The dead began to move.
Not Ragnap.
Not yet.
The first shapes came from the base of the stepped monument.
They had once been statues.
Hexen understood that only after seeing one move.
Stone shoulders twisted beneath black growths that had forced themselves through cracks in carved armor. What might once have been a heroic face had split around a dark ridge of corruption. Horn-like protrusions jutted from the back and shoulders, not carved as part of the original figure but grown through it, twisting the monument into something that resembled the person it had been made to honor only enough to make the transformation obscene.
A second guardian stepped into the light beside it.
Then mummified forms began emerging from the shadows.
Kaylor looked up toward the figure at the summit.
Ragnap’s body stood where the ancient hero’s spirit had appeared only moments before.
The same armor.
The same broad frame immortalized throughout the tomb.
None of the same man.
Darkness seemed to move beneath his skin.
Whatever had taken him had worn his corpse for a very long time.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
“How many?”
Isamu looked along the chamber.
“Enough.”
“Useful.”
Hexen became wind.
He had retained the elemental shape through their descent, and now he surrendered fully to it. His body expanded into a whirling column of air and dust that climbed from the floor with unnatural speed.
Kaylor glanced upward.
“Going for Ragnap?”
The answer came from inside the storm.
“Eventually.”
One of the corrupted statues moved.
It did not run.
It leapt.
The enormous thing crossed a distance that should have required several strides in a single violent surge. Air exploded from beneath it. The force of its movement scattered dust across the chamber.
Kaylor brought Peacemaker up.
The black greatsword intercepted stone and corruption.
The impact traveled through his entire body.
He yielded one step.
The guardian’s distorted mouth opened.
Cold poured from it.
Not winter.
Something older.
The breath of sealed tombs and bodies that had forgotten the sun.
Frost spread across Kaylor’s armor.
He pushed through it.
“That,” he said, “is annoying.”
The guardian struck again.
Kaylor answered.
The battle split.
It always did when rooms became large enough.
Isamu ran.
He took the wall rather than the floor, boots striking vertical stone as naturally as level ground. The corrupted guardians at the base of the monument turned too slowly to follow him. He crossed above them and launched himself toward one of the upper tiers.
Fendor stayed back.
Distance was his advantage.
The chamber tried to turn it into a weakness.
Ragnap stood more than two hundred feet away, elevated above a battlefield already filling with moving bodies. Mummies crossed the lower floor. The corrupted monuments occupied the approach. His friends moved through the lanes between them.
Fendor looked at the ancient hero.
Then at the Oathbow.
“All right.”
He drew.
The oath came quietly.
Ragnap—or the thing using Ragnap—became his enemy.
The first arrow missed.
The second vanished somewhere among the stone tiers.
The third found him.
The shaft crossed the entire chamber and struck the figure at the summit.
Ragnap barely moved.
Fendor frowned.
“Too far.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“For you?”
“For anyone sensible.”
“That has never stopped you.”
“No.”
Fendor drew again.
Kaylor fought below.
The corrupted guardian had strength enough to break men through armor. It also moved with bursts of speed impossible for something made from stone.
It breathed cold again.
Kaylor endured it.
Then struck.
Once.
Twice.
Peacemaker carved through the dark growth beneath the guardian’s chest.
The creature staggered.
Another shape slid toward him from the shadows.
A mummy.
Then another.
Kaylor saw them coming.
“Of course.”
Above him, Hexen reached the first corrupted monument.
Wind hammered into stone.
The guardian shifted but did not fall.
Hexen circled it and felt something beneath the corruption.
Not life.
Memory.
This had once been a statue honoring one of Ragnap’s companions.
The thing growing through it had not merely damaged stone.
It had changed purpose.
Hexen struck again.
The guardian retaliated.
Necrotic power entered the wind.
That should have been impossible.
Hexen felt his elemental form blacken around the edges as something attempted to rot air.
He recoiled.
The second guardian opened its mouth.
Ancient cold passed through him.
For a moment the air elemental became frost.
Hexen dropped several feet.
His shape destabilized.
He forced it together again.
“Rude.”
Nobody heard him.
Nethnarel looked past the guardians.
She wanted the source.
The figure at the summit.
