Njiru felt it before the Wigu ever saw it.
A tremor ran up the tether between them—thin as a spider's thread, cold as grave soil. The sensation made his fingers still over the bowl of bone-ash and black water he was scrying through. The world on the surface of the liquid rippled, then darkened, as if the sun itself had been swallowed.
There you are.
The Wigu's mind pressed against his own, simple and feral, its thoughts little more than sensation and hunger. Njiru let it in anyway. He had shaped the creature for this purpose: to crawl where living flesh would hesitate, to see what the dead remembered.
The savannah unfolded through its eyes.
The dense grass fell away into a clearing strangled by silence. No insects. No birds. Even the wind seemed to avoid the place. Njiru smiled faintly. That kind of stillness was never natural. It was curated.
The Wigu slunk forward, its limbs bending the wrong way, claws clicking softly against stone half-buried in the dirt. The air tasted wrong—sweet rot layered over old flowers. Njiru inhaled sharply through his own nose, savoring it through the link.
"Yes," he murmured. "You're close."
Then the coffin came into view.
Even through the Wigu's dull, corpse-clouded vision, it was unmistakable.
Massive. Ebony-dark. Carved from a single impossible piece of wood that should not exist anymore. The runes caught the light and bent it, gold lines swimming as though alive. Gems pulsed slowly, like a heart that had forgotten how to die.
Njiru's breath caught.
Not awe. Never awe.
Recognition.
"So," he whispered, reverent despite himself. "You did it after all, Bekeel."
The Wigu crept closer, instinctively wary. The statues ringed the coffin like predators frozen mid-pounce. Njiru felt the faint pressure of their dormant magic brushing against his senses. Old constructs. Crude by modern standards—but powered by something far more interesting than spellcraft.
Souls.
Not free ones. Not gone ones.
Anchored.
Njiru leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth lifting as understanding clicked into place. He had chased this answer for years—through failed vessels, screaming revenants, collapsing abominations that tore themselves apart under the weight of too many spirits.
Containment had always been the flaw.
Until now.
"Look at it," he said softly, guiding the Wigu's gaze across the coffin's surface. "You weren't trying to live forever, were you? You were trying to stop dying."
The Wigu reached the edge of the central square. Its claws scraped stone.
The air changed.
Njiru felt it immediately—a pressure, like standing at the bottom of deep water. The link between him and the Wigu tightened, the creature's empty mind suddenly crowded with borrowed awareness. The coffin noticed them.
Not awake.
But listening.
Njiru laughed quietly. "Oh, don't worry. I'm not here to free you."
The Wigu twitched as one of the statues shifted slightly, stone grinding against stone. A warning. Njiru could feel the spell lattice beneath the ground, threads of necromancy woven into the village itself. Elegant. Wasteful. The entire settlement had been sacrificed to feed this one object.
A village traded for eternity.
Pathetic ambition.
But brilliant execution.
"Do you know what you made?" Njiru asked, though Bekeel could not answer. "A perfect womb. A perfect cage. You trapped yourself… but you proved it could be done."
His mind raced, already rearranging the world.
The coffin wasn't a tomb. It was a threshold—a place where souls could be held without decay, without release. Time strangled. Death denied completion. That was why the land felt wrong. Why the plants lived but did not breathe.
Life could not cycle where souls were hoarded.
Njiru felt a thrill coil low in his chest.
This was the heart he had been missing.
The Wigu edged closer despite the rising pressure, its loyalty overriding its fear. Njiru let a sliver of his will bleed through it, steadying the creature as it studied the runes.
Yes… yes, he could see it now.
The coffin didn't just hold a soul.
It pulled at them.
Like gravity.
With the right adjustments—new sigils, a widened aperture—souls wouldn't need to be coaxed. They could be harvested. Drawn sideways at the moment of false death, stripped from their bodies and fed into the reliquary.
The bodies would rise, of course. Empty things. Useful things.
But the real treasure would flow inward.
Njiru's pulse quickened.
"How many, do you think?" he mused. "A hundred? A thousand? How many souls before the vessel stops resisting?"
The ultimate warrior took shape in his mind—not a shambling corpse, not a stitched monstrosity, but something refined. A singular form housing an army of experiences. Strength layered upon strength. Skill upon memory upon pain.
A god built from refusal.
The statues around the coffin stirred again, responding to the spike in intent. The Wigu hissed, crouching low. Njiru felt the guardians awakening, their borrowed souls flaring like dying embers.
