Korrak knew when something was watching him.

  It was a feeling etched into his bones after years of battle, of ambushes, of knowing what lurked in the shadows long before it made itself known.

  And now, inside the Darkspire, that feeling had never been stronger.

  The air was thick with something unseen, something that curled around their bodies like invisible fingers. Every step forward felt like pressing into something that did not want them there.

  Korrak ignored it.

  That was the only thing to do.

  But the warband did not ignore it.

  They felt it too.

  They did not whisper anymore.

  They did not look at each other.

  They simply walked forward, weapons in hand, breathing shallow.

  The only one unbothered was the Mage.

  His golden eyes gleamed as he traced unseen symbols in the air, muttering to himself, completely at peace in the darkness.

  Korrak did not like that.

  Not at all.

  They reached the first true chamber of the tower, a vast, impossibly large hall, stretching further than should have been possible.

  Torches lined the walls, but none were lit.

  The only light came from the pale, ghostly glow of something above them—faint threads of light, suspended in the air, drifting like strands of a spider’s web.

  Korrak did not look up.

  He had learned long ago that nothing good came from looking up in places like this.

  Instead, he focused on what was ahead.

  And what was ahead was a graveyard.

  Hundreds of figures stood along the walls, each frozen in time, clad in ancient armor, rusted chain, ceremonial robes.

  Korrak frowned.

  They were not piles of corpses.

  They were standing.

  Silent. Still.

  Their faces withered and sunken, their jaws open in silent screams.

  One of the mercenaries exhaled sharply.

  "Gods…"

  Another gripped his sword tighter.

  "What did this?"

  Korrak already knew the answer.

  The Tower.

  Then—the sound.

  Soft. Low.

  Like stone shifting over stone.

  A sigh, too vast to be human, too deep to belong to anything that walked the earth.

  The walls shuddered.

  The air grew colder.

  And Korrak knew—

  The tower was alive.

  He turned to the Mage.

  The younger man was staring at the figures along the walls, tilting his head.

  Then he smiled.

  "They were not killed."

  Korrak frowned.

  The Mage turned to him, his golden eyes alight with something dangerous, eager, unhinged.

  "They were kept."

  Someone in the warband broke.

  One of the mercenaries, a grizzled man with a notched blade and too many scars, suddenly turned on his heel.

  "Nope. No. This is cursed. This whole damned place is wrong. We’re leaving."

  Korrak said nothing.

  He just watched.

  The man did not wait for permission.

  He turned—

  And stopped.

  His face contorted.

  His body twitched.

  His sword fell from his fingers.

  His mouth opened.

  And the scream that came out of him did not belong to him.

  It was layered, warped, a hundred voices shrieking at once.

  His eyes rolled back.

  His skin tightened over his bones.

  And then, with one last shuddering breath—

  He froze.

  Standing still.

  A new statue.

  A new body in the Hall of the Fallen.

  The warband staggered backward.

  Men shouted, cursing, raising weapons.

  But none dared move forward.

  None dared run.

  Because now, they knew—

  If they turned their backs, they would never turn back around.

  The Mage laughed softly.

  "This is fascinating."

  Korrak turned to him, expression hard.

  "You knew this would happen."

  The Mage shrugged.

  "I suspected."

  Korrak exhaled through his teeth.

  Then he stepped forward, toward the statue that had once been a man.

  And he did what no one else dared.

  He touched it.

  The moment his fingers brushed the flesh—

  The man moved.

  Or rather, something inside him moved.

  Something tried to move Korrak’s hand for him.

  Something cold.

  Something wrong.

  Korrak ripped his fingers back.

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  And in the silence that followed—

  A sound whispered from the walls.

  A sound Korrak did not want to hear.

  A hundred dry, rasping throats—breathing in.

  The statues twitched.

  The dead men standing along the walls—

  They began to move.

  Jaws unhinged.

  Fingers stiffened.

  Their hollow, gaping mouths stretched wide—

  And one by one, they turned their heads toward Korrak.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  Hungry.

  The Mage let out a breathless chuckle.

  "Oh."

  "They are awake."

  The statues turned their heads toward Korrak.

  Not slowly. Not stiffly.

  All at once.

  A hundred withered necks snapped in unison, faces still frozen in their eternal screams, empty sockets locking onto him.

  Then, one by one—they moved.

  Joints cracked like breaking wood, tendons creaked like rusted hinges, and a terrible sound filled the hall—not moans, not growls, but a slow, rhythmic grinding of bones shifting into motion.