Whatever possessed Ragnap had attacked Kaylor with death magic before the battle began. It had turned the ancient hero’s body into the center around which everything else moved.
Nethnarel reached for a spell designed for living enemies.
Power gathered between her fingers.
Dark energy crossed the chamber toward Ragnap.
It struck.
Nothing happened.
Not nothing.
The spell arrived.
The magic worked.
The target simply had no life left for death to take.
Nethnarel stared.
“He’s already dead.”
Kaylor shouted from below.
“Helpful!”
“I was confirming!”
“Confirmed!”
Ragnap raised one hand.
Something moved behind the heroes.
Then another thing.
The tomb was still opening itself.
Mummified companions approached from opposite sides of the chamber.
Corrupted guardians descended the tiers.
Ragnap remained above them all.
Fendor decided subtlety had been given enough opportunity.
He drew the Oathbow.
Then drew again.
And again.
Arrows crossed the chamber almost too quickly to distinguish individually. Fendor stopped trying to find an easy lane through the battle and created one through precision alone. Shafts passed between Isamu and a corrupted guardian, above Kaylor’s shoulder, through a gap between two mummies.
Several struck Ragnap.
The dead hero rocked backward.
Not enough.
“Still standing,” Fendor said.
Kaylor drove Peacemaker into the cold-breathing guardian.
The creature shattered.
Not cleanly.
The black growth within it held stone together for another heartbeat before the entire form collapsed.
Cold exploded outward.
Kaylor threw one arm across his face.
Frost rolled across the floor.
One approaching mummy was caught in it.
The corpse did not care.
Kaylor turned.
It did.
He attacked.
On the upper tier, Isamu reached another corrupted guardian.
It was enormous at close range.
Larger than he had expected.
That changed nothing.
He struck.
The Swarm Gloves tightened.
His second blow found the same opening.
The guardian resisted his attempt to stop its movement completely.
Isamu struck again.
It still resisted.
“Stubborn.”
The creature swung.
Isamu moved beneath the attack.
Behind him, Hexen became solid again.
The air elemental collapsed.
Hexen returned to himself hard.
His boots struck the upper platform.
For one brief instant he had time to understand that changing back had preserved his life.
Then something hit him.
A claw.
Stone or bone or something between them tore across his body and threw him against the platform.
Cold followed.
Hexen fell.
Not dead.
He was becoming tired of discovering the distinction at close range.
Below, Nethnarel saw him go down.
She started forward.
A mummy came from the side.
Its fist struck her.
Ancient rot entered the wound.
Nethnarel staggered.
Another attacker closed.
The battle had stopped being clean.
It became attrition.
They killed one thing.
Two more reached them.
Kaylor’s displaced image pulled attacks away from his true body while mummies crowded him from both sides. Isamu fought among the upper tiers. Fendor remained far enough back that distance protected him from some dangers and left him helpless against others.
Hexen regained his feet.
Barely.
He called a healing spirit beside him.
Light gathered within the storm of insects and dust.
Some strength returned.
Then the tomb answered.
A whirlwind of dead air erupted around him and Isamu.
Dust filled Hexen’s eyes.
He could see nothing.
Isamu disappeared inside the same storm.
Then insects came.
Not the insects of the Swarm Gloves.
Not anything natural.
Thousands descended through the swirling dust.
They crawled beneath clothing and across exposed skin.
They bit.
Hexen struck blindly.
Nothing useful happened.
Isamu covered his face and moved by memory.
“This is becoming irritating.”
“Agreed.”
The insects continued eating.
Fendor had problems of his own.
He drew the Vorpal Longsword when a mummy reached him.
The blade had killed kings.
Dragons feared weapons like it.
Fendor swung too hard in a battlefield where smoke, dust and moving bodies destroyed clean footing.
The sword glanced.
Pain shot through his arm.
For one humiliating instant his own weapon became the most dangerous thing near him.
He stumbled.
The mummy advanced.
Fendor recovered.
“No one saw that.”
Kaylor was sixty feet away.
“I saw it.”
“Busy.”
“I am.”
Nethnarel went down.
There was no dramatic cry.
One moment she stood.
The next an undead blow removed the last strength from her legs.
