We Need To Get Out

The whip unraveled, segment by segment, each bone clattering softly as it loosened.

Then—release.

The coil slackened. The old man collapsed like string cut from a puppet. His hands scraped weakly at the floor, pawing at his crushed foot. His breath came in shallow gasps, each one more ragged than the last.

The guard didn't look at him again.

Boots scraped against stone. Slow. Intentional.

He stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and the man who had spoken.

Now they stood face to face.

The man—tall, but slightly hunched, hunger having carved him down to bone. His ribs jutted out beneath his skin. His arms trembled at his sides.

A body already halfway gone.

The guard tilted his head, casual as wind. Then he began wrapping the whip around his waist again—slowly, deliberately. One loop at a time. Each movement drawn out, as if he were dressing for a performance.

Then came the smile.

A slow stretch of the mouth. No joy in it. No warmth.

A wolf's grin.

"If you can land one punch on me," the guard said, his voice smooth and full of cruelty, "I'll release every slave in this room."

Silence fell over the chamber.

Hands paused mid-cut. Blades hung frozen in the air. A carving tool slipped from someone's fingers and clattered to the ground.

Some turned their heads. Others didn't move at all, but their eyes flicked sideways—watching, waiting, barely breathing.

Hope stirred.

It wasn't loud. It wasn't bold. But it moved through the room like a ghost—flickering in tired eyes, crawling into cracked minds.

The kind of hope that had once lived in them all.

Then—

Just as quickly as it came, it began to die.

Their gazes shifted to the man standing in front of the guard.

They saw the ribs. The trembling hands. The slack in his knees.

They saw what he was—and what he wasn't.

The guard laughed. Low. Mocking. Like it all amused him.

"Look," he said, spreading his arms wide. Open. Inviting.

"I won't even move. All you have to do... is land one hit."

The man's arms hung limp at his sides. His body swayed—thin and brittle, like a sheet of old paper about to fold. Whether it was fear or fatigue, no one could tell.

His chest rose in shallow gasps. But in his sunken eyes—

A flicker of something else.

Resolve.

He knew what this was.

He had nothing left to lose.

With a trembling breath, he raised one fist. Thin fingers curled. Bone pressed against skin.

Then he lunged.

Every eye in the Ossuaries locked on the movement.

For a moment, the world stopped breathing.

The guard didn't flinch.

That grin still sat on his face. Leisurely. Cruel. Confident.

The fist closed the distance—inch by inch.

For one impossible second, it looked like he might land it.

Like hope might live just long enough to matter.

Then—

THUD.

The sound echoed like a drum inside a crypt.

Silence followed.

The old man's fist hung in the air—suspended.

A breath away from the guard's face.

He didn't move.

He couldn't.

Raine narrowed his eyes—then looked down.

A thick fist, slick with blood, jutted clean through the man's back.

What...?

I didn't even see him move.

Is this... the power of a cultivator?

The guard's smile never faded.

With a single, fluid pull, he yanked his arm back.

The old man crumpled—bones folding, flesh collapsing. A ragdoll. A husk.

Still smiling, the guard grabbed him by the head and dragged the corpse across the stone floor. Blood smeared behind them in thick, red strokes. A trail no one dared follow.

Then—he stopped.

No word. No twitch of muscle.

Just pressure. 

A sudden, invisible force exploded from his body, slamming into the chamber like a shockwave.

Spirit lanterns guttered. Shelves shivered.

Slaves dropped where they stood—knees crashing into stone. Some buckled completely, gasping for breath.

Raine hit the ground hard.

His limbs locked, every bone screaming. His chest pressed against the floor like the earth itself was crushing him.

It feels like my skeleton is fracturing from the inside out...

The air was thick. Heavy. Wrong.

Then—

The guard spoke.

His voice cut through the weight like a blade of bone:

"Get back to work.

Unless you want to end up like him."

And then—he vanished. No footstep. No breath.

Gone, as if the dark had swallowed him whole.

The suffocating pressure lifted like a dying wind, leaving the chamber in stunned silence. Then—

"Back to work!" one of the guards barked.

The command broke the stillness.

Slaves resumed their tasks with shaking hands, heads bowed, eyes averted—as if pretending the old man's corpse, and the blood now seeping into the cracks of the stone floor, didn't exist.

But Raine couldn't look away.

