The stairs coiled downward like the throat of a stone serpent.

  For the first hundred steps, the air was dry and stale, smelling of centuries-old dust. But as an unlikely duo descended deeper, the atmosphere grew heavy. The darkness pressed against them, a physical weight that seemed to swallow the light from the pale, purple fire hovering above Krim's palm.

  The passage was narrow, the walls rough-hewn and claustrophobic. Caldreth's scabbard scraped against the stone occasionally, the hiss of metal on rock the only sound breaking the silence.

  Caldreth stopped, glancing back up the spiraling dark. "How good is their hearing?"

  Krim paused, the violet light casting deep hollows in his face. "Who? The liches?"

  "Yes, can they hear us now?"

  Krim looked up, narrowing his eyes. "They can hear through those under their control. But down here?" He shook his head. "Myrrakhael admitted his scouts were destroyed. If there are no bodies left to rot, there are no vessels for them to ride. We are in a blind spot."

  Caldreth nodded, the tension leaving his shoulders. He continued the descent, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur.

  "Good. Because I don't intend to give them anything."

  Krim stumbled on a step, catching himself against the damp wall. "Excuse me?"

  "The curse," Caldreth said, his eyes fixed on the darkness ahead. "Velcryn wants to study the Tome. He wants to understand how the curse evolves so he can control it. I won't let him."

  "You... you're planning to hold out on two ancient lichlords?" Krim questioned with panic. "Are you mad? They will peel your mind like a grape."

  "They need me," Caldreth countered. "Velcryn said it himself. He can't touch the anchor. He can't navigate the earth down here. I am the key. As long as I am the key, I set the terms."

  He adjusted the heavy drake-skin coat, feeling the reassuring weight of the armor.

  "They are tools, Krim. Powerful ones, yes. But tools. I need their power to take Shatterdeep. I need their army to hold the Wastes. But once I have what belongs to me... I don't intend to share the throne with them."

  Caldreth glanced at the Necromancer. "Is there a way to destroy them?"

  Krim stopped walking.

  The silence that followed was absolute. The orbs of light Krim conjured at the start of their descent flickered, making the shadows jump. Krim looked at Caldreth, not with fear, but with the look one gives a child playing with a loaded crossbow.

  "You really don't know what you've woken up to, do you?" Krim whispered.

  "Tell me."

  "You don't kill a lich, Caldreth," Krim said, his voice grim. "You can batter their physical forms to dust. You can burn their bones to ash. But they will reform. Their essence is bound to phylacteries hidden in places within the Necropolis you couldn't reach in a thousand lifetimes."

  Krim leaned against the cold wall, crossing his arms.

  "You can bind them. Seal them away. Lock them in the deepest dungeons for eternity. Velcryn said it himself, given more time, the tombs they were sealed in would have given way. He wasn't bragging, he was stating a simple, absolute fact."

  "There has to be a way," Caldreth insisted. "Everything dies."

  Krim didn't answer immediately. He stared into his motes of light, his expression pinched. He looked like a man deciding whether to share a secret that would get them both killed, or one that didn't matter because it was impossible to use anyway.

  He let the silence stretch, the only sound the distant, rhythmic dripping of water deep below.

  "Well?" Caldreth pressed.

  Krim sighed, a long, ragged exhalation. "There is... an exception. A loophole in the weave of their existence."

  He looked Caldreth in the eye, his face grave.

  "You can kill them," Krim admitted quietly. "But only if you speak their true name."

  Caldreth frowned. "True name?"

  "The name spoken by the Underworld itself when their soul is bound to the phylacteries of their choosing," Krim explained, his voice taking on a scholarly cadence. "To speak a lich's true name is to hold absolute dominion over their existence. It is the only way to unravel the knot of their immortality."

  Krim gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, toward the world above.

  "Here's the worst part, Caldreth. Not even the Grand Necromancer knows them."

  Caldreth frowned. "He is the Father of the City of the Dead. Surely he made them?"

  "He made the vessels," Krim corrected. "But the name is forged in the transition; only the Underworld itself is present when a lich is bestowed their true name. During the purge of the lichlords, the Grand Necromancer didn't just wave his hand and unmake them. He had to hunt them."

  Krim shivered, wrapping his arms around himself as they walked deeper into the dark.

  "He had to capture them. Chains. Cages. He dragged them to the nameless place of the Necropolis and tortured them for years, sometimes decades. He had to peel their minds apart, layer by layer, until the pain was so great that they whispered their true name just to make it stop. And the moment they spoke it, the Grand Necromancer held the winning hand."

