Page 54 of Warlord’s Plaything

54

HIRA

T he night feels unnatural.

Like it's holding its breath.

Like it's waiting for something to die.

Or maybe?—

Something to rise.

We move through the ruins in silence.

Footsteps muffled.

Weapons drawn.

Each of us is a shadow in the dark, ghosts creeping toward something that should never have been disturbed.

The temple looms before us, its broken spires clawing at the sky.

It was once a shrine to something long forgotten, something that should have remained buried.

Now it is a wound in the earth.

And at its heart Kaelith waits.

The atmosphere is overflowing with rot, heavy with the scent of death long past.

But this isn’t the decay of time.

This is something else.

Something wrong.

Something hungry.

I glance at Xyron.

His face is carved from stone, but I see it—the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers tighten around the hilt of his blade.

He feels it too.

The way the magic here clings, whispers, calls.

His father warned him about this place.

Now, we walk straight into it.

"We move fast," he murmurs, voice barely a breath of sound. "Kill anything that gets in our way. We don’t give Kaelith time to finish what he started."

I nod.

There’s no room for hesitation now.

Not with what’s at stake.

Not when the air itself feels like it’s rotting around us.

The entrance to the temple is nothing but a gaping mouth of darkness, jagged stone framing it like teeth.

Shadows twist inside.

Moving.

Shifting.

I swallow hard.

I’ve never been afraid of the dark.

But this?

This feels alive.

Inside, the air is thick. Wrong. Suffocating.

The walls whisper, the shadows stretch.

And the bodies?—

Gods.

The bodies.

They line the walls, hanging like grotesque ornaments.

Some still wear armor, their corpses twisted, faces frozen in horror.

Others are little more than bones, blackened by time, by magic.

But all of them?—

Every single one?—

Is watching.

Their eyes glow with something unnatural, something not entirely dead.

Waiting.

Listening.

Like Kaelith has made them part of this place.

Like he has woven their very souls into the stone.

"This is worse than I thought," Xyron mutters.

His voice is sharp.

Cold.

Like he’s trying to hold something back.

Like he’s trying not to lose himself in what we’ve walked into.

We move deeper.

The corridors are too narrow, the walls pressing in, thick with magic.

The further we go?—

The more the air vibrates, the more the shadows crawl.

We are walking into the heart of something unholy.

I hear him before I see him.

A voice.

A whisper.

A chant that slides through the air like silk, like rot, like a blade pressed against bare skin.

"The gods have no power here."

The voice is soft.

Too soft.

Too calm.

I step forward, and then I see him.

Kaelith stands at the base of the altar, his arms spread wide, his body bathed in violet light.

He doesn’t look the same.

His skin is no longer just dark elf obsidian—it’s cracked, glowing from within, pulsing with raw necromantic energy.

His eyes are gone.

Now, they are endless voids, swirling with power.

His robes hang off him like tattered funeral shrouds, his hands blackened with the magic he wields.

He smiles.

"You’re too late." His voice is a blade through the silence. "The veil is already tearing."

He gestures to the altar.

That’s when I see the rift. A crack in the air itself, jagged, black, and pulsing with something that should not exist.

And beneath it?—

Bodies.

Hundreds.

Their forms broken, twisted, bound in chains of light that do not let them rest.

And Kaelith is drinking them in.

Their souls.

Their essence.

Their very existence.

Feeding on them.

Growing stronger.

And my stomach turns.

I know what this means.

"He’s becoming something else." Xyron’s voice is pure steel. "He’s not just raising the dead. He’s becoming death itself."

Kaelith laughs. A low, rasping sound, something that crawls beneath the skin. "Oh, Xyron. You of all people should know that death itself is made, not born. And tonight—I become one."

I grip my blade.

Tight.

So tight I feel the bite of steel against my palm.

This is worse than I imagined.

This is not just a battle.

This is a war against something unnatural, something unstoppable.

And if we don’t end it now, we never will.

"We must kill him."

Xyron’s voice cuts through the air, sharp as a death sentence.

"Now."