The Devil’s Wager

The tunnel exploded.

A white fire bellowed from the amulet in Elias's hand, scorching outward like the fury of God. Heat whipped against the stone walls, vaporizing the first wave of contorted corpses that lunged after them. The five-headed thing that slithered from the black shrieked, flinching as the light ingested gloops of its decaying meat.

Elias didn't stop. He couldn't.

"KEEP MOVING! " he bellowed.

Selene staggered alongside him, staring in disbelief at the white fire consuming everything they left behind. "Elias, you're going to be killed! "

"May as well die doing something useful! " he snarled.

The amulet was sucking him dry. Now he could feel it: veins of molten iron, Hollow Mark aflame with agonizing heat. His vision swam as the amulet's power flowed from his body like a river bursting its dam.

And then the fire stopped.

Elias staggered. "Shit."

She caught him before his legs gave in. "Elias!"

"I'm." His voice cracked. "I'm fine."

No, he wasn't. His sight was a blur of light and dark. His Hollow Mark was devouring him from the inside. The amulet, cold and lifeless in his hand, weighed more than stone.

Selene put her fingers on his jaw and turned his head to her. "You're bleeding," she said sharply. "You can't be using that thing anymore."

Elias swallowed thickly. "No choice."

Then.

A scream rang out from the dark behind them.

It wasn't human. It wasn't dead, either. It was something in between.

Selene's head snapped around. "You didn't kill it."

"I don't," Elias said bitterly. "Come on."

He pulled himself up, grimacing through the searing pain, and dragged Selene deeper into the tunnel's black maw. The monstrous thing that moved behind them, The Crawling Dead, was already stirring, its five heads howling in discordant agony. The Reclaimer's touch still lingered in the air, fetid and corrupt.

"Elias…" a warning in Selene's voice. "We're still trapped."

Elias glanced ahead. The tunnel kept going, but something was eating at him, a presence. Something old. Forgotten.

And it wasn't the Reclaimer.

They ran deeper. The mouth of the tunnel behind them was nothing more than a fading ember of light in the distance. The black pressed in from every side, and the walls groaned like something was breathing inside them.

Elias gritted his teeth. "Keep your knife ready."

"Ready for what?" Selene snapped. "We're walking right into the mouth of hell, Thorne."

"We were already in hell."

Selene laughed bitterly, but her voice was drowned by the noise of something shifting in front. A low, grinding drag, like bone against stone.

Elias stopped cold.

Selene bumped into him. "Why are you stopping?"

"Quiet."

She froze.

The sound grew closer. There was something in the dark with them, but it wasn't the five-headed beast. It was something older. Meaner.

Then a voice.

"Elias Thorne…"

His blood turned to ice.

"Elias?" Selene whispered. "Tell me you heard that."

"I did."

"What the hell was it?"

Elias didn't answer. He knew. He felt it. Something that was buried in the earth long before men ever stepped foot here. Something tied to the amulet.

"Do you know what you bear, thief? " The voice slithered from the very stone. "You bear the death of kings. The ruin of empires. And now the House of Dust trails your blood.

Selene swallowed hard. "Elias. What did you steal?"

"A chance," he murmured. "A second chance."

"Second chance for what?"

He clenched his teeth. "Living."

And the voice laughed. Low. Mocking. Almost human. "You believe it belongs to you, don't you? The amulet. The life. The second chance."

"What the hell do you want?!" Selene snapped.

"Just to warn you," the voice chuckled. "And then to watch you die."

The air shifted.

And something enormous emerged from the shadows before them.

Then a shape stepped into view, and Elias and Selene froze.

It was not like the dead things trailing behind them. This was worse.

A giant of rot and bone, a step pyramid high, shrouded in funeral veils sewn of human skin. Its face was a skull, yet its jaw moved when it spoke as if some infernal force still clung to it. It bore a long curved blade not forged but grown from twisted bone.

And its eyes… were human.

Trapped. Tormented. Gazing from the hollowed-out eyeholes.

"The Keeper…" Elias breathed.

Selene shot him a look. "The what?"

"The House of Dust has more than one monster," Elias said hoarsely. "This one prevents the living from departing."

The Keeper didn't speak. It charged.

"MOVE!" Elias roared.

The beast moved more quickly than it had any right to. It swept across the ground in seconds, its skeletal blade shrieking the air. Elias barely pulled Selene out of the way in time as the weapon cleaved the ground where they were standing.

"IT'S FAST!" Selene gasped.

"RUN, DAMN YOU!"

They bolted. Elias fired three shots into the Keeper's skull, but nothing happened. The thing didn't even flinch. Its grin only widened.

"It's not dying," Elias rasped. "The House does not kill anything! "

"Then how do we kill it?!"

"We don't!"

The Keeper lunged again, blade singing through the dark, and Elias forced Selene into a tight crevice between two fallen beams. The skeletal blade came down upon the stone, inches from them.

"We're trapped!" Selene gasped. "It's too fast!"

Elias's pulse thundered. "We have to use the amulet one more time."

"NO!" Selene gripped his arm. "It's killing you, Elias. You can't!"

"It's this or we both die!"

The Keeper turned its skull to them, and then it spoke.

"Your soul belongs to the House, Elias Thorne.

Elias gritted his teeth. "COME AND TAKE IT THEN!"

He tore the amulet from his coat and opened hell.

This time, the explosion of light was even stronger, but the amulet was working against him. Elias heard both his bones crack as power ripped out, scorching half the Keeper's body to ash.

But it didn't die.

The Keeper merely laughed. "The House will not stop. We have claimed you. We will consume you."

Elias screamed. His mark flared, white-hot, splitting the skin around his wrist. It was drawing his soul into the amulet.

Then Selene drove her knife into the Keeper's back, but the creature hardly flinched. It only stared at Elias.

"The Keeper rasped, "You cannot keep it, Thorne. "The amulet will break you. You will be one of the House."

Elias's teeth bared. "Not today."

He had entrusted the amulet with everything.

The whole tunnel bloomed with divine flame.

The Keeper screamed. Its regular body flared up in flame, thrashing, the bones cracking under the power of the light.

"Elias!" Selene caught his collapsing body. "STOP!"

"I CAN'T!"

But something else was coming through him now.

"Give it up, Elias," came a voice from the amulet. "Or become mine." *

Elias made his choice.

"Go to hell!" he bellowed and destroyed the amulet.

The ensuing blast of energy blew the tunnel behind them apart.

And Elias fell to the ground, knocked out.