The floor did not cracked, but instead the wound itself had yawned open on the weathered stone, sending a frigid air of death seeping from the opening.
The sensation hit Valen before anything or anyone might have, turning the first waterskin he had on his person into a block of hard ice within mere moments.
And as two of his fellow warriors paused at the opening, ice spreading up their arms faster than sense could tell them to run, the last breath in their lungs escaped in startled cries as they fell to the ground.
A statue that should have been shattered in the fall remained on the floor, waiting in dreadful pause for the winter to come.
[WARNING: Necrotic Field Detected]
[Lethality: Extreme]
[Target Emerging: Ancient Lich Lord – True Dungeon Boss]
That, Kaelen realised, was not what passed on as a miniboss encounter.
Not even close.
The feeling in his borrowed bones tensed impossibly tight in apprehensions, and Kaelen felt a coldness that could not be attributed to the field, not in any manner.
It climbed slowly from the opening, the fabric of decayed and frigid materials wrapped around the limbs that no longer served their purpose, twin pinpricks of luminescing blue fire burning where its eyes should have been.
And so it was not sound, but stillness that swallowed the camp in twofold heartbeats, turning the wails of their guides into desperate cries as they scattered in blind confusion, knights frozen in their movements in sheer disbelief as if, impossibly, their preparedness had prepared them for this.
Valen’s own sword hand shook, Kaelen saw, as if the knight could not believe his own strength and will to see the monstrosity.
He won’t make it.
There isn’t enough time.
If Valen fails to live, the entire group is finished on this front.
[Ding!
Existential Threat Detected – Host Vessel and Core Organism at Risk]
[Emergency Protocols Available: Temporary Motor and Vocal Override]
[Warning: Limit exceeds current infection threshold.
Risk of permanent neuronal damage to host or detection: High]
I don’t have much of a choice.
Let’s go.
Kaelen felt limbs and muscles that had been moving as if in a dream tighten impossibly taut, muscles moving at a precision his body had not felt in years, at the very cusp of true ascension as the power surged through his veins – and then crashed in a wave of sensation that nearly sent him reeling at the sensation.
This was Valen’s body, but not what Valen had used to its full, and if not for Corin’s body failing him, Kaelen would have thought nothing of it.
Instead, it was overwhelming, was more than it could contain, was a feeling of power that sent shivers – no, cracks – down Corin’s spine as he moved his head to look past Kaelen.
“FALL BACK TOWARD THE RIDGELINE!” Kaelen roared with Valen’s tongue, with the man’s strength, the knight’s bearing that the warrior in question had worn for all of these years.
Knights, he barked as the battlefield roared on, the panic around him growing into a deafening wail.
“FORMATION, WEDGE ON MY POSITION, GUIDES BEHIND THE WEDGE, NOW!”
There was no confusion, no hesitation as the madness, the sheer blind panicking of it all was funneled into the one voice the camp had been so accustomed to, even trusted in his presence.
Even the knights, who had stood in horrified stunned silence only moments before, snapped their bodies into motion if only in instinct, forming a line along the ridgeline.
“Coordination efficiency increased greatly; you are capitalising on the host’s authority over the unit in order to negate the imminent threat of death through blind panic.
This is effective.”
“Thank you, Nix thank you!” Kaelen pushed forward another soldier who had stumbled too close to danger, the limb that rose and shoved the poor woman away from the ridge powerful enough to send the guide reeling.
“Not there.” Not them.
Kaelen almost whispered the words, but not entirely, and somehow, it was enough.
I’m doing this for me.
This is a fool’s move.
Talia’s face flashed involuntarily within his thoughts, and for a moment, he was again faced with the bloodied knight who had not survived the effort and whose agony of failure echoed in Kaelen’s own thoughts for months.
And, if anything, he was surprised with the effort it now takes to feel that kind of anger, that kind of loss.
Selene arrived last, her hand still gripping the collar of the knight’s shirt as her breath came fast and uneven, the previous doubt in the knight’s intentions erased impossibly quick with a new and resolute dread.
“That’s a Lich Lord.” Even as she came to, Selene looked upon what stood between the lines of soldiers facing inward, toward the ridge and the camp behind it.
“It’s a true Lich Lord.
Not some lesser version, not a construct- the report said this dungeon was only Tier 2.
That kind of thing isn’t found this deep in a catacomb!”
“The reports were wrong.” Kaelen said, even as the words did not entirely belong to him.
“Doesn’t matter now.
We fall back to the ridge and regroup, we find the next possible opening, and we find our way out.”
The monster before them seemed to stare at the line of survivors with something akin to mild amusement, though as Kaelen’s borrowed eyes tracked the undead’s head, he would soon wish the thought entirely from his mind.
Not only him.
Valen.
[WARNING: Anomalous Target Recognition]
[“Lich Lord’s gaze shows indication on anomalous target recognition”]
It wasn’t looking at him.
Kaelen nearly froze where he stood, the new warning more than anything reminding him of something colder, deadlier – the necrotic fields pouring out from the opening that had brought this thing forth, that had led Kaelen himself to this point, this place – but the sensation he felt now, behind his ribcage, was somehow even colder than either of those.
“You wear your shell beautifully, little parasite.”
“Parasite?” Kaelen’s head was turned in Selene’s direction, concern already building in the way she held her posture tight and tense.
“What–?”
“He speaks of you, parasite.
Not of your shell, the good host Valen so faithfully protects,” the thing’s jaw worked up and down, bone in muscle long past its prime and the remains of whatever life had once been, in it’s own way, familiar.
“Shells do no protection before the grave.”
The entire line of knights turned, their eyes tracking to the source of the old voice’s message in something of universal confusion, but not all of them.
Kaelen saw Selene turn, her sharp eyes narrowing on Valen’s face, which already felt a beat and far stronger than he would ever have thought when he first took it as his own.
In fact, Kaelen felt his bones, his muscle, a heartbeat in the skin that he had worn for years now, and it had nothing to do with the strange pulse moving behind it in careful cadence.
It recognised me.
[SYSTEM ALERT: REAL WORLD ANCHOR DETECTION ERROR]
The system message rang out, sharp and unforgiving, slicing Kaelen’s nerves to pieces as the last words sent something unpleasant tight in the pit of his stomach.
[Lyra’s Tracker Beacon: Location Change Detected]
[Current Location: Unregistered Sector – Flagged Zone – Black Market]
[Warning: No further intelligence received beyond this point]
No.
The single syllable of protest rang in his thoughts, louder than the Lich Lord’s words, louder even than the panic in the ridge.
No, there was something wrong in the way he sounded, not him alone but in the words, in how it had said them, in how it was doing so in the first place.
There was a reason they should not be there.
Not any of them – and certainly not her.
“Confirmed.”
At least the monotone didn’t make it feel any less true.
Or scary
“Your sister’s beacon picked up in unregistered territory.
And from what I remember, that kind of zone doesn’t have a registered safety protocol.”
Kaelen was locked between two fires of a sort, an ancient and unknowable monster and something he was not prepared to say out loud, something he could not save her from.