The council members disperse, heading to their own places, conversations echoing through Haven's stone corridors. Yet Commander Ikert remains, her hands resting on the worn map on the table.

  Light shines across her face, revealing the lines of years, fatigue, of unending siege.

  I stand.

  The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken fears and desperate hope.

  "Tell me true, Champion," she finally says, her gaze fixed on the maps as if Haven's fate were written in faded lines rather than the disposition of forces.

  "I don't know how we can survive another siege."

  Her admission—a stark confession of the despair that has gnawed at Haven's heart in the absence of these bones to defend them. She has shown strength before the council, resolve before her soldiers, but here, in the quiet of the war room, the weight of command presses downward.

  "Dwarven aid will come," my transformed voice resonates. "The Legion will hold the walls. Your soldiers will rest."

  Commander Ikert shakes her head, a bitter smile crossing her lips. "And when the dwarves leave? When your Legion marches on to other battles? The Drowned Kingdom is but one ripple in an ocean of darkness. We plug one hole, and three more burst open."

  She sweeps a hand across the map, scattering stone markers that represent Haven's meager forces. "We're an island, Champion, and the tide is rising."

  Small sounds in the vast silence of command.

  I step closer. "You speak of tides and islands. But Haven is more than stone and walls."

  "Is it?" Commander Ikert is tired. "Tell that to the families who've lost sons to lurker packs. Tell that to the mothers who watch their children grow thin because our scavenging runs grow shorter each month."

  She turns from the table, facing the narrow window that overlooks the courtyard. Below, guards move in tired patterns, their armor patched and repatched.

  "I've been commander for fifteen years," she continues. "In that time, we've lost a third of our population. The walls hold, but what are we protecting? Empty buildings? Memories of what this place used to be?"

  The spectral tissue between my bones shifts, responding to emotions I barely understand. "You protect hope."

  "Hope?" A bitter laugh escapes her. "Hope died with the elves."

  She stops herself, jaw clenched.

  I wait. The dead have learned patience.

  "The council looks to me for strength. The soldiers need confidence in their orders. As for the civilians..." She trails off, pulling a thin report from the shelf. "We're down to three weeks of grain reserves. Even with dwarven aid, winter will be brutal."

  I study her, noting the premature greying through once-proud hair. Command has aged her beyond her years.

  "You fear failure," I state.

  "I fear success." The admission surprises us both. She sets the report down carefully. "Every day we survive is another day closer to watching everything crumble anyway. Sometimes I wonder if we're just prolonging suffering."

  Honesty lies there. This is the voice that never reaches the council chambers.

  "You spoke of the darkness spreading," she continues. "Of corruption at its source. If you succeed, if you somehow carve through it all, what then? Do we rebuild from ruins? Do we reclaim lands that have been poisoned for generations?"

  "You assume success is singular," I reply. "One victory that ends everything."

  "Isn't it?"

  "No." I move to the window, gazing at the walls where my Legion will soon stand guard. "Success is each breath your people draw. Each morning they wake defended. Each child who grows knowing the darkness has not claimed everything."

  Sarah joins me at the window. "Pretty words from death's champion."

  "Not words. Experience." I gesture toward the courtyard where a young soldier teaches another to mend armor.

  She follows my gaze, watching the simple human moment.

  "The Legion will hold while your people rest," I continue. "Dwarven trade will ease the hunger. And when I return from the deeper battles, Haven will endure."

  "And if you don't return?"

  The question hangs in the air. "I am not leaving yet, not till after."

  "Then the Legion continues its purpose. The dwarves honor their agreements. And you find the strength commanders have always found when darkness presses close."

  She nods slowly.

  "Three days," she says.

  "Three days."

  I consider her words, the echo of countless last stands reverberating through my borrowed fragments. "Hope is not lost while even one defender remains."

  "Hope?" She laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "Hope is a ration we ran out of seasons ago. Now we subsist on stubbornness and the memory of that first sunlight after the dark heart." Her gaze goes to the arrow-slit window, toward the darkness beyond. "How long until that memory fades too?"

  I hold no answer for such questions. Yet her words strike a chord within the oldest fragments of this form, of kings and men who watched their realms crumble.

  Before I can form a response, a stirring comes from deep within my core. The hollow space where borrowed memories reside calls.

  A voice from within that inner chamber. May I speak?

  Commander Cid Ikert, the largest fragment, the core of my first awakening. His essence, now permanent, seeks expression beyond mere structural support.

  This is new. The fragments have informed, have urged, have even warred within me, but never has one asked to speak directly through my transformed voice.

  You wish to address her? I direct the thought inward.

  She carries a burden too heavy for one lifetime, he responds. Perhaps a voice from her own bloodline might offer perspective.

