***Dance of the Dead***

Steel sang.

Bones shattered.

Jace moved like a man possessed.

The first skeleton lunged at him, a rusted sword swinging for his ribs. He slipped inside the arc, feeling the rush of dead air against his skin, and drove his elbow into its skull.

It crumpled instantly — brittle, dry.

Too easy.

Except three more surged forward, teeth clacking and swords raised.

Jace ducked low, spinning with a kick that splintered two at the knees, then rolled sideways as the third's blade missed his neck by a whisper.

Reya was a blur beside him, her twin daggers flashing silver. She fought dirty — hamstrings, throats, eye sockets — never wasting a motion. Blood dripped from shallow cuts on her arms, but she didn't even flinch.

Lena was laughter and violence, leaping through the undead like a storm. Every move was sharp, vicious. Her blade glowed faintly — a low enchantment — and each cut burned the skeletons to ash instead of simply breaking them.

Jace grunted, dodging another strike.

The shard in his chest throbbed, vibrating harder with every enemy he killed. He could feel it — feeding. Growing.

Maybe he should've been scared.

Instead, he smiled.

He welcomed it.

Another skeleton charged. This one bigger, its armor still clinging to cracked bones. A captain, maybe, in whatever army had died here.

It roared — a soundless, gaping thing — and raised a massive greataxe.

Jace sprinted straight at it.

At the last second, he slid under the downward blow, feeling the ground shudder as the axe smashed stone.

Before the thing could recover, Jace sprang up and drove his knee into its spine, cracking the ancient bone.

It staggered, jerking wildly —

And he seized its broken helmet and ripped the skull free from the spine.

Dust exploded in the air.

Jace staggered, panting, blood dripping down his side where a glancing blade had found him earlier.

"Jace!" Reya shouted. "Behind you!"

Too late.

A spear punched through his right shoulder.

Pain flared hot and immediate.

Real. Blinding.

He bit down on a scream, twisting violently.

The skeleton shrieked, clinging to the embedded weapon, trying to pin him.

Jace grabbed the shaft of the spear, yanked the skeleton forward, and headbutted it so hard the skull exploded.

He ripped the spear free, blood pouring down his arm in warm, sticky rivers.

His vision flickered at the edges.

Reya was suddenly at his side, guarding his left flank, teeth bared in a snarl.

Lena flanked his right, her blade now glowing brighter, burning anything it touched.

"We're getting swarmed," Lena barked. "Fall back to the platform!"

A broken staircase led up to a raised dais where some kind of altar stood, half-shattered.

Good high ground.

Jace grunted, nodding, forcing himself to move even as black spots danced before his eyes.

The three of them fought their way up — hacking, slashing, cursing — slipping on blood and bone shards.

By the time they reached the platform, Jace's left arm was useless, hanging limp at his side. Reya was breathing raggedly, one leg dragging slightly from a deep cut. Lena still moved like a goddess of war, but even she had a torn gash across her ribs leaking blood into her shirt.

They were alive, but barely.

The skeletons surged against the platform's base — dozens, maybe hundreds now, an endless tide of death.

"We can't hold this," Reya rasped.

"We don't have to," Jace said, voice rough.

The shard inside him pulsed harder.

Use me.

He stumbled to the altar.

There, carved into the stone, was a symbol — the same one that had burned the floor earlier. The same one that sang to the broken thing inside him.

Lena's hand clamped on his good arm.

"You don't know what that'll do."

Jace laughed bitterly.

"I'm not interested in knowing anymore."

He pressed his blood-slicked hand against the symbol.

The world shuddered.

Pain. Fire. Hunger.

The Catacombs screamed.

The dead howled.

Jace dropped to his knees as energy ripped through him — not just magic, but something deeper, something primordial.

The bones below erupted into black fire.

The skeletons burned, collapsing into heaps of ash and screaming dust. The air became a vortex of raw power, shrieking through the chamber.

Reya shielded her face, squinting through the storm.

Lena just stood there, watching him with a look he couldn't quite read — awe, horror, maybe both.

When it ended, the chamber was silent.

Nothing moved.

No bones.

No skeletons.

Only Jace, kneeling at the altar, blood dripping from his mouth, grinning like a lunatic.

The shard inside him was no longer a passive passenger.

It was awake.

Lena knelt beside him carefully. "You just burned half your soul, dumbass."

Jace chuckled, tasting iron and ash.

"Could've been worse."

She tilted her head, studying him.

"Could it?"

Reya approached, limping, wiping blood from her eyes.

"What the hell are you now, Jace?"

He looked down at his hands — still trembling, still cracked with black veins that hadn't been there before.

"Not sure yet," he said honestly.

Then he forced himself to stand, the world swaying slightly.

"But whatever I am," he said, smiling darkly, "I'm just getting started."