The chill of the surface air did nothing to him. Ile Mortis emerged from the crypt into a world that felt unchanged yet undeniably altered. The heavy weight of the blackened shard in his grasp was proof enough that what had transpired within was no illusion, no fleeting hallucination of the mind. Something had watched him. Something had taken note.

  The sky was the same dull expanse of gray it had been when he had first descended into the tomb. The wind carried with it the scent of damp earth, of rot buried deep beneath the roots of ancient trees. His skeletal hand flexed around the artifact, feeling the thrum of its unnatural pulse. It was no ordinary relic; he had wielded magic, artifacts of great power, in his lifetime—this was different. It was not bound to the world as he knew it. It was something else.

  He took a moment to survey his surroundings. The crypt's entrance behind him remained undisturbed, its stones untouched by the violent shift he had experienced. No great force had rent the earth, no sign of reality trembling as he had felt in the Dead Woods. But the weight in his chest, the feeling of being seen, remained. The cursed blade at his back vibrated with something close to anticipation.

  A test, indeed.

  Stepping away from the entrance, he started toward the winding path through the decaying trees. The forest surrounding the crypt was ancient, its gnarled roots twisting out from the soil like skeletal fingers grasping at something unseen. He had passed through these woods before, unbothered by its gloom, but now each step felt observed.

  The silence was thick. Too thick.

  Ile Mortis halted. He had known silence before—the hush of a battlefield before swords clashed, the eerie stillness of a corpse-strewn throne room—but this was something else. The world was listening.

  He turned his head slightly, his empty sockets scanning the gloom. He saw nothing, yet the presence was unmistakable. He was not alone.

  "I tire of this game," he muttered, voice dry and rasping. "If you wish to face me, then do so. I am not one for waiting."

  No answer came.

  But the trees shifted. Not by wind, nor by movement, but by something deeper. He watched as the dark bark trembled, as though recoiling from something unseen. And then, from the edges of his vision, they came.

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  Figures. Tall, thin, draped in shadow. They did not step forward; they merely stood, between the trees, between reality itself. Their forms flickered as if not entirely in this world, shifting in and out of focus. No faces, no voices, only the weight of their gaze pressing upon him.

  Ile Mortis did not move. He had faced monsters, men, gods themselves in his reign, and he had not bowed to fear then. He would not start now.

  "I know your kind," he spoke. "Watchers. Lurkers in the veil. I do not answer to you."

  The figures did not react. They did not advance, did not retreat. They simply remained.

  And then, the whisper returned.

  "You have taken."

  It was not a single voice. It was many. Layered, endless, a chorus of echoes slipping between time itself.

  "And so you are seen."

  Ile Mortis tightened his grip on the shard. "I have been seen before. It did not save those who opposed me."

  A pause. The figures did not move, did not breathe, yet he could feel something shifting between them.

  "This is not war, O King of Bones," the whispers coiled around him. "This is acknowledgment."

  A chill that had nothing to do with the wind brushed against him. A thousand unseen fingers grazing the edges of his existence.

  "You tread paths forgotten."

  The cursed blade trembled. For the first time in centuries, it spoke.

  Leave.

  A command. A warning. The blade, a thing of curses and hatred, feared nothing—but this, whatever it was, had unsettled even it.

  Ile Mortis chuckled dryly. "You fear them? You, who have bathed in the blood of kings?"

  They are not of this world.

  He already knew that. He had felt it. But he would not be commanded, not even by the weapon bound to him.

  "I do not fear what does not act," he said. "If they wish to strike, let them. Otherwise, I grow weary of this empty posturing."

  The figures did not move, but the whisper deepened, shifting into something older, something further than he could comprehend.

  "You do not understand, O King Who Was."

  The shard pulsed.

  And suddenly, the world changed again.

  The sky above cracked—not shattered, not broken, but cracked, as if something on the other side had pressed too hard against the fabric of reality. The Watchers did not move, but the space around them twisted, bending inwards, contorting impossibly. The pressure in the air grew suffocating, ancient, the weight of something that should not be here forcing itself upon existence.

  And then, the whisper spoke once more, softer, yet final.

  "You are seen."

  The pressure vanished. The sky healed. The figures faded, slipping away as though they had never been.

  Ile Mortis stood in the silent forest once more.

  He exhaled slowly, fingers clenching and unclenching around the shard. The cursed blade was silent. The world was still.

  But something had changed.

  Something had seen him. And it had let him go.

  For now.