  The warband tensed.

  Weapons were drawn, steel scraping steel.

  The Mage smiled.

  Korrak gritted his teeth.

  Then the first of the dead lunged.

  It came faster than it should have.

  One of the armored corpses—a thing that had once been a warrior, clad in rotted chain and ceremonial gold—leapt forward, its fingers outstretched like talons.

  Korrak moved on instinct.

  His sword came up, a whirl of muscle and steel, the weight of it effortless in his hands.

  The blade bit deep into the dead man’s ribs—

  And stopped.

  Not because the strike was weak.

  Not because the corpse was armored.

  Because the body did not break.

  Instead, it bent around the blade, twisting like soft wax, folding like something that had forgotten what shape it was meant to be.

  Then, just as quickly, it snapped back into place.

  And it kept coming.

  Korrak ripped his blade free as the thing’s fingers scraped toward his throat.

  Then he did the only thing that had ever worked against something that refused to die—

  He cut harder.

  The warband erupted into chaos.

  The first man who hesitated was dragged down instantly, his mouth open in a scream that never finished.

  The dead fell upon him, clawing into his flesh, digging into his ribs like dogs tearing apart a carcass.

  His body twitched violently—

  Then, with a shuddering jerk, he went still.

  And then he stood back up.

  Korrak did not watch.

  He was too busy killing.

  His sword sang through the air, cleaving through limbs, torsos, skulls—but nothing stayed dead.

  Every severed limb crawled back toward its body.

  Every broken thing stitched itself back together.

  One corpse rushed him, mouth stretched too wide, jaw distended into something no longer human.

  Korrak gripped the thing by its throat and slammed it into the stone floor hard enough to shatter bone.

  The corpse twitches violently.

  Then it snapped its head toward him—

  And smiled.

  Korrak ripped its head from its shoulders.

  It did not scream.

  It only kept smiling.

  Some men fought.

  Some ran.

  None survived.

  A spear thrust through an undead warrior’s ribs—only for the thing to grip the shaft and drive it deeper into itself, pulling its attacker closer before sinking its teeth into his throat.

  A mercenary smashed one of the corpses with a mace—only for the thing to splinter into blackened fragments that wriggled like severed fingers, crawling back together.

  Another ran for the entrance—only to find the hall twisting, the exit pulling further away, stretching like a mirage until it vanished entirely.

  The Tower was playing with them.

  The Tower was laughing.

  And Korrak was growing tired of it.

  The Mage stood at the center of the carnage, untouched.

  His golden eyes burned.

  His lips moved in silent incantation.

  He had been waiting for this moment.

  Then, as the dead closed in, he raised a single hand.

  And the Tower shuddered.

  Korrak felt the change instantly.

  A ripple in the air.

  A pulling sensation, as if the very fabric of the world had twisted.

  Then—fire.

  A great roar of golden flame erupted from the Mage’s fingers, rushing outward in a blazing wave, consuming everything in its path.

  The dead burned.

  Not in pain.

  Not in fear.

  But they burned.

  Flesh blackened, twisted, crumbled to ash.

  And for the first time—they did not come back.

  The Tower shrieked.

  Korrak turned to the Mage, watching the golden light reflected in his too-wide, too-eager grin.

  This had been his plan all along.

  As the flames faded, the Hall of the Fallen was no more.

  The dead were gone.

  The Tower was silent.

  But the walls—the walls had changed.

  Where once there had been stone, now there were faces.

  Hundreds. Thousands.

  Mouths, frozen open.

  Eyes, blinking without seeing.

  A hundred trapped souls, watching them.

  The Mage laughed softly.

  “Now we see.”

  Korrak did not ask what he meant.

  Because he knew.

  This Tower was not just a prison.

  It was a living thing.

  And it had only just begun playing with them.

  The fire had done its work.

  The Hall of the Fallen lay silent now, its guardians burned beyond revival, their ashes drifting in slow, unnatural spirals along the cold stone floor.

  But the Tower was not dead.

  And Korrak knew it would not forgive them.

  The faces in the walls still watched, blinking without sight, their mouths locked in eternal screams.

  The Mage—**grinning, golden-eyed, victorious—**stood amidst the destruction, his fingers still smoldering with the remnants of whatever forbidden spell he had cast.

  For a moment, there was stillness.

  Then—

  A sound.

  A deep, wet shuddering.

  A breath.

  Something else was in the chamber.

