The first wave lunges as one, scattering across the walls and ceiling.

  Dozens of pale shapes converge, each long as a grown man but segmented like nightmarish centipedes.

  My transformed spine twists, coiling inward as Aeternus sweeps through the attack.

  The blade cleaves through pale chitin, separating segments.

  Fluid spills.

  Another strikes from behind before I can steady myself.

  Dragon-curved talons find grip on stone as I spiral tighter, using the motion to drive Aeternus in a continuous arc.

  The sword, now an extension of my spine, cuts with every rotation.

  Blood, thick and white, spurts over my rib-legs.

  The monster crashes to the stone with a wet slap, limbs still twitching.

  Its companions scuttle around the corpse, moving to encircle me.

  Pale bodies split where steel meets exoskeleton.

  More rush in.

  Feeding mandibles snap uselessly against bone plates while my movements never cease.

  Purpose guides each rotation.

  The transformed frame circles in on itself, becoming a deadly spiral of bone and steel.

  No wasted motion, every turn of spine delivers Aeternus to a new target.

  Segments of pale flesh scatter across the stone.

  They attack from above, dropping onto my coiled form.

  Dragon talons anchor my position as I continue the spiral, letting their own momentum drive them onto the blade.

  Their bodies provide no resistance to Aeternus' edge.

  The continuous spin builds momentum.

  What began as defense becomes offense as force adds power to each strike.

  I pivot as two creatures dive from overhead, jaws spread.

  Aeternus meets them mid-air, slicing one in half while my reconfigured arm-bones lash the second aside.

  It screeches, spinning end over end before slamming into a pillar.

  No breath to knock from its lungs, but the impact breaks half its legs.

  I dart forward, serpentine spine launching me in a whip-like motion that drives the sword tip through its skull.

  Another tries to blindside me.

  Its hooking limbs scrape across my overlapping ribs, finding no flesh to pierce.

  I twist, letting the friction guide me into a punishing tail-sweep that crushes its midsection.

  There is pressure, and then a pop.

  More of the white blood spills.

  Another shredded carcass tumbles at the base of my coil, its twitching limbs still clinging to life in meager protest.

  I release the crushed remains, letting the severed shell pieces clatter across the floor.

  A slick of pale liquid follows, streaking the stone in crooked lines.

  Bone-talons click against rock as my serpentine form unwinds.

  The spiral loosens, vertebrae straightening into a deadly line.

  Aeternus drips white.

  The chamber reeks of broken chitin and spilled fluids.

  A scraping draws my attention upward.

  More shapes retreat into ceiling cracks, through gaps too small for their size.

  The sound of their passage fades, leaving only dripping ichor and death-rattle twitches.

  My coiled form stretches, testing its new configuration.

  The narrow confines that should limit movement instead multiply attack angles.

  Where a human form would struggle to swing a blade, this shape turns restriction into advantage.

  Hollow sockets track movement above.

  Their flight speaks volumes - territory ceded, colony broken.

  I slide between scattered remains, bone-talons clicking against stone.

  Shattered chitin crunches beneath my passing coils.

  White ichor pools in stone depressions, reflecting what little light penetrates these depths.

  The broken bodies twitch, death spasms that mean nothing to one already dead.

  My serpentine frame heads deeper into darkness.

  The pull grows stronger with each segment of distance covered, a familiar compulsion that speaks of ancient things.

  The coiled frame compresses, vertebrae shifting to accommodate tighter confines.

  The tunnel's curve deceives.

  What should lead deeper instead rises, a subtle grade that defies expectation.

  Stone texture changes, rough-hewn gives way to worked surface, tool marks visible even in shadow.

  A current of air stirs, bringing the scent of old incense and dried blood.

  The pull shifts, no longer drawing down but sideways, through hidden paths that speak of ritual purpose.

  The passage opens to a vast chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness above.

  Rows of stone benches rise in tiers, facing a central platform suspended over the void.

  Ancient chains vanish upward, holding the walkway in eternal tension.

  Burial linens flutter at the chamber's far side, strips of cloth that might once have been white, now stained black as corruption itself.

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  They trail behind a towering figure like dead wings, marking the presence of an entity neither living nor truly dead.

  The chamber defies physical space, its edges bleeding into shadow that feels older than stone.

  Reality bends here, warped by fallen divinity.

  This proving path exists between realms, anchored by corrupted purpose rather than mortal architecture.

  The pull that guided this frame reveals its true nature.

  Not deeper into the earth, but sideways through reality's thin places.