  "That is why they are here, Caldreth. They didn't run because the Grand Necromancer knew who they were. They ran because they knew he would tear them apart to find out."

  Krim pushed off the wall, shaking his head.

  "So, no. You cannot kill them with that sword. And unless you plan on marching into the Necropolis and asking the Grand Necromancer for a favor, you are stuck with them."

  He started walking down the stairs again, passing Caldreth.

  "I'd suggest you learn to be a very good partner, Sangrathi. Because defying a lich isn't just a death sentence. It's an eternity of regret."

  Caldreth stood still for a moment, his hand resting on the hilt of his new blade.

  True names, he thought.

  He pushed the thought away, focusing on the immediate darkness.

  - - -

  The spiral stairs finally ended, dumping them out onto a wide, circular landing of black basalt.

  Krim raised his hand, the white fire flaring brighter to push back the gloom.

  "Gods below," the necromancer whispered.

  They were standing on a railed balcony overlooking a massive subterranean cavern. The ceiling was lost in shadow, but the floor far below was illuminated by a soft, pulsating white light.

  Jagged crystals, some as large as siege towers, jutted out of the cavern floor at violent angles. They hummed with a low, throbbing resonance, the raw energy of the Leyline Anchor bleeding into the earth. The air here tasted metallic, and the wind that rose from the depths carried a chill that bit through Caldreth's leathers. A welcome change from the scorching heat of the Wastes.

  "It's wild down here," Caldreth murmured.

  "It's volatile," Krim corrected, stepping back from the edge. "Look at the stone. It's warped."

  Caldreth followed his gaze. The basalt railing of the balcony was cracked. Crystalline tumors sprouted from the masonry, twisting the stone into fluid, organic shapes where the magic had rewritten the geology.

  Above them, a sound ricocheted off the ceiling. It was faint, claws on stone, but in the silence of the deep, it was unnerving.

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  Caldreth's hand flew to his hilt. "Movement. Above."

  Krim jerked his head up, thrusting the light toward the ceiling.

  Clinging to the stalactites were pale, hairless things, roughly the size of wolves but built like insects. They had too many limbs, translucent skin that showed the pulsing organs beneath, and heads that were nothing but a vertical slit of teeth.

  Deep-Stalkers. Scavengers of the dark.

  "They're hunting," Caldreth said, his voice flat.

  As if on cue, three of them detached from the ceiling, dropping toward the balcony.

  Caldreth didn't wait for them to land. He stepped forward, the Void-Steel scimitar hissing as it cleared the scabbard.

  The first Stalker hit the ground and sprang, jaws snapping for Caldreth's throat.

  Caldreth pivoted, a smooth, practiced motion he hadn't possessed when awakening in the crypt days ago. The Sangrathi blood in his veins slowed the world down just enough. He saw the creature's muscles bunch, and the drool flying from its maw.

  He swung.

  The Void-Steel blade met the creature in mid-air. There was no resistance. The dark metal sheared through flesh and bone as if they were smoke.

  The Stalker split in two, the halves tumbling past Caldreth to slap against the stone.

  "A fine ede," Krim grunted.

  The necromancer was busy with the other two. He didn't use a weapon. As the Stalkers rushed him, Krim ducked under the lead creature's snapping jaws, driving a stiff palm upward into its throat with a sickening crunch. The beast gagged, its legs giving out as it collapsed under its own momentum

  The third one tried to flank Krim, but Caldreth was already there. He didn't even use the edge this time; he drove the point of the scimitar through the creature's skull, easily piercing the bone and pinning it to the floor.

  It thrashed once, then went still.

  Silence reclaimed the landing, broken only by the drip of ichor from Caldreth's blade. He stood motionless, the Void-Steel hilt tight in his grip.

  He wasn't looking at the corpse; he was staring at nothing, his chest heaving. A familiar heat was blooming behind his ribs, not the parasitic hunger of the Tome, but the hot, electric spark of his own blood.

  The vibration of the impact still hummed in his arm, a sweet, numbing note that made his nerves sing. The grey gloom of the Undercrypt seemed to sharpen, edges becoming razor-distinct. For a split second, the heavy, crushing atmosphere of the deep felt light as air.

  There was something else there. A shadow of a feeling, hovering just beyond the edge of his senses. It felt like a memory he couldn't quite catch, a rising tide that promised to fill a different hollow ache in his chest if he could just reach out a little further.