  Bloodline. Her ancestor. Her blood.

  It would change nothing, I warn the fragment. She would see only another ghost speaking.

  Perhaps. But sometimes the living need to hear that their ancestors remember what they fought for.

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  She turns from the window, noting my silence. "Champion?"

  Perhaps she deserves to know she does not stand alone.

  The fragment pulses with patient hope, waiting for permission to offer what consolation an ancestor's ghost might provide to his descendant's struggles.

  She carries my blood, Commander Ikert's fragment pulses within me. Let me speak to her.

  But other voices stir in the bone-chamber of my being.

  Caution, Carida's essence warns from her protective cage. Gentle.

  The dragon fragments coil with ancient memory. Kings have fallen before when hope is devoured rather than feeding it.

  The wolf bones rumble. The living pack leader shows weakness when she admits the hunt grows harder. Adding voices from the dead might scatter what resolve remains.

  The soldier fragments, those countless warriors whose final breaths shaped my awakening, offer their own counsel in overlapping whispers, some saying to speak, others to stay quiet. The resolve is split nearly even.

  Yet other voices rise. The Arkashoth fragment, that primordial knowledge gained in the deep darkness, speaks with cold certainty: All bloodlines end. All kingdoms fall.

  But Commander Ikert's fragment persists.

  The debate rages within my frame. Dragon bones speak of pride and bloodline honor. Wolf bones growl warnings about pack hierarchy and the danger of disrupting established order. Soldier fragments argue both sides.

  What does the champion decide? The Arkashoth fragment asks. You claim independence from our borrowed nature.

  Speak then, I consent. But choose your words with care. The living break easily.

  The bones within my frame shift.

  The spectral flesh covering my skull tightens, features subtly reforming, taking on new form I did not command. My jaw, once more wolf-like from recent battles, smooths, the phantom tissue molding itself into a human shape, familiar yet unsettlingly different.

  The blue-white flames in my eye sockets soften, their intensity drawing inward.

  Commander Sarah Ikert watches, hand instinctively moving toward the sword at her belt. Her eyes narrow, suspicion flaring.

  "Champion?" she questions. "What is this?"

  The voice that emerges from my transformed throat carries different cadences, older patterns of speech that belong to another era. An accent that speaks of windswept northern plains. It is the voice of a seasoned soldier, a leader of men, a father.

  Commander Ikert. Ancestor.

  "Peace, descendant." The words hold warmth I had not possessed moments before.

  "I speak of challenges," the voice continues, "of walls, the ghosts of the fallen, of commanders who bear the weight of many on their shoulders. I speak of things I know."

  The blue of my sockets churns with the warm glow of a human soul. "I am, or rather, I was, the commander of the legions who fell. For this moment, the voice is mine, though my bones are just many of the bones this guardian now uses."

  Commander Ikert's face pales.

  "Many things seem impossible until they stand before you." The ancestor's voice flows. "I led twelve legions against darkness. We failed. Yet here stands Haven."

  "You're claiming to be?" She stumbles.

  "Commander Cid Ikert. Your ancestor. The largest fragment within this champion's frame."

  She steps back, colliding with the war table. Maps slide to the floor.

  "My last stand was on the Field of Broken Banners. My final order was to hold the line, to save what could be saved. And here you are, generations later, still holding the line."

  "This is madness," she mutters.

  "This is victory," the ancestor corrects. "Not the kind songs celebrate, but the only kind that matters in darkness. Survival."

  I feel the fragment's pride radiating through my form, his memories flooding my awareness—the weight of armor, the taste of battlefield dust, the final moments when life faded but duty remained.

  "You think you've failed because Haven shrinks? Because walls crack and supplies dwindle?" The spectral features harden. "But I see a commander who has kept her people alive. The darkness should have devoured you long ago. Yet you remain."

  Sarah's eyes glisten with something beyond shock.

  "Why show yourselves now?" she asks. "Why reveal your true nature after all this time?"

  My features shift once more, Carida's gentle determination replacing her father's stern countenance. "Because only now is it possible. Death's Champion has grown stronger with each battle, each challenge overcome."

  "The magic that drives these bones has evolved," Cid adds, features returning as they alternate speaking. "When first he rose from battlefield soil, we were merely fragments. After Maha Marr, after facing He Who Burns, after Veradin's divine forging—only then did we gain strength to manifest."

  "And we speak now because we must," Cid's stern countenance returns.

  "We fight the same war, you and I. Across centuries, across death itself. The champion carries our purpose forward." The voice softens. "And you, blood of my blood, carry my hope."

  "Hope is a fragile thing, descendant," the voice says. "But it is for hope of tomorrow that old men plant trees whose shade they will never see."

  Commander Ikert bites her lip and stares.