  Purpose led true, bringing these fragments to the threshold between the surface world and corruption's heart.

  Serpentine coils compress as bone fragments shift.

  Dragon-spine straightens while wolf-enhanced limbs find their proper place.

  The frame reconstructs into a more familiar shape, pieces settling into a tested configuration.

  The iron mask clicks against my skull, completing the transformation.

  Aeternus returns to my grip, its length still marked with pale gore from the tunnel creatures.

  The blade remembers its place in this hand.

  Ancient power radiates from the towering figure.

  The towering figure turns, burial linens swaying like dead wings.

  "You stand before Lormenos." His voice echoes through the chamber, a sound like ancient stone grinding against itself. "Once, I guided those who lost their way through darkness."

  The stained cloth wrapping his form shifts, revealing glimpses of what might have been divine flesh, now blackened by corruption.

  "Now I test those who would traverse the deeper dark." His hand extends, fingers elongated by centuries of isolation. "Many seek passage. Few prove worthy."

  Something in these bones knows him. Lormenos, the fallen guide, corruption seeping from burial linens that were once pilgrim blindfolds.

  Those strips of cloth, offerings from travelers he led before falling to deeper dark, now trail like dead wings behind his form.

  The burial linens stir without wind as hollow sockets meet his gaze.

  The air grows thick with old incense and dried blood.

  Magic older than kingdoms presses against form, testing conviction.

  This is no mere chamber, but a place of trial where worthiness burns bright or fades to nothing.

  The burial linens writhe as his voice fills the chamber. "Who has come to the proving path?"

  No response forms, these bones hold no voice to answer.

  The jaw opens, closes, but produces no sound.

  The iron mask shifts against skull fragments, yet remains silent.

  His presence looms larger, power radiating outward like heat from a forge-fire.

  The pressure builds, threatening to overwhelm.

  Then he compels speech.

  A sound tears from these bones, pulled by power older than kingdoms.

  It emerges as grave-song, a keening note that carries neither words nor meaning.

  The sound scrapes through my hollow frame like wind through ancient crypts.

  The note hangs in stale air, echoing off stone tiers until the chamber itself seems to resonate with its emptiness.

  More dirge than voice, more ending than beginning.

  The sound fades, but its echo remains, proof that even voiceless things can be made to speak when divinity demands.

  The sound claws free from my hollow chest, a dirge born from hollower spaces.

  Not speech, but something older.

  The note carries memories of final breaths and ancient oaths, echoing through chamber air thick with corruption.

  My jaw works without purpose, bone grinding against bone.

  The sound continues, rising and falling like the tide of battle.

  It speaks of duty that outlasts flesh, of promises carved in marrow.

  Then meaning forms within the sound.

  "These bones serve." The words emerge as whispered fragments, carried on grave-wind through my hollow frame.

  The burial linens writhe as Lormenos towers above, his corrupted divinity pressing against my forms.

  Yet purpose remains unbroken.

  What was many has become one - dragon fragments, wolf bones, fallen warriors all unified in a single cause.

  The iron mask shifts against my skull as my jaw continues its work.

  Another sound rises, this one bearing the weight of countless battles.

  "The path leads through darkness. These bones follow."

  Purpose shapes sound into meaning, each word dragged from depths where memory sleeps.

  No throat to form speech, no tongue to shape words, yet still they come.

  The chamber's corruption cannot silence what duty demands.

  My form frame stands straighter, bones settling into tested configuration.

  Aeternus remembers its grip, still marked with pale gore from tunnel creatures.

  The blade's presence adds strength to the grave-song voice.

  "Haven needs passage," the words scrape free. "These bones seek way."

  Lormenos studies my form, his hollow eye sockets glowing with a light that pierces shadow.

  The burial linens flutter behind him, agitated, as if they share his uncertainty.

  "You have walked between realms, 'Forgotten Thing,'" he intones, his voice carrying the weight of ages.

  "You follow ancient laws I thought no longer existed."

  The term "Forgotten Thing" stirs something deeper than memory.

  Not a name, but a definition.

  A recognition of my nature.

  He sees a truth even these bones do not fully understand, a creature created from purpose.

  The chains holding the central platform rattle as he shifts, drawing closer.

  His form is even more grotesque up close, a mass of tangled sinews and bone, with stolen feathers marking his wings.

  "Tell me, 'Forgotten Thing,' why do you seek the dwarven roads? What compels this form to delve where few dare tread?"

  His voice pulls at these bones, a temptation to share, a lure of connection, but my purpose resists.

  My skull inclines slowly, letting him see the blue-white light that pulses within hollow sockets.