  Something waiting.

  And it was not dead yet.

  The warband turned toward the sound—the slow, heavy rasp of lungs filling with air, the deep vibration of something pulling itself from the shadows.

  And then—it stepped forward.

  Or rather, what was left of it.

  The war-beast was no longer the thing they had brought to the Tower.

  It had been changed.

  The monstrous creature—**once a horror of muscle and iron, a thing of flame and brute force—**had been reshaped.

  The flesh of it had softened, blackened, liquefied and then hardened again.

  Its once-massive limbs had twisted, the bones lengthened beyond reason, stretched like melting wax.

  Its jaws had widened, fangs replaced with something worse—a great chasm of shifting, writhing teeth, layered upon one another, spiraling into its throat like the mouth of a bottomless pit.

  And its eyes—

  Its eyes were gone.

  No longer red with rage, no longer burning with the fury of something born from war.

  Now, in their place, were faces.

  Hundreds of tiny, human faces, shifting beneath its skin like something trapped beneath ice—mouthing silent, wordless cries.

  And then—

  It spoke.

  Not in words.

  Not in sound.

  But in the voices of the warband.

  Korrak felt it before he heard it.

  A ripple of something unnatural, something dragging against the edges of his mind, whispering, pressing against the walls of his skull.

  And then—

  From the creature’s gaping maw, the voices came.

  "Korrak."

  His own name, spoken in a hundred different tones.

  Some his own voice.

  Some voices of men who had already died.

  Some—voices that had not spoken in years.

  The warband staggered back.

  One of them, a scarred raider, dropped his axe and clutched his head.

  "No—no, that’s—"

  Then—

  The creature moved.

  Faster than something that size should have been able to move.

  It collapsed forward, its warped limbs twisting beneath it like a spider’s, and lunged.

  And the warband broke.

  The first man never even screamed.

  The creature landed atop him, its body folding inward, smothering him in a wave of writhing, pulsing flesh.

  For one terrible moment, he was still alive, still struggling.

  Then his features twisted—his mouth stretching, his eyes sinking—

  And then his face was gone.

  It had become part of the beast.

  The next mercenary swung an axe into its back—

  And the axe sank in like wet mud.

  No blood. No reaction.

  The flesh closed over the wound like it had never been struck.

  Then another mouth opened where the wound had been, and it bit him in half.

  The warband scattered.

  Korrak did not.

  He charged.

  The thing that had been their war-beast lunged toward him, limbs twitching, mouths opening and closing across its body, whispering, screaming, calling out.

  Korrak did not falter.

  He met it head-on, his blade flashing in the dim, sickly light.

  The first strike severed a limb—

  Only for the limb to sprout another limb, pulling itself back together.

  The second strike drove deep into its chest—

  Only for the wound to vanish, swallowed by more flesh.

  The third strike—

  The third strike was fire.

  Golden light flashed from behind Korrak.

  A torrent of flame, twisting and wild, lashed out—engulfing the beast’s form.

  The Mage was laughing.

  “Let’s see if it burns like the others.”

  The fire clung to the thing’s flesh.

  It twisted. Screamed.

  And for the first time—

  It hesitated.

  Its form shuddered, breaking apart, its unnatural frame collapsing inward.

  The faces in its skin screamed in unison.

  Then, without a sound—

  It sank.

  Sank into the floor.

  The black stone rippling like water, pulling the thing downward, dragging it into the Tower’s depths.

  Then—

  It was gone.

  And the Tower was silent.

  The warband was fewer now.

  Many dead.

  Some standing in stunned silence.

  Some still breathing hard, gripping weapons that had done nothing.

  Korrak exhaled, his knuckles white around his sword.

  The Mage stepped forward, brushing dust from his cloak, utterly unbothered.

  “Well,” he said cheerfully.

  “That was illuminating.”

  Korrak glared at him.

  The Mage simply smiled.

  Then, without another word, he gestured toward the path ahead.

  “Shall we?”

  Korrak sees your admiration.

  And he hates it.

  He is not a hero. Not a legend. Not some specter that walks between myth and reality, meant to be whispered about in awe. He does not care for the songs, the stories, the drunken retellings of his deeds that twist and swell with each passing tongue.

  If you had stood before him, clutching your reverence like a fool clutching a dull blade, he would have only stared. And then he would have walked past you.

  Because to Korrak, it was never about glory.

  It was about the hunt.

  And if he still lives, it is only because there is always another chase.