Beneath the Black Spires

The wind howled through the ruins of Varkir Hold like a wounded god. Its wail curled through broken battlements, swept across shattered altars, and whispered down stairways carved into the bones of the mountain itself.

Xerces stood at the edge of the abyss, cloaked in illusion, though his bones ached for truth.

The figure—the Sentinel—was gone now. It had vanished after issuing its warning, dissolving into the mist like breath in frost. No battle. No challenge. Only that one chilling command:

Come and see what you left behind.

He had no memory of this place. And yet… something in him recoiled at the steps leading downward.

Behind him, Mira and Sael moved cautiously through the debris. She held a conjured flame in one hand, the glow brushing across her cheeks, golden and soft against the cold.

Sael said nothing. The man's silence had grown heavier since revealing the truth of his past life. But Xerces understood. Memory was a strange poison—it never killed cleanly.

Xerces turned toward the stairwell carved into obsidian stone. Beneath. That single word, carved into the altar days ago, hummed in his skull like a pulse.

He stepped into the dark.

The descent was steep, the walls too smooth to be natural. He touched one with his gloved hand, and a sensation sparked through him—familiar and wrong.

"Magic was worked here," he murmured. "Not the kind we cast freely. The kind we seal."

Sael's voice followed close behind. "Sealed… or buried?"

Mira shivered. "Why would anyone bury power like this?"

"To forget," Xerces answered grimly.

Torches flickered along the walls, though none had been lit in centuries. And yet, they burned. Ghostfire, steady and blue.

Then the staircase ended in a vast hall. A cathedral of silence.

Black stone columns rose like petrified trees. The floor beneath them was inlaid with countless names—etched in a language older than any spellbook. Names… and warnings.

One caught Xerces's eye.

"In fire he broke the world. In bone he shall rise again."

He stepped back, heart—or whatever part of him still resembled one—thudding like a war drum.

That wasn't prophecy.

It was history.

A sudden hiss echoed from beyond the chamber.

Xerces raised a hand, summoning necrotic energy to his palm. His glamour shimmered, faltering at the edges, revealing bone for just a heartbeat.

Mira gasped softly—but didn't flinch. Sael drew his blade and stepped forward.

Then the chamber shifted. Walls groaned. A sigil burst to life on the far side—an immense seal of binding, carved into the stone itself.

A voice emerged. Low. Dissonant. Inhuman.

"You left me to rot in the dark. You… who once wore the crown of dusk."

Xerces's hands trembled.

"I don't remember," he growled. "I don't want to remember."

"But you must."

The wall crumbled.

From within the broken seal emerged a Wretch-Lord, its body stitched from writhing corpses, its eyes hollow but burning. It lunged, and the chamber roared to life.

Xerces raised his staff and let the illusion fall.

Bone shimmered beneath torn cloth. His eye sockets blazed. Magic swirled around him like a hurricane of ash.

Mira fell back, instinctively raising a barrier. Sael stood his ground beside her.

The Wretch-Lord shrieked, and dozens of smaller darklings poured from the shadows, screaming like children in agony.

"I've had enough of your kind," Xerces said coldly.

With a roar of incantation, he slammed his staff into the floor.

Black chains erupted from the stone, piercing the Wretch-Lord's limbs, anchoring it mid-charge. With a second gesture, a storm of bone shards swirled around him, shredding the darklings before they could even reach him.

A black halo ignited behind his skull—an aura of pure undeath.

Mira gasped.

"He's… beautiful," she whispered.

Sael stared in silence. Reverence. Or fear.

Xerces stepped toward the bound creature. "You remember me?" he asked.

The Wretch-Lord hissed. "You… were the Graveborn. The First Necromancer. You built the Seal. And you broke it."

"I will break it again," Xerces said—and crushed its skull with a wave of necrotic flame.

The room fell silent once more.

Mira approached him slowly. "You revealed yourself."

"I had no choice."

"You chose to protect us."

He didn't reply. His aura faded. His form knit itself back into the illusion. A traveler once more.

But something had changed.

He felt it in his bones.

The necrotic power wasn't just stronger—it was calling to him. Whispering truths buried beneath memory.

And somewhere in the deeper dark, the Devourer stirred.