  But the fight had ended too quickly.

  The tide receded before it could crest, vanishing into the silence and leaving him standing on the precipice. His hand twitched, the muscles seeking another impact, another target to chase that phantom sensation back into the light.

  He let out a ragged breath, frustrated without fully understanding why. He yanked the steel free, wiping the black fluids on the creature's flank with a rough, agitated motion

  He looked over at the necromancer, who was casually shaking the dust from his hands.

  "You never carry steel, Krim," Caldreth noted, his voice rougher than before, thick with the adrenaline he hadn't been able to spend. "I've only ever seen you fight with your hands. Is it pride, or do you just prefer the risk?"

  Krim stopped, tapping a small, nondescript hilt hidden beneath his sash. "I carry a dagger," he admitted. "But that is a tool for rituals, for cutting the veil to let the dead through. It is not for fighting."

  He looked down at his empty palms, his expression shifting.

  "The weapon I truly favor is not something I can hang on a belt. It takes a fair amount of darkcraft to summon, and it is... temperamental."

  Caldreth's expression sharpened, a flicker of warrior's curiosity lighting his eyes. "A summoned weapon? Can I see it?"

  Krim smirked, shaking his head. "You may not."

  "Why? I'm sure you have the power."

  "It costs much to bring it forth, and it costs even more to maintain it," Krim corrected. "It is no ordinary blade."

  "Where does it come from?" Caldreth asked, genuinely surprised. "The void?"

  Krim knelt, placing his palm flat against the cold, uneven stone of the Undercrypt floor. He closed his eyes for a second, as if listening to something deep beneath them.

  "From the crust," Krim whispered. "From the bones of the world. It rises up from the very earth."

  He looked up at Caldreth, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper.

  "Graveshard."

  Caldreth raised an eyebrow, impressed by the name alone.

  "It is a heavy toll," Krim explained, standing up. "I can only wield it effectively when I am surrounded by death. The more who follow me, the more passive dark energy I can siphon to keep the blade materialised. Alone? I can hold it for only a few minutes. But with an army..."

  Krim's eyes glinted in the low light.

  "Help me build a worthy horde, Sangrathi. Do that, and maybe one day you'll get to see it."

  Before Caldreth could answer, a heavy thump against his hip made him stagger. The Tome floated forward, hovering in the air before him. Its pages fluttered wildly. The scent of a fresh kill taunted the Tome.

  It drifted toward the ruined corpse of the Stalker Caldreth had halved, the cover creaking open like a jaw.

  "Wait," Caldreth commanded, holding up a hand.

  The Tome paused, hovering impatiently, vibrating with a low, sullen hum.

  Caldreth turned to Krim. "These are small, but they're fresh. If I take the blood, does it ruin them for you?"

  Krim walked over to the corpse, nudging a severed leg with his boot.

  "I bind the spirit to the bone, Sangrathi," Krim said dismissively. "The blood is just wet weight. Take it. They actually move faster when they're dry."

  He reached for his pack to begin the ritual, only to freeze and grimace.

  "My reagents," Krim muttered, frustration lining his face. "Lost the bag in the Hollow Canyon ambush. Ash-salts, binding twine, grave-dust... all gone. And my damn silver-threaded chalk, that cost me a small fortune."

  Caldreth paused, the Tome hovering eagerly over the corpse. "Can you raise them without the salts?"

  "I can," Krim grumbled, drawing the small ritual dagger from his sash. "But it requires raw force instead of finesse. It's going to give me a headache."

  He looked at Caldreth. "Go ahead. Feed your little monster."

  As soon as the permission was given, Caldreth felt it. A knocking at the back of his mind.

  It wasn't a sound, but a feeling, a frantic, vibrating excitement that bled from the Tome into Caldreth's consciousness. It had been days. Days of dry stone and hunger. The Tome was starving, and its desperation washed over Caldreth like a wave.

  He didn't fight it. He let his eyelids flutter shut, falling into a light trance. He welcomed the intrusion. They were bonded, after all. Why shouldn't he share in the thrill of the feed?

  He sheathed the Void-Steel scimitar and stepped toward the ruined bodies.

  There was no need to kneel anymore, nor place a hand on a cold corpse to establish a connection. The Tome was no longer wasting its energy shrouding Caldreth from the liches; the veil was dropped, and the full weight of the Tome's power, while minimal, was at his fingertips.

