Death felt cold.
Not the numbing cold of winter, but something deeper. The cold of empty space between stars. It seeped into Cael's consciousness like water through cracked stone, filling every corner of whatever remained of him.
He floated in nothing. No body. No sensation. Just awareness suspended in a void that stretched forever in all directions. This was death. Real death. Final death.
Then something changed.
A pulse. Faint and distant, like a heartbeat heard through water