  "Trees?" Her voice is rough. "The trees are ash, the trees are withered. Aside from the farms we've reclaimed, there is only blood and bone."

  She gestures vaguely at the maps strewn across the table. "What shade can grow from such a desperate harvest?"

  The spectral flesh around my jaw shifts in ancient sadness.

  "Yes," the borrowed voice replies. "Harder still, knowing the hardship passed from one generation to the next. Your burden is heavy, descendant, heavier than mine. I only had to die for my people, you must live for yours. Living is hardship."

  He pauses for a moment as if looking inward. "I stood where you stand, though the walls were but freshly raised then. We thought our combined legions would bring lasting peace."

  The voice pauses. "Peace is a dream for quiet nights, not for the dawn that follows our kind of war."

  Commander Sarah slowly lowers herself onto a nearby stool, the fight draining out of her, leaving weary emptiness. "The Demon King broke twelve legions," she mutters, not to me, but to the ghosts in the room. "My ancestor, she led the survivors here. They built Haven on the bones of that defeat, hoping for a sanctuary."

  "And she did well," Cid's voice agrees. "Sanctuary was all we could ask for then. But sanctuaries are not meant to endure forever. They are breathing spaces, moments to gather strength for the battles that inevitably follow."

  He takes a phantom step closer, the spectral flesh around my form rippling slightly. "You are of my blood, descendant. That same strength flows in your veins. The strength to look into the abyss and still choose to light a candle rather than curse the darkness."

  "And if the candle gutters?" Sarah asks, her voice hollow. "If there is no oil left to feed the flame?"

  "Then you become the flame," Cid's voice resonates, gathering unexpected power. "You burn with the memory of all who fell before, with the sacrifice of every soldier who gave their last breath so that others might draw one more. That is the legacy of our line. That is the fire that cannot be extinguished."

  Another presence stirs within my ribcage. Carida's remains, the Vigilant Sister, resonate with her father's words. Her presence—a counterpoint, now full, fierce, protective.

  She asks to speak and I grant it. My form shifts.

  The spectral tissue of my face shifts again, features becoming softer, more feminine. Carida's essence rises through the borrowed bones, her presence flowing into my voice. The tone changes, higher but still carrying the weight of the grave.

  "You are not alone."

  Commander Sarah's head snaps up.

  The voice of her ancestor, not the commander, but the daughter who built Haven up from ruin.

  My ribcage opens without sound, bone plates shifting aside.

  Within that hollow space rest two collections of bone fragments glowing with divine light. Not yellowed or soil-darkened like my other borrowed pieces, but shining with permanence that transcends mortal decay.

  "We are not memories," Carida explains, her voice emerging from my transformed features. "Not echoes or impressions. Veradin's forge made us permanent. Indestructible. Divine purpose given eternal form. There is no comfort to give, for comfort is for wounds that have time to heal. Your wounds are fresh, and the battle still rages. There is only this: you must rest while you can rest. Let these bones, and the Legion they command, carry the fight for a moment. For an hour. For a night. Gather your strength, Commander. Haven will need it when the true dawn breaks."

  The spectral flesh around my jaw settles, the borrowed voices receding, leaving my own familiar grave voice to fill the quiet chamber.

  A subtle shift back to my own voice seems to break the spell. Sarah blinks, as if waking from a dream, though the weariness in her eyes remains.

  "Rest," she echoes, the word foreign to her.

  She looks down at her hands, calloused from gripping a sword hilt. "I've forgotten what that means."

  I stand silent, letting her process what has occurred. The fragments within me settle, their purpose served, their memories once again becoming part of the collective that forms my consciousness rather than individual voices.

  The borrowed bones speak no more.

  Commander Ikert rises, straightening her shoulders with visible effort. "Three days," she says again, this time with renewed purpose. "The Legion will hold the walls. Your... ancestors... they truly believe we can endure?"

  "They know it," I respond. "They have seen Haven's strength through my eyes."

  She nods once, decisively. "Then I will rest. And when you depart to face the darkness at its source, we will continue to fight here."

  I incline my skull in acknowledgment, the blue flame of my eyes steady.

  The dead have spoken. The living have listened.

  And for now, that is enough.

  "Go then," Commander Ikert says, a note of dismissal in her tone, the commander once more fully in control. "See to your warriors. And Champion," she adds as I turn to leave, "the words you spoke, or those who spoke through you, they were not unwelcome."

  I incline my skull, then step out of the war room, leaving her to her maps and her burdens.

  Within my frame, the fragments settle, the borrowed voices quiet once more. Yet something has changed, a deeper integration, perhaps. The boundaries between us have blurred.

  The fragments within me settle, their purpose served, their memories once again becoming part of the collective that forms my consciousness rather than individual voices.

  These bones speak no more.