  Caldreth simply held his hands out, palms down, hovering above the corpses.

  He could feel it. The blood inside the creatures, waiting to be commanded. He could feel where the flow had stopped in the veins, pooling in the gravity of death.

  His left hand grew hot. A faint, crimson aura ignited around his fingers, shimmering like heat haze.

  Come, he willed.

  He didn't pull with muscle; he pulled with authority. The blood obeyed, as it should.

  Dark, viscous fluid began to rise from the wounds of the Deep-Stalkers. It defied gravity, lifting into the air as droplets, then streams, then a river. The blood struck Caldreth's left palm and vanished into his skin.

  Caldreth gasped, his head snapping back.

  The rush was instantaneous. He had forgotten how good it felt. The warm, metallic energy didn't just sit in his veins; it surged through his arm, slammed into his chest, and pumped through his heart. It was a jolt of pure life, electric and intoxicating, washing away the fatigue of the descent.

  It flowed through him, a circuit of vitality, before exiting his right hand as a controlled ribbon of red liquid. It began to orbit the Tome, spinning in perfect concentric circles, faster and faster, until it looked like a crimson ring.

  The Tome snapped open.

  The pages fluttered wildly before settling on a fresh sheet. The ink that appeared was the very blood Caldreth was manipulating, wet and glistening.

  Blood Acquired. Tithe Taken. 10% Deducted

  Blood Reserves: 35% Capacity

  Sources: 3

  1. Store: Hold blood for vitality.

  2. Devour: Feed the Tome to unlock Chapter II.

  3. Sanguine Crystallization: Bind blood into solid matter. (Cost: 30%)

  Progress to Chapter II: 0%.

  Caldreth didn't hesitate. He needed the secrets locked behind the next chapter.

  "Devour," he commanded. "Take it all. You have knowledge I require."

  The ink sizzled. The spinning ring of blood slammed into the open pages with a wet, heavy impact, soaking instantly into the parchment. The book shuddered, letting out a low, satisfied groan that vibrated in Caldreth's teeth.

  The text scrambled and rewrote itself.

  Progress to Chapter II: 35%.

  Caldreth closed the book, feeling the connection hum in the back of his mind.

  "Feeding it?" Krim asked, watching the red glow fade.

  "If we're going to survive the liches, I need more than basic tricks."

  He tapped the cover of the book, his expression darkening.

  "Velcryn didn't send us down here just to scavenge. He wants the curse to evolve. He wants to see what it can do. As long as I'm progressing, I'm valuable to him."

  Caldreth glanced back at the stairs, toward the unseen monsters waiting above.

  "But it's not just about keeping them off my back," he added, his voice dropping to a murmur. "The first chapter gave me survival tools. The secrets of this grimoire are likely buried behind mountains of blood."

  He met Krim's gaze, the implication clear.

  "If I'm ever going to find a way to stand against them, the weapon I need isn't a sword. It's in these pages. I need real power before they figure out that my plans don't involve them."

  Krim was silent for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Insurance. Smart. Let's hope you live long enough to cash it in."

  They left the landing, stepping through the archway and into the throat of the cavern proper.

  The transition was immediate. The air grew colder, heavy with a static charge that made the hair on Caldreth's arms stand up. The silence of the stairwell was replaced by the low, throbbing hum of the leylines, a resonance so deep it vibrated in the marrow of their bones.

  "Ngh," Krim grunted, stumbling. He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, his eyes squeezing shut. "Velcryn wasn't joking about the headache. It feels like someone is driving an icepick into my skull."

  "Can you focus?" Caldreth asked, steadying him.

  "I can manage," Krim hissed, forcing his eyes open. "But it's loud."

  Caldreth looked ahead. The walls were no longer just stone. Luminescent crystals had ruptured through the basalt, jutting out at violent angles like the jagged teeth of some subterranean leviathan. They pulsed with a rhythmic, blue light, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to dance on the floor.

  But beneath the hum of the crystals, there was something else.

  It started low, echoing from the shadows high above in the stalactites, then answered from the dark crevices in the floor. It sounded like water rushing over gravel, claws moving in unison against stone.

  Krim looked down the long, twisting path that wound through the crystal forest.

  "Whatever lays claim to these dark depths... it more than likely knows we're here now. Best to move forward with care."

  Caldreth gripped the hilt of his scimitar, his thumb tracing the leather wrap.

  "Careful," Caldreth agreed, "But not slow."