She hit the floor.
The battle continued around her.
Kaylor saw.
He could not reach her.
A mummy blocked him.
Another attacked from behind.
He destroyed the first with a strike powerful enough to collapse its chest.
The second moved into the opening.
Isamu was still blind.
Hexen was bleeding.
Fendor had enemies closing.
Ragnap remained above them.
The heroes were losing.
Not because they had forgotten how to fight.
Because the tomb had been waiting for people exactly like them.
Ragnap had been a hero.
His companions had been heroes.
Whatever corrupted this place understood what powerful people looked like.
It had turned heroic defenses into a weapon.
The cold-breathing guardian struck Hexen again.
His body failed.
He fell.
Two heroes down.
Kaylor looked up.
Ragnap’s corpse remained at the summit.
“Enough.”
He stopped conserving anything.
Power followed Peacemaker.
The mummy in front of him disappeared beneath the force of the blow.
Fendor saw the opening.
Something within the Oathbow answered.
Healing crossed the chamber.
Not enough to erase wounds.
Enough.
Hexen inhaled.
Nethnarel moved.
Both returned to consciousness.
Nethnarel opened her eyes.
A mummy stood over her.
“Of course.”
She rolled aside before its fist came down.
Hexen pushed himself upright.
The dust storm still blinded him.
He could hear the insects.
Isamu somewhere beside him.
The corrupted guardian ahead.
He could not see any of them.
So Hexen changed the battlefield.
Flame rose.
A wall of fire tore across the upper tiers.
Heat drove the biting insects away from one side and forced the corrupted defenders through a narrow approach.
Later Hexen replaced fire with thorns.
The Staff of the Woodlands struck stone.
Impossible vegetation exploded through cracks.
Thick briars wrapped one guardian completely, sealing it inside a living cage.
The creature fought.
The wall held.
Below, Fendor reached into his equipment.
Two small beads rested in his palm.
Beads of force.
He looked toward two approaching mummies.
“Fine.”
He threw.
The first bead struck.
Force erupted around the corpse.
A transparent sphere snapped into existence and trapped the mummy inside.
It hammered its fists against the impossible surface.
Nothing happened.
The second bead detonated nearby.
For several precious seconds, two enemies stopped mattering.
Nethnarel got up.
Again.
She had stopped counting.
So had everyone else.
A mummy struck her.
Nethnarel fell.
Again.
Fendor stared.
“That is becoming excessive.”
Isamu reached her.
He had finally escaped the blinding storm.
The insects had left blood across his skin, but he remained upright.
He crouched beside Nethnarel.
Her breathing was shallow.
Alive.
He stabilized her.
“Stay.”
Nethnarel did not answer.
“Good.”
Then he returned to the fight.
They stopped trying to win beautifully.
Kaylor destroyed undead with the last of his smiting power.
Hexen burned whatever came through the thorns.
Fendor used the Oathbow until nothing remained between him and the summit.
Isamu fought with the same disciplined hands that had carried him through every disaster since they woke beneath the mountain.
Ragnap’s possessed corpse remained.
Fendor drew.
The chamber had become clear enough now.
No friends crossed his line.
No corrupted statues remained to hide behind.
Only the ancient hero.
Fendor released.
The arrow struck.
Kaylor began climbing.
One tier.
Then another.
Ragnap raised his hand.
Necrotic power came.
Kaylor kept moving.
The next arrow struck.
Isamu reached the stairs from the opposite side.
Hexen followed more slowly.
They converged.
The thing controlling Ragnap had spent thousands of years inside a tomb designed to imprison something worse.
It had survived.
It had corrupted heroes.
It had turned guardians into monsters.
It had nearly killed the five people coming toward it.
That did not make those people stop.
Kaylor reached the summit.
Peacemaker rose.
Ragnap’s dead eyes looked at him.
For one instant, Kaylor thought he saw the man behind them.
Then the darkness returned.
Kaylor struck.
The body fell.
The chamber stopped.
Not gradually.
The way a storm sometimes ended when wind vanished between one breath and the next.
The mummy trapped in Fendor’s sphere ceased struggling.
The thorns stopped shaking.
Dust settled.
