The chamber seemed to hold its breath.
The heavy, unmoving air — dense as stagnant water — wrapped around Arthur and Mia as they stared at the throne in the center.
The skeleton seated upon it — enormous, imposing even reduced to bone — faced the void with its jaw slightly open, as if frozen in a final silent scream.
Mia clutched Arthur's arm.
— Arthur… something's wrong. I feel… a weight.
He nodded.
He didn't just feel the weight — he felt a presence.
An ancient pressure. Suffocating.
A memory that wasn't his, squeezing his mind like a closed fist.
Then—
The world shifted.
A dry crack snapped through the hall — crac — then another, and another, until the king's bones began to vibrate, as if something inside them were breathing.
— Arthur… step back… — Mia whispered, retreating as her body wavered under the energy permeating the room.
The skull turned slowly toward them.
An impossible movement.
No muscles.
No tendons.
Only will.
Black flames erupted from the empty eye sockets, flowing like liquid smoke, wrapping around the bones, carving shadows into every fissure.
And when it spoke, the voice did not come from a nonexistent throat.
It vibrated in the walls.
In the bones.
In Arthur's chest:
— I… am the remnant… of Áztrofi's power.
Mia collapsed to her knees, the torch trembling in her hand.
Arthur stepped forward instinctively to shield her, but his legs felt unbearably heavy.
The skeletal figure rose from the throne, black flames crackling like tongues of hatred.
— What do you seek here?
— Did you come to die?
— Or have you simply forgotten whom I destroyed before you?
The king extended one ossified hand.
Black energy poured from his fingers in a violent surge.
It crawled across the floor like a searching tide, then leapt onto the bones scattered across the hall.
The effect was instant.
The ground shook.
Each skeleton — orcal, drakonir, zaraqnil, humans, even remains Arthur didn't recognize — began to tremble.
Black cracks spidered across their bones.
And then, they rose.
One by one.
Lifted like puppets of shadow.
Mia gasped.
— Arthur… this… this is impossible…
Arthur drew his sword, though his hands trembled.
The skeletons advanced.
First one.
Then three.
Then an entire horde, all creaking, all wielding aged weapons — cracked and worn, yet strangely intact along the blade.
— Defend yourself, Mia! — Arthur shouted.
She raised her hand, surrounding her body with trembling amounts of green mana — a swirling aura of wind and healing that breathed around her like a storm of leaves.
The battle began.
■ Clash of metal.
■ Dry snaps of shattering bone.
■ Groaning creaks as if the sound came from inside the ear.
Arthur swung his blade, breaking spines, but each shattered skeleton reassembled — until Mia unleashed a blast of wind that scattered bones long enough for Arthur to crush their skulls.
The skeletons' blades were strangely resilient.
When he blocked a direct strike, the enemy sword vibrated with a clear, crystalline ring — TINNN — like struck glass.
And then Arthur noticed.
Along the edge of each blade…
…a faint blue line.
A breathing glow.
He had no time to question it.
The final skull fell.
Mia panted against a wall.
Arthur turned.
The skeletal avatar watched in silence.
Then—
— Impressive.
— But the battle… has not yet begun.
He raised his hand.
And the world collapsed.
GRAVITY FELL
The air thickened.
The ground dragged at them like a colossal magnet.
Arthur dropped to his knees — his ribs creaking under the pressure.
Mia cried out, her voice crushed by the weight.
— I am sealed, human… — the skeletal voice echoed like a smothered thunder. — But this fragment of my power… is enough to destroy you.
The avatar's hand sank slightly.
Gravity doubled.
The floor rushed toward Arthur's face.
He clenched his teeth, digging his nails into the stone to keep from being flattened.
— You took too long to seal me…
The voice pulsed inside Arthur's skull.
— Because of your stubbornness, some avatars consumed by my power managed to retain fragments of my consciousness.
— Some acted…
— Others, like this one… waited.
Arthur didn't understand.
He didn't remember.
But something deep inside him recognized the truth.
Gravity increased again.
His vision dimmed at the edges.
And then he heard Mia:
— A-Arthur… — her voice cracked, thin. — My… mana… it's almost gone…
He forced his head sideways with tremendous effort.
And saw.
The green aura around her body flickered — like a candle in a storm.
She was holding her physical form together with that mana.
Without it…
The ground trembled harder.
The avatar's hand began to descend once more.
Mia looked at Arthur.
Tears crushed by the pressure.
Blood already streaking down her cheeks from the strain.
And she tried to speak.
— Arthur… I lo—
Her mana vanished.
The sound came before comprehension:
A wet explosion, accompanied by a crushing crack that rippled through the hall.
Like flesh pressed between slabs of stone.
Like a water-filled sack stomped by a giant.
Arthur saw —
and didn't see —
at the same time.
One moment, Mia was there.
The next…
Gravity collapsed her body as if it were soaked paper.
The stone caved beneath her.
Blood erupted upward in a red column before splattering across the floor.
Fragments of what she had been struck Arthur's face — warm, silent.
And all that remained was—
An unrecognizable mass.
A pool.
Something that, a second before, had a smile, a voice, a name.
Arthur couldn't breathe.
His lungs locked.
His scream didn't come — crushed inside his throat by horror and gravity.
The skeleton watched.
— Weak.
— She needed wind just to avoid being crushed.
— And even so… she failed.
Arthur's eyes widened.
The world twisted.
Something inside him —
something buried —
broke free.
His skin darkened.
His blood boiled.
The roots of every hair burned as they turned a vibrant, blazing red — like embers igniting in the dark.
The skeletal avatar hesitated.
For one second.
— …Interesting.
But Arthur didn't hear.
He saw nothing.
Nothing except the imaginary sound:
The crack.
The crunch.
The silence after death.
And the eternal image of the person who walked beside him…
becoming nothing more than a stain before his eyes.