Chapter 4 – Murder, Then Arson
The interrogation chamber lay at the lowest level of the dungeon — damp, silent, and heavy with the stench of blood and mold.
Beyond its iron door, a winding staircase of gray stone spiraled upward toward the second-to-last floor below ground.
Charles had no idea how deep this tower's underlevels went. When he'd been dragged in, he'd already been unconscious; by the time he woke, he was chained to a post in the torture room.
He didn't know how many guards there were either.
That was why, when he struck down the two inquisitors earlier, he had done it as quietly as possible.
But quiet or not, there was no way to avoid making some noise. The man with the whip had shouted before dying, after all.
"Good thing these stone walls are thick," Charles muttered under his breath, creeping up the stairs one cautious step at a time.
That shout had been loud enough to echo through a hall—
yet, judging by the silence above, no one seemed to have heard.
"Or maybe… there's no one up there?"
The thought had barely crossed his mind when a faint murmur drifted down from above.
He froze, straining his ears. The words were muffled by distance and the thick walls, and though he only understood fragments of their Andalish, it was enough to know: someone was up there.
That realization made him all the more careful.
He flicked a glance at the skeletal soldier beside him, silently warning it to keep still.
Unfortunately, the skeleton's bare feet made stealth impossible. Each step of bone against stone produced a crisp clack, each sound stabbing into Charles's nerves like a hammer blow.
He clenched his jaw and pressed onward.
Fortunately, by the time he reached the final landing, no alarm had been raised.
From here, if he tilted his head just slightly, he could see the edge of the next floor—
and the voices above were much clearer now.
He crouched in the shadows, listening. Most of the words were still too quick to grasp, but a few key phrases cut through.
"Interrogation… torture… not important…"
"Humidity… treason… Northern army… might implicate us…"
Charles exhaled in relief.
"So they think the noise downstairs was just more torture," he thought.
By the sound of it, only two guards were present. Still, he couldn't be sure whether others were stationed farther away. He decided to move a little closer—just enough to see.
"Stay here," he whispered to the skeleton, who stood motionless in the shadows behind him. Its jaw clicked once in what he chose to take as acknowledgment.
Then Charles moved.
On all fours, slow and silent as a hunting cat, he crawled up the final stretch of stairs, making sure his weight didn't betray him with a creak or scrape.
A minute later, he reached the top.
Keeping only his eyes above the stair's edge, he peered into the corridor.
A long, dim hallway stretched before him—lined with dark wooden doors on either side, their iron hinges black with rust. At the far end, another flight of stairs wound upward toward the surface.
Near the center of the hall sat two guards in brown leather armor, chatting quietly at a small round table. Every now and then, one would glance toward a nearby cell door.
A glowing message flickered faintly before Charles's eyes:
[Two fully armed guards. They appear to be guarding an important prisoner. You are unlikely to defeat them in direct combat.]
"Only two of them?"
He scanned the area carefully. No others in sight. That eased him a little—but only for a moment.
The system's "warning" was disheartening, but not enough to deter him. He didn't need to outfight them.
He had a different advantage.
Normal men, when they saw something like a walking skeleton…
they ran.
Unless they were extremely brave—or extremely stupid.
If they turned their backs to flee, that would be enough. A single opening was all he needed.
Still, he didn't allow himself to get overconfident.
What if they didn't run?
What if they'd seen undead before, or were used to such horrors?
After all, he knew next to nothing about this world.
For all he knew, necromancy could be common here.
And stripped of its supernatural aura, his skeletal soldier was little more than an ordinary man in combat power.
That meant if things went wrong… he'd be fighting two armed soldiers in close quarters.
He swallowed hard, eyes narrowing as he measured their positions.
"...If I'm going to kill them," he whispered, "I'll have to make it loud enough that no one else will ever get the chance to come running."
His gaze flicked to a torch mounted on the wall.
A dangerous thought sparked in his mind—simple, ruthless, effective.
If he had to fight his way out…
He'd burn the whole place down first.
That was one problem — even if he could defeat the two guards, could he stop them from raising an alarm?
Charles doubted it.
He hadn't seen any warning mechanisms, but there was no way a dungeon like this wouldn't have something in place.
He simply hadn't found it yet.
"So brute force is out of the question," he thought grimly. "I'll have to use my head."
He made up his mind, turned around, and quietly headed back down the stairs.
Moments later, smoke began to curl upward from below.
It started thin and gray, seeping from the interrogation chamber, winding its way up the stairwell like a creeping fog.
The two guards above didn't notice at first—until one sniffed the air, frowned, and turned toward the source.
"Hey… do you smell that?"
The other squinted down the hall. "There shouldn't be anyone down there except Will and the new guy, right?"
"Yeah. They brought in one prisoner earlier—had him tied up good."
The two exchanged puzzled looks.
"Then what's burning?"
They approached the stairwell cautiously and peered down. Only smoke greeted them—thick, swirling, and growing darker by the second.
"It's spreading fast…" one muttered nervously. "Fire?"
Before they could retreat or sound the alarm, a muffled shout echoed faintly from below:
"Down here! Quick—help us!"
"You hear that?" one of them said, relief in his voice. "There's someone alive down there!"
"Should we call for backup?" the other asked.
"Smoke's bad, fire's small! Four men will be enough!" came the answer from below.
Neither of them questioned how someone below the smoke could shout so clearly.
They rushed down the stairs.
They never came back up.
Moments later, a figure emerged from the billowing haze — coughing, eyes watering, face streaked with soot. He pressed a damp rag over his mouth, hacking as he stumbled into the open corridor.
"Damn it," Charles wheezed between coughs, "how does rotten furniture burn so fast… and make this much smoke?"
No one answered him, of course.
Behind him, the skeletal soldier followed silently, its jaw clacking open and shut like it was laughing at him.
Charles glared back at it. He could feel the faint mental link between them — enough to issue basic orders, but not enough for fine control.
The skeleton wasn't a puppet. It was more like… a soldier who listened, but moved on its own instincts.
Sometimes it even displayed expressions — as much as a pile of bones could.
"Don't tell me this spell actually stuffs a soul into the skeleton," Charles muttered. "That'd explain why it acts so damn alive…"
He shook his head. No time to dwell on it.
The dungeon's second floor stretched before him, and he had a plan.
While observing earlier, he'd noticed the two guards kept glancing at a specific cell door — one they seemed particularly wary of.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," he told himself.
Charging blindly upward was suicide.
If he wanted to escape, he needed a guide — someone who knew this place better than he did.
And that meant… finding whoever they were guarding.
The hallway was lined with cells, each sealed with a heavy black lock. But that was no problem.
He'd already stripped the bodies of the inquisitors downstairs, and among the bloodstained coins and trinkets, he'd found a keyring.
One of the keys — an old iron one — matched perfectly.
Click.
The lock came loose, and Charles slowly pushed the door open.
The hinges groaned faintly, revealing a pitch-black cell — no windows, no torchlight, only the faint flicker of firelight spilling in from the hallway behind him.
The air was thick and cold.
In the far corner, a filthy pile of straw served as bedding.
Someone was sitting there.
A man — middle-aged, his tangled hair the color of dry wheat, clad in torn brown leather armor. He sat hunched over, hands resting on his knees, shoulders heavy with exhaustion.
When the sudden light reached him, he winced and raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"Who's there?" he rasped, voice low and hoarse.
He looked like he might once have been strong — broad-shouldered, built like a bear — but prison had whittled him down to a starving shadow of his former self.
A faint line of text appeared before Charles's eyes:
[A middle-aged noble of some standing. His leg is injured. He has not eaten properly in a long time.]
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