"Easy," he murmured. "I'm not taking it yet."
Not yet.
This place needed preparation. Study. Reverence, even.
And there were… complications.
Green magic lingered faintly at the edges of the land, like a scar half-healed. Someone had been here recently. Someone alive. Someone who listened to trees.
Njiru's smile thinned.
"No matter," he said calmly. "Let them run. Every cycle needs witnesses."
He loosened his hold on the Wigu, pulling his consciousness back inch by inch. Before severing the link, he allowed himself one last indulgence—one final look at the coffin, radiant and terrible beneath the broken sun.
"I'll come back for you," he promised Bekeel's trapped soul. "And when I do… you'll finally be useful."
The connection snapped.
Njiru opened his eyes in the dim chamber of his sanctum, candle flames guttering as if disturbed by his thoughts alone. He rose slowly, bones creaking, already planning rites, sacrifices, names to be erased from the world.
At last.
A vessel worthy of his vision.
Death, perfected.
The last rays of the sun bled across the horizon, painting the clouds in shades of bruised purple and orange. Below them, the forest canopy was a sea of deepening shadows. For three days, they had walked, pushing themselves. The pace was taking its toll.
Leonotis paused, resting his hand against the rough bark of an ancient baobab tree. He watched the others catch up, their exhaustion plain in the slump of their shoulders and the weary drag of their feet. Zombiel stumbled slightly, and Low's hand shot out to steady him, her expression a familiar mask of fierce protectiveness. Jacqueline offered Zombiel a small, tired smile, her own face laced with fatigue.
"We should make camp," Jacqueline said, her voice soft but strained. "Zombiel needs to rest."
"We all do," Low grunted, her eyes scanning the darkening woods around them. "But we're too exposed here. We need to find better cover."
Leonotis pulled a nearly empty water skin from his belt and took a small sip before passing it to Jacqueline. "She's right. And it's not just cover we need." He nodded toward their meager supply packs. "Our water skins are nearly empty. We have maybe one more day of dried meat and stale bread."
Zombiel, who had been quiet, looked up, his voice small. "The bread is gone."
A heavy silence fell over the group, punctuated by the chirping of insects waking for the night. The reality of their situation settled over them, colder than the evening air. They were young, alone, and running out of everything.
It was Low who saw it first. She had climbed a small, rocky outcrop to get a better vantage point, and she suddenly stiffened. "Hold up," she called down, her voice tight. "Over there."
Leonotis and Jacqueline joined her, following her pointing finger. In the distance, nestled in a valley just as the forest began to thin, was a pinprick of light. Then another. Smoke curled lazily into the twilight sky from what looked like a dozen different cookfires. A village.
Hope, fragile and dangerous, flickered in Leonotis's chest. "Food," he breathed. "Water. A place to rest for a night."
"Or a trap," Low countered immediately, her gaze sharp and suspicious. "We don't know who lives there. It could be a bounty hunter outpost."
"We can't assume every person we meet is an enemy," Jacqueline argued gently, though her eyes were also wary. "They're just villagers, Low. Trying to survive, same as us." She glanced meaningfully at Zombiel, who was watching the distant lights with a kind of hollow longing. "We can't keep this pace. He's pushing himself too hard."
Low's jaw tightened. She knew Jacqueline was right. Zombiel's use of fire, even days ago, had left a deep drain on him that sleep and meager rations couldn't fix. But the thought of walking into another unknown danger made her stomach clench. "It's a risk."
"Everything we do is a risk," Leonotis said, his voice firm. He felt the weight of leadership settle on his shoulders, a familiar burden. Pushing on meant they would be weaker tomorrow, easier prey for anything that found them. Turning back was not an option. The village was the only path forward. "We'll be careful. We approach from the woods, watch from the tree line. If anything feels wrong, we leave. Agreed?"
Jacqueline nodded immediately. Low hesitated for a long moment, her gaze flicking between the distant, welcoming lights and Zombiel's tired face. Finally, she gave a short, sharp nod. "Agreed. But I'm going in first."
"We go in together," Leonotis corrected, his tone leaving no room for argument.
With their decision made, a renewed, if tense, energy filled them. They gathered their sparse belongings, their movements quiet and purposeful. With the last of the light fading from the sky, they began the descent toward the village, each step taking them closer to the promise of sanctuary, and further into the unknown shadows that lay in wait.