing flesh before it even has the chance to unfold its arms. Dark blood spills across the stone tiles as the two halves of our companion fall lifelessly to the ground.

  The sudden violence triggers the rest of the room. The massive slug shifts from the darkness of the corner, its slimy body sliding rapidly across the floor to intercept the armored man, leaving a trail of hissing acid in its wake.

  "Slime incoming!"

  the brawler shouts, pointing her iron glove toward the corner.

  The gnome does not even flinch. He steps in front of the armored warrior, raises his polished wand, and speaks a single word. A roaring tower of yellow fire erupts from the tip of the wood, illuminating the chamber in a blinding flash of heat and light. The flames consume the slug entirely, wrapping around its massive body and burning the dissolving slime into black ash. The smell of roasting flesh and scorching acid fills the damp air as the slug collapses into a charred, motionless mound on the floor.

  I lie frozen in the pile of bones, unable to process the speed of the slaughter. In less than a dozen heartbeats, two of the oldest defenders of this chamber have been wiped out of existence with casual effort.

  My two skeleton brothers do not wait for my command. Driven by the agonizing loss of our kin, they rise from the piles of bone with a clatter of old joints, screaming in a silent, hollow rage that requires no vocal cords to express. They charge the adventurers with their rusted swords raised high, throwing themselves into the blue light to avenge the dead.

  The black woman with the dreadlocks steps forward to meet them, a wide smile stretching across her face. She does not bother to draw a weapon. As the first skeleton swings his blade, she sidesteps the strike effortlessly and drives her spiked iron glove directly into his ribcage. The impact shatters his spine instantly, exploding his bones into a cloud of white dust and sharp fragments that rain down on the floor. Without breaking her momentum, she spins and delivers a crushing backhand to the skull of the second skeleton, tearing his head from his shoulders and sending his body collapsing into a lifeless heap of disconnected joints.

  I watch my friends die from the floor, my mind drowning in the total shock of the devastation. The anger finally breaches the paralysis holding me down, consuming the hollow space inside my chest until there is nothing left but the blinding need to kill. I rise from the pile of the dead, gripping my sword with both hands, and launch myself at the closest target.

  The rogue with the pointed ears stands with his back to me, seemingly unaware of my charge. I swing my blade with all the strength my ancient bones can muster, aiming to cleave his neck in two.

  But he does not even turn around to look at me. He merely pivots on his heel, ducks beneath the rusted steel of my sword, and delivers a devastating kick to the center of my shield. The force of the blow lifts me entirely off the ground and sends me crashing backward into the heavy stone wall. My sword clatters away into the darkness, and my shield slips from my broken grip. I slide down the wall and slump against the floor, my ribs cracked and my spine screaming with phantom pain.

  The rogue steps toward me, flipping one of his daggers in his hand so the blade points downward, ready to sever my skull from my neck and end my existence.

  "Stop,"

  the elf girl says, lowering her glowing orb and stepping closer to the rogue.

  "Do not kill it yet, Firrol."

  The rogue pauses, keeping his dagger hovering mere inches from my eye socket.

  "Why? It is just a broken skeleton. Let me finish clearing the trash so we can open the box."

  "Because I need a target,"

  she says, resting her staff against the wall and reaching into a leather pouch at her waist.

  "I have been learning a new incantation from the guild archives, and I need to test it on something physical before we leave."

  The armored man leans his heavy axe against the floor and crosses his massive arms.

  "What kind of spell is it, Alys? You already know enough ways to burn things to ash."

  "It is a spell to fix things,"

  she replies, pulling a handful of shimmering silver dust from her pouch. She turns to the armored warrior and narrows her eyes.

  "Do you remember last month in the tavern, Kalen? When you drank too much ale and knocked over my pack, breaking my favorite mirror?"

  The big man shifts uncomfortably in his heavy armor, the arrogance fading from his voice for the first time.

  "Why are you bringing that up now? I apologized for that, and I already bought you a new one from the merchant in the lower city."

  "Yes, you bought me a new one,"

  she scolds him, her voice sharp and irritated in the cold air of the crypt.

  "But the old one was precious to me. It was an heirloom from my mother, the only thing I took with me when I left the tribe to come to the human cities. I have been learning this mending spell for weeks just so I can put the glass back together, and I think this is the best chance to try the incantation to see if it actually works on complex structures."