The crimson pool still glistened. Thick. Fresh. Final.

That man died because of me, Raine thought, his heart pounding like a war drum.

He had wanted to stop him. Had meant to step forward. But now it was too late.

The guilt burned in his chest, heavier than the cultivator's pressure had ever been.

Then—he looked up.

Across the chamber, Elara was watching him. Her face was pale, streaked with sweat and grime, but her eyes were clear. Determined.

She gave him a single, sharp nod.

Raine returned it.

No words were needed. They both understood.

They had to get out.

Far above the Ossuaries, deep within the heart of the Bone Spur Sect's inner sanctum, a man sat draped in power and bone.

The throne beneath him was carved from a single, towering femur—bleached white and engraved with ancient sigils that pulsed faintly with dormant Qi. The chamber around him was vast and dimly lit, the walls lined with bonework so intricate it bordered on madness. Skulls of every shape and size adorned the upper ridges of the room, some human, others far larger—trophies of things long dead. Ribcages had been split and molded into chandeliers that burned with cold blue spirit-flame.

And at the center of it all, seated as if born to command from the dead, was Elias Crow, Supreme Warden of the Bone Spur Sect.

His armor—sleek plates of interlocking bone fused with spirit iron—covered most of his tall, wiry frame, etched with runes and blood-sealed bindings. Only his head remained bare, as if daring the world to look upon him and flinch.

His face was pale, scarred by past battles and cruel rituals alike. And from beneath a jagged brow, his ice-blue eyes burned with the cold certainty of one who had long since traded humanity for control.

Long strands of blond hair cascaded down his back like silk caught in ash.

Thunder roared beyond the sanctum walls—deep, shaking thunder, as if the heavens themselves were tearing apart. The very stone around the room trembled.

Elias narrowed his eyes.

"Those damn gods and their nonsensical fighting…" he muttered, his voice low and venom-laced.

He didn't speak to himself.

A shrouded figure stood silently in the corner of the room, unmoving, as if carved from the shadows themselves.

Elias continued, louder now. "They've already damned this world. And now they treat the skies as their battlefield?"

He slammed his hand down on the throne.

CRACK.

The sound echoed like a war drum. Dust fell from the ceiling. One of the smaller bone ornaments rattled and fell to the ground, shattering.

"I will not have my domain shattered because the heavens cannot contain their temper tantrums."

His voice dropped to a growl, simmering with dangerous intent.

"I've built my order from marrow and blood. And I will not see it undone by celestial children flinging fire through the sky."

Silence followed—thick and tense—until the thunder rolled again, as if mocking his fury.

Elias sank back into his throne, the bone creaking beneath his weight as he fixed his cold gaze on the figure veiled in shadow.

His voice was calm, but sharp enough to cut.

"What is the current status of the Black Sun Sutra?"

The shrouded figure stepped forward, emerging slowly into the pale blue light of the spirit-flame chandeliers.

He was no human. That much was immediately clear.

His skin, a deep and unnatural blue, shimmered faintly beneath the folds of his dark hood. His fingers—long, jointed strangely, ending in bulbous, pointed tips—twitched as he came into view, as though unused to the weight of flesh. Something in his movements was too smooth, too measured, like a predator mimicking stillness.

"Our most recent experiments have… not gone as expected," the creature said, his voice dry and toneless. "But I assure you—we are close. The sutra is responding, though not in predictable ways."

Elias's eyes narrowed further, the blue flames flickering in their reflection.

"But," the creature continued, "we could accelerate progress… if you were willing to provide more slaves for testing."

Elias leaned forward slightly, the aura around him turning sharp.

"I can't just keep handing over my property with nothing to show for it," he said, voice rising. "You told me you'd unravel the sutra's secrets if I gave you access. That was the deal."

The creature said nothing, but his fingers twitched again, slightly faster now.

"Don't make me regret it," Elias growled, his scarred face darkening with threat.

His fingers drummed once against the arm of the throne—a sound like bone striking bone.

Finally, Elias sat back once more, but the tension in the air did not lift.

"You'll have one more test subject," he said flatly. "One. I expect results."

The creature bowed its head ever so slightly.

"As you wish."

"And bring in all the slaves," he said, eyes flicking toward the high, arched windows where faint flashes of divine lightning danced across the clouds. "I don't want any of them dying to this storm.