The black growth inside the shattered statues shriveled.
Nobody moved.
Isamu looked toward Nethnarel.
Still alive.
Hexen leaned against his staff.
Fendor kept the Oathbow raised.
Kaylor stared down at Ragnap.
Light emerged from the corpse.
Not bright enough to hurt.
Warm.
The same golden-white radiance they had seen before the possession reclaimed him.
A man stood within it.
Ragnap the Strong.
This time no darkness followed.
He looked younger than the corpse.
Not young.
Whole.
The face belonged to the carvings.
The warrior celebrated by people who had planted a Linnar tree above his grave because ordinary stone had not seemed sufficient.
He looked at Kaylor.
Then the others.
“Thank you.”
The voice was quieter now.
No tomb carried it.
It did not need to.
Hexen approached.
“What happened here?”
Ragnap looked toward the dead companions around the chamber.
Grief passed across his face.
“They were not meant to rise against you.”
“We guessed.”
Fendor lowered the bow.
“What were you guarding?”
Ragnap turned.
His coffin stood at the highest level of the monument.
Beside it rested a smaller container.
Or what remained of one.
Heavy chains lay broken around it.
Metal seals had been torn apart. Lines in the stone suggested wards that had once crossed the box in several directions.
Now they were dead.
Ragnap pointed.
“A prison.”
Kaylor looked inside.
Empty.
“What was in it?”
Ragnap’s expression tightened.
“A diamond.”
Nethnarel stirred below.
Isamu helped her sit.
She heard enough.
“A valuable diamond?”
Fendor looked at her.
“Please.”
Ragnap did not smile.
“Large. Enchanted. It held a spirit.”
The humor left.
Hexen looked toward the broken wards.
“What spirit?”
“We never knew its name.”
Ragnap gazed somewhere beyond the chamber.
Memory took him thousands of years backward.
“We fought it when my companions and I still lived. A horned warrior. Powerful beyond any mortal soldier. It wielded magic as readily as steel.”
Kaylor glanced toward the images carved into the tomb.
“One of your enemies.”
“One of something else’s servants.”
Ragnap looked at him.
“An ancient evil.”
The words changed the room.
Not because they explained enough.
Because they explained almost nothing.
Hexen tightened his grip on the staff.
“You killed it.”
“We thought so.”
Ragnap looked toward the empty prison.
“When its body was destroyed, what remained became bound within the diamond. Whether that was its soul, spirit or another part of it, we never learned.”
“You buried it with you,” Fendor said.
“I chose to guard it.”
Ragnap gestured toward the tomb around them.
“This place was built so the prison would never leave.”
Isamu looked at the shattered seals.
“It did.”
“Yes.”
“What opened it?”
Ragnap was silent.
That answer frightened Hexen more than a name would have.
“Something came here,” the ancient hero said at last. “Powerful. Strange. It sought the prison.”
“You saw it?” Kaylor asked.
“Not clearly.”
Ragnap’s spirit dimmed slightly.
Time was pulling at him.
“It broke what had held for thousands of years. It freed what we guarded.”
“And cursed you,” Hexen said.
Ragnap nodded.
“All of us.”
The dead around them changed.
Light appeared above the nearest mummy.
Its wrapped corpse remained on the floor.
A person rose from it.
Not undead.
A warrior.
Whole.
Another spirit appeared beside a shattered statue.
Then another.
Men and women emerged throughout the tomb, their appearances replacing for a heartbeat the corrupted forms the heroes had fought.
Ragnap’s companions.
The forgotten faces from the carvings.
The people whose names had disappeared while his survived.
They looked toward the five heroes.
Some bowed.
Others merely smiled.
One placed a fist against his chest.
Thank you.
The words were not spoken by all of them.
They did not need to be.
Then they began to leave.
Light rose through ancient stone.
One by one the spirits vanished.
The mummy trapped inside Fendor’s force sphere slumped.
There was no curse inside it anymore.
No will.
Nothing worth fighting.
Fendor watched the last spirit disappear.
“I suppose that solves that.”
Hexen looked toward the empty diamond prison.
“No.”
Fendor followed his gaze.
“No.”
It solved the tomb.
Something far worse had left it.