  The rogue pinning me to the wall looks back at her, a confused smirk on his face.

  "And how exactly does a mending spell relate to this skeleton?"

  "By trying it on him,"

  she says matter-of-factly, gesturing toward my broken body slumped against the stone.

  "I will cast the spell over the bones to imprint the magic. Then, you will break him into pieces. If the spell holds, the magic should pull the structure back together and fix the skeleton. If it fails, then he is just a pile of dust anyway."

  The rogue throws his head back and laughs loudly, the sound echoing cruelly over the remains of my fallen friends.

  "That sounds incredibly stupid, Alys, but I suppose it does not hurt to try. Go ahead and cast your magic."

  I listen to their casual conversation in absolute terror, trapped against the wall while they discuss my destruction as if I am nothing more than a broken toy for their amusement. I try to reach for my sword, but my arm refuses to obey, the bones too fractured from the impact against the wall.

  The girl steps forward, muttering a long string of foreign words while sprinkling the silver dust over my skull and ribcage. The dust settles into the cracks of my bones, but I feel nothing. There is no warmth, no surge of power, no magical tether binding my joints together. She finishes the incantation and steps back, nodding to the rogue.

  "Do it,"

  she says.

  The rogue smiles, raises his heavy boot, and brings it down directly onto my skull.

  The impact is deafening. My vision shatters into a thousand fractured angles as the bone gives way under the weight of his heel. I feel my neck snap, my spine disconnect from my pelvis, and my ribs cave inward to scatter across the damp stone tiles. I am broken into a dozen disconnected pieces, lying in the dirt while my consciousness desperately clings to the fragmented remains of my skull.

  I wait for the darkness to take me. I wait for the final void to swallow the fear and the anger, ending my long vigil in the deep earth.

  But the darkness does not come. I find myself still alive, trapped in a shattered state, able to see the ceiling of the chamber from a tilted angle on the floor, but completely unable to move or control the pieces of my body scattered around me. I do nothing. I just wait, hoping the magic she spoke of will pull me back together.

  Nothing happens. The dust settles in the quiet room, and my bones remain broken and disconnected on the floor.

  The brawler with the iron gloves points at my shattered skull and bursts into deep, mocking laughter.

  "Well, that was a spectacular failure, Alys. Remind me never to ask you to fix my armor."

  The gnome chuckles and shakes his head.

  "You mispronounced the third syllable of the incantation. I told you restoration magic is too complex for an elf, but you never listen."

  The elf girl sighs in disappointment, kicking a loose piece of my ribcage across the room.

  "Fine. It was a stupid idea anyway. Let us just open the sarcophagus and get the gold so we can leave this miserable damp hole."

  The armored man steps over my broken skull and approaches the heavy stone box in the center of the room. He slides his massive hands under the carved lid, grunting with exertion as he pushes the heavy stone aside. The lid grinds against the base and crashes to the floor with a heavy thud, sending a cloud of ancient dust rising into the blue light of the orb.

  The adventurers crowd around the open box, peering into the dark interior. The silence in the chamber stretches for a long moment, broken only by the sound of the dripping water hitting the floor.

  "You have got to be kidding me,"

  the rogue says, his voice flat and devoid of amusement.

  "Where is the lich?"

  the girl asks, leaning her staff against the stone.

  "Where is the treasure?"

  "There is nothing,"

  the armored man growls, slamming his fist in frustration against the side of the sarcophagus.

  "It is completely empty. Not a single gold coin, not a rusted crown, not even a pile of bones. It is just a hollow box."

  The gnome spits on the floor in disgust.

  "I told you we should have taken the bounty in the northern mountains instead of listening to tavern rumors. We wasted three days walking through the mud to fight weak skeletons for an empty box."

  "Let us just move out and leave,"

  the brawler says, turning her back on the sarcophagus and walking toward the exit.

  "I need a hot bath and a strong drink to wash the smell of this place off my skin."

  They do not linger. They gather their weapons and walk out of the chamber, their voices echoing down the corridor as they complain about the wasted time and the lack of treasure, leaving the blue light to fade into the absolute darkness of the underground.