  He understands, without the need for words, that these bones are not his to command, that my form is not his to consume.

  "You have seen the dark," Lormenos continues, his voice tinged with a strange longing.

  "You have touched corruption and lived. This path you choose, it is not for the living or the dead, but for things between."

  The decaying banners trail out, like hands reaching to claim something that no longer exists.

  "For things that have been forgotten."

  He pauses. His gaze goes to Carida's bag.

  "What secrets do you carry so close to your own bones?"

  He traces a path with a single bony finger across a banner that seems to absorb the light.

  "And what brings a skeleton to this, my proving path? Are you seeking passage, or simply seeking?"

  My hand scrapes the floor. He has not seen purpose. Yet.

  "You offer questions," I say, the words forced from bone and will.

  "Haven needs trade. Needs allies. Not more secrets."

  His head tilts. The burial linen writhes, obscuring his face.

  "You know of Haven, this tiny flame in the darkness? The humans who huddle in fear, hoping for a miracle?"

  A dry chuckle escapes him, "You would risk this path for such a fragile hope?"

  He is testing me.

  "They live." the hollow voice speaks and states, nothing more.

  Lormenos laughs, a sound that carries no mirth. It is simply how he speaks.

  "You seek the dwarves, the stone dwellers, who hold themselves apart."

  The decaying fabric flaps with unnatural force.

  "They too had their purpose, their reason for building cities so deep. A pact to be protected, to be separate. They made this path for us, for those beyond, but then they built a wall, and forgot us as all do."

  The meaning shifts as the words echo, his tone turning somber.

  "This path," he continues, waving a skeletal hand at the ruins, "this is not the way you may hope. They sealed the path for a reason. And those sealed should not be disturbed."

  The tone is a warning. This is not a path that should be taken.

  The path of those beyond the world.

  He wants an answer, some reason for my path.

  I must give him truth.

  "My purpose is not theirs."

  "And what is that, 'Forgotten Thing?' What purpose guides your steps when gods cannot?"

  Aeternus shimmers as I shift stance. The blade recognizes truth in his words.

  We are both things between, monsters on a path that none have ever walked.

  But where his seeks to understand, I seek a way.

  "Protect. Destroy." The answer comes easy. It is what I am. What I always have been.

  The burial linens wrap tighter as Lormenos shifts in place.

  "Simple words, spoken with conviction. You are not a knight, nor a hero. You have a beast in your bones as well. You use steel with more than just skill, but power."

  He pauses, studying the runes that crawl along Aeternus's length.

  "That blade," he muses. "It has tasted death's essence. Knows deeper truths than even gods remember. Yet somehow the blade answers to you."

  His words acknowledge something beyond the simple structure of this form.

  He does not see a skeleton, but something else, something that wields a power beyond his comprehension.

  My voice answers without conscious thought. "It is Aeternus."

  The name forms without conscious effort, a truth older than these bones.

  "The sword of the underworld," Lormenos murmurs, as if speaking a forgotten language.

  "A weapon lost to time, held by... what are you?"

  The burial linens pull tight, concealing his face in shadow.

  "You are not a knight, not a hero, and yet the sword follows you? What is your claim to power?"

  My hand shifts on Aeternus's grip, runes glowing brighter, a small show of force in the face of his doubt.

  It serves my mission. It serves these bones. That is all there is. All there must be.

  "My claim is purpose." The answer comes with all the certainty I can conjure. Not power, not glory, but something simple.

  "The living must survive."

  The burial linens stir, like wings preparing for flight.

  He steps forward, drawing closer.

  "And what makes the living so precious? This spark of flame, so easily extinguished? You've seen what lies beyond, why bother?"

  My claws dig into stone, anchoring my position.

  "They choose to live. That is enough."

  The words settle between us, a core truth that even a god-made-monster must contend with.

  Lormenos remains still. The silence stretches until ancient chains groan.

  The floating platform begins to descend, lowering to meet the floor beneath.

  "The proving path awaits." The figure's voice is a whispered challenge.

  "Cross this divide, and you may reach dwarven roads. Fail, and join the others who have been claimed by darkness."

  "I have seen them," the hollow voice acknowledges his challenge. "I will not join them."

  "Then cross," Lormenos commands, his corrupted power shaking stone. "Prove what you claim to be. Show me if even forgotten things can learn the path."

  He spreads his stolen wings, their decaying feathers catching fire from below.

  The platform descends, separating me from the only other being to acknowledge what I am.

  This testing ground is not my destination. I must continue.

  The proving path awaits.