Ragnap remained.
Barely.
He looked toward Kaylor.
“Take what you need.”
Kaylor frowned.
“From your grave?”
“The dead have less use for weapons.”
Fendor nodded approvingly.
“A sensible hero.”
Ragnap almost smiled.
Then the ancient warrior faded.
No corruption interrupted him.
No darkness pulled him backward.
The light rose.
And Ragnap the Strong finally left his tomb.
For the first time in thousands of years, the place became what its builders had intended.
A grave.
They rested before searching.
There was no shame in it.
Nethnarel had fallen too many times to pretend otherwise. Hexen’s body carried wounds from losing his elemental form and being struck immediately afterward. Isamu’s skin bore the marks of swarming insects. Fendor had taken enough punishment that even he stopped arguing about whether they could continue immediately.
Kaylor sat against the monument.
Peacemaker rested beside him.
Nobody spoke for a while.
Eventually Nethnarel looked toward the broken prison.
“We should be concerned.”
Fendor opened one eye.
“We are.”
“I mean more.”
“I am capable of increasing concern.”
Hexen stared at the empty box.
“Don’t decide what it is yet.”
Kaylor glanced toward him.
“No Swarm Lord?”
“No.”
“Craven?”
“No.”
“Naked ancient spider goddess?”
Nethnarel frowned.
“That was oddly specific.”
Kaylor shrugged.
“We have a history.”
Hexen looked around the tomb.
“Ragnap didn’t know what his prisoner served. He only knew it was ancient and evil.”
Fendor considered.
“Comforting.”
“We know something came here looking for it.”
“Also comforting.”
“And whatever came here was powerful enough to break a prison that survived several thousand years.”
Fendor closed his eyes again.
“Stop helping.”
They searched after resting.
Ragnap had given permission.
That made the act feel marginally less like grave robbing.
Marginally.
The ancient hero’s possessions had survived remarkably well.
The armor drew Kaylor’s attention first.
Heavy enchantment remained within it despite the centuries.
Nethnarel examined the metal.
“Strong.”
“How strong?”
“Enough that you should stop wearing inferior armor.”
Kaylor looked down at what he wore.
“I like this armor.”
“You like everything that prevents you from being stabbed.”
“Correct.”
“Then you’ll like this more.”
They set it aside for later fitting.
Two potions of speed survived among Ragnap’s stores.
A powerful healing draught joined them.
A halberd rested near the coffin, enchanted but otherwise straightforward—a warrior’s weapon rather than a puzzle.
Fendor inspected it.
“Good.”
Kaylor looked over.
“Want it?”
“No.”
“Then why good?”
“Not everything magical needs to contain insects or eat souls.”
Hexen glanced toward Grim Harvest.
“Fair.”
The mace was stranger.
Magic coiled inside it around fear itself.
Nethnarel handled it carefully.
“This makes people afraid.”
Kaylor stared.
“So do I.”
“Without requiring the mace.”
“Then it’s redundant.”
Fendor looked toward him.
“Not everyone has your face.”
They packed it anyway.
The rest was wealth accumulated across an age when heroes were buried with evidence of their reputation.
Gems.
Silverwork.
Ceremonial cups.
Objects precious because someone had spent months shaping them.
Ragnap had told them to take what they needed.
Fendor interpreted the instruction generously.
By the time they finished, they carried valuables worth roughly fifteen thousand gold pieces.
Big Oak could handle the weight.
Fendor mentioned that twice.
They slept in the tomb.
Nothing attacked.
That felt unnatural after two days in the Moaning Waters.
No electric lights emerged from the ceiling.
No beetles broke through the floor.
No mummy rose because someone rolled over too loudly.
The tomb had been cleansed.
Morning—if it was morning outside—found five heroes restored enough to remember why they had come south in the first place.
The crossroads.
Fendor sat up.
“We still haven’t reached it.”
Kaylor opened one eye.
“No.”
“We have been gone for days.”
“Yes.”
“We were asked to investigate missing travelers.”
“Yes.”
“We instead fought a giant frog, demonic spiders, an extinct tree, undead heroes and the possessed corpse of Ragnap the Strong.”
Kaylor stood.