  I lie on the cold stone floor alone, my broken skull resting in the dirt while the shadows creep back into the corners of the room to reclaim the space. I look at the empty sarcophagus dominating the center of the chamber, the heavy stone lid resting on the floor beside it.

  It is empty.

  The realization hits me with a physical weight that crushes the remnants of my spirit. There was no sleeping lich. There was no dark master waiting to be awakened. The purpose that defined my existence, the sacred duty that kept me standing in the dark for hundreds of years, was a complete and total lie.

  I look at the charred remains of the slug and the shattered wood of the mimic. I look at the white dust that used to be my skeleton brothers. They died for nothing. We fought and bled and stood our ground against the endless tides of invaders to protect an empty box made of stone.

  A profound, suffocating anger rises from the depths of my broken form, replacing the shock and the sorrow with a dark, burning hatred. I hate the empty stone box. I hate the centuries I wasted standing in the dark. I hate the adventurers who walked into my home, slaughtered my friends for amusement, and broke my body just to test a spell they did not even understand. Most of all, I hate the fate that bound me to this miserable existence.

  I scream silently into the darkness, the rage consuming me until the hollow ache in my chest becomes a force pushing outward against the damp air.

  And then, I feel something strange.

  Amidst the blinding anger, I feel the faint sensation of the bones in my fingers twitching against the stone tiles a few feet away from my skull. I focus my mind on the scattered pieces of my body, pouring every ounce of my hatred and my will into the dark space between us. I do not know if the elf girl's spell finally took hold, delayed by her sloppy incantation, or if my own sheer refusal to die broken and useless is forcing the magic into existence.

  I imagine pulling the pieces together. With agonizing slowness, the bones begin to scrape across the floor. My spine drags itself through the dirt to reconnect with my pelvis. The ribs slide over the damp stone and snap back into place around my empty chest cavity. I feel my neck lift my skull from the ground and fuse it back onto my shoulders.

  With immense hardship and the grinding sound of bone scraping against rock, I push myself up from the floor. I am whole again, standing in the center of the dark chamber under the dripping water from the ceiling.

  But what is the point of being whole when there is nothing left to defend?

  I stand alone in the silence of the crypt, looking at the empty sarcophagus and the remains of my friends. I have no goal. I have no purpose to keep me anchored to this room.

  I look toward the dark corridor leading to the upper tunnels, the path the adventurers took to return to their world of light and noise. If my old purpose was a lie, then I must forge a new one to justify the anger burning inside my chest. Why not avenge the fallen? Why not leave this damp hole, walk out into the world of the adventurers, and hunt down the Deadly Five to kill them one by one?

  The thought settles into my bones, offering a cold and sharp clarity that replaces the confusion of the empty box. It sounds like a good goal. It is a purpose built on my own terms, not dictated by a missing master or a hollow stone tomb.

  I walk across the room, picking up the heavy iron shield and the rusted sword from where they fell, but I know they are not enough. If I walk into the light as a walking skeleton, their world will hunt me down before I can reach my targets. I need a disguise to hide my true nature from the eyes of the living.

  I move out of the chamber, walking slowly through the upper tunnels filled with the corpses of the adventurers we killed over the centuries. I scavenge through the rotting remains, pulling pieces of armor from the dead to build a shell that will conceal the white bone beneath. I strap a battered, semi-armored leather suit over my ribs, the material stiff with dried blood and age, but functional enough to hide my chest and arms. I find a heavy iron helmet with a rusted visor to cover my skull, wrapping a thick, frayed wool scarf tightly around my neck and lower jaw to ensure no skinless bone is visible in the gaps. I discard my rusted sword and pick up a heavy, dull iron cleaver from the hands of a dead warrior, its weight familiar and brutal in my grip.

  I walk for a long time, following the drafts of fresh air that the other skeleton had spoken of earlier today. The smell of the damp earth and the rotting flesh slowly fades, replaced by the scent of the wet soil, and something vast that does not end at the walls.

  I stand now at the heavy iron gates of the dungeon, the rusted bars separating the dark tunnels from the blinding glare of the outside world. The wind blows through the gaps in the metal, carrying the sound of rustling leaves and distant birds. I adjust the grip on my heavy cleaver and stare through the gates into the light, waiting for the shadows to lengthen so I can take my first step outside.