The Spiral of Bones

The morning mist clung to the earth like a stubborn ghost as Abraham, Tess, and the unnamed undead ant began their trek east.

The map had been a mess of smudged ink and angry scribbles, but the spiral-shaped symbol near the region called "The Hollow" drew Abraham's attention like a beacon. Tess didn't like it, her nose wrinkled when he pointed it out, but she hadn't offered a better idea.

The Spiral of Bones, she'd called it. Locals once believed it was a shrine. Some beastling cultists turned it into something worse.

As the trio moved through the twisted woods, the air grew colder, and the trees grew stranger. Their bark was pale and peeling like dry skin. Moss hung like curtains from dead branches.

Abraham kept close to the ant, its massive legs cutting through underbrush with effortless menace. Birds didn't sing here. Even the wind felt cautious.

"You'd think people would clear paths around ancient death-ruins," Abraham muttered, brushing aside cobwebs. "Is it too much to ask for a road, or at least some aggressive landscaping?"

Tess grunted. "Keep talking. Maybe the trees will get bored and leave."

Despite the banter, Abraham could feel the tension in his new companion. Her hand never left her sword hilt. Her eyes kept flicking to shadows. Even the ant walked quieter, its heavy steps muffled like it, too, feared drawing attention.

Hours passed. Abraham tried to strike up conversation, but Tess answered in short bursts. The further they went, the less light pierced the canopy. The forest darkened unnaturally. Abraham's necrotic senses buzzed like a tuning fork buried in his skull like it was his normal thing.

Eventually, they reached a clearing.

At the center stood a spiraling structure of bones; ribcages, femurs, skulls, and spines, twisting upward like a grotesque helix. Some were animal. Some... not. The spiral emitted a low hum, like a distant whisper through gravel.

It was tall, at least three stories high, and meticulously constructed. Each bone interlocked in impossible ways, held not by mortar but sheer green goo. Black tendrils of shadow pulsed through the crevices. The air stank of rot and dry magic.

"Behold," Abraham said softly, "we're in the architectural achievement of people with too much time and not enough therapy."

Tess didn't smile. She was staring at something behind the structure. Abraham followed her gaze.

A corpse.

Human, armored, slumped against a stone. His chest had been caved in. Around his neck hung a pendant carved with a sunburst pattern. Fungus ate his body. His sword, broken in two, lay in the dirt.

"I knew him," Tess whispered. "One of the villagers. He tried to protect the eastern pass."

Abraham knelt beside the body. "There's magic here. Old and angry." He could feel it, prickling against his skin like static. As his hand touched the cold earth, a sickly green glow began to form around his fingers. He could sense the death here. It was recent. Raw.

"Whatever killed him wasn't natural."

She knelt beside him, brushing her hand against the pendant. "He was a good man. Told bad jokes. Thought he could save us all."

Abraham placed a hand on the ground and let his necromantic sense stretch out.

Below the spiral, there was movement.

"Company," he said, standing quickly. "We've got—"

The ground split open.

A crack tore through the earth like a wound. From the depths rose skeletal beasts—twisted hounds with elongated limbs and antlers made of bone. Their spines jutted out like jagged fins, and their eyes glowed with sickly blue fire. Their entire body covered by moss and fungus.

One had two skulls fused together, its jaws clicking out of sync. They didn't charge. Not yet. They circled.

Tess stepped in front of Abraham. "Let me."

He placed a hand on her shoulder. "No. This time... I lead."

He raised both arms. The ant reared up with a shriek like grinding metal. Abraham's voice deepened as he chanted raw, ancient syllables that resonated through his mind. Some kind of "cheat" that every MCes got when they isekaied to another world. The difference is, he got this a little bit late.

Bones from the spiral snapped loose and flew to him. A swirling vortex of femurs and phalanges formed around his hands. Runes lit up along his sleeves, glowing with emerald fire. The skeletal hounds hesitated.

Then they charged.

"Now would be a great time for a necromantic miracle!" he shouted.

And miracle he did.

From the loose bones, Abraham forged guardians, half-formed warriors of ivory and rage. They towered over the hounds, wielding makeshift weapons made of sharpened bone. One caught a hound mid-leap, both shattering in a violent tumble. Another dragged a beast into the earth, skeletal fingers wrapped around its throat.

Tess darted into the melee, her blade flashing. She ducked a slash, rolled beneath a hound, and came up slicing through its leg. Her movements were vicious and efficient.

Abraham had to remind himself she was still a teenager. One hound lunged for her back, but the ant intercepted it with a vicious slam, pinning it with one leg and impaling it with its mandibles.

The battle became chaos. Abraham directed the bone guardians like a conductor. Each movement of his hand summoned a spike, a shield, a cage. Magic burned through his veins. He felt like a storm—barely contained.

But with each spell, he felt the drain. His nose bled. His vision blurred. The pendant around the villager's corpse flared briefly, then crumbled to ash.

Finally, the last beast fell.

The clearing was a battlefield of scattered bone and panting breath.

Abraham dropped to one knee. He gasped, barely holding himself upright.

"That," he wheezed, "was the most terrifying use of bone furniture I've ever seen."

Tess crouched beside him. "You okay?"

"Define 'okay.'"

"Still talking. So yes. Kind of?"

He chuckled. The spiral behind them began to collapse, its power spent. Whatever force had maintained it was now part of his growing pool of necrotic energy.

And as the dust settled, a whisper echoed through the clearing.

"Seek the Vault."

Tess froze. "Did you hear—"

"Yeah," Abraham said. "And I really hate being told what to do by disembodied voices."

They turned back to the corpse of the villager. Abraham lifted the broken sword and tucked it into his pack. Tess said nothing, but he saw the way her jaw clenched.

The sky began to darken. Not from nightfall, but from an unnatural gloom that rolled in from the east.

"We shouldn't stay here," she said.

"No argument," Abraham replied.

They mounted the ant—Abraham at the front, Tess behind him. It scuttled into the trees, vanishing beneath the canopy's gloom.

They had survived whatever there is.

But something deeper had awakened.

In the hollow roots of ancient trees, in the echo of bones that once formed prayers, something watched.

And it remembered him that his life wouldn't be ordinary anymore.

***