“Efficient route.”
Fendor stared at him.
“I dislike you.”
They returned to the surface.
The Linnar tree waited above.
Sunlight passed through its impossible leaves.
For a moment Hexen simply stood beneath it.
Thousands of years.
The tree had guarded Ragnap while the hero guarded the diamond.
Now the hero was gone.
The prison was empty.
The tree remained.
Hexen collected what viable material he could without harming it.
Seeds if they were seeds.
Fruit if they were fruit.
Enough to try.
Perhaps a species did not need to remain dead simply because history believed it was.
Then they headed south.
Big Oak walked with them.
The journey from the Moaning Waters to the crossroads was shorter than everything they had done to avoid arriving there.
The road appeared first.
Then another.
Then two more.
Four routes met across a broad stretch of packed earth surrounded by woodland and low country.
Thomas Lightfoot had described it as one of the most important crossings in the region.
It should have been busy.
It was silent.
Kaylor slowed.
Isamu stopped beside him.
Fendor reached for the Oathbow.
Wagons stood along the road.
Not one.
Several.
A merchant’s cart lay tipped on its side near the southern approach, its compartments thrown open by the fall.
Another wagon rested partly in the ditch.
Farther away, the remains of vegetables and produce sat in crates where they had rotted.
Nethnarel approached carefully.
“Robbed?”
Fendor checked the nearest cart.
“No.”
Coins remained.
Tools.
Trade goods.
Anything worth stealing appeared to have been left exactly where it had been.
Kaylor looked around.
“Horses?”
None.
“Bodies?”
None.
Hexen crouched beside the road.
“No blood.”
Isamu studied the abandoned wagon.
“No weapon marks.”
Fendor searched farther along the verge.
There were no signs of a fight.
No arrowheads in timber.
No hacked traces across wagon sides.
No trail where injured people had dragged themselves away.
Nothing.
The wagons looked as though their owners had simply stopped traveling.
Then ceased to exist.
Thomas Lightfoot’s words returned.
Anyone who came through the crossroads disappeared.
Oxland sent guards.
They disappeared too.
Fendor stood beside the overturned merchant cart.
“Bandits would take the goods.”
Kaylor nodded.
“Animals would leave bodies.”
Hexen looked toward the surrounding woods.
“Something should leave tracks.”
Nethnarel stared at the untouched cargo.
“Then what happened?”
Nobody answered.
There was no evidence.
That was the evidence.
Kaylor walked into the center of the crossroads.
Four roads stretched away from him.
He spread his arms slightly.
“All right.”
His voice carried into the trees.
“Show yourselves.”
The world changed.
Color appeared in the air.
Not one color.
All of them.
Blue folded through green. Gold twisted inside violet. Patterns formed where no object existed to cast them. The road seemed to ripple beneath Kaylor’s boots.
A sound moved through the crossroads.
High.
Low.
Near.
Far.
Nothing human produced it.
Isamu turned south.
Something whispered inside his mind.
Go.
Nethnarel stopped.
Her thoughts scattered.
For one bizarre instant she understood with complete certainty that pigs needed wings before anything else could proceed.
She crouched and began drawing in the dirt.
Fendor stared.
“Neth?”
She looked up urgently.
“We need the pigs.”
Fendor closed his eyes.
“Of course we do.”
Hexen felt pressure entering his mind.
Kaylor’s hand moved toward Nethnarel.
Magic did not feel right.
Not quite a spell.
He tried to break it anyway.
Nothing happened.
The colors deepened.
The sounds came closer.
Isamu took several steps down the southern road before stopping himself.
He turned back slowly.
“What—”
Nethnarel continued drawing.
Hexen reached her.
Restorative power moved through his hand.
The confusion broke.
Nethnarel looked down at the stick in her fingers.
Then at the incomprehensible symbols she had scratched into the road.
“Why am I sitting?”
Kaylor drew Peacemaker.
The forest around the crossroads remained empty.
But empty no longer meant safe.
The heroes spread.
Five veterans faced four silent roads.
Around them, abandoned wagons waited for owners who had vanished without blood, struggle or theft.
The colors began moving between the trees.
Something was coming.
And at last, they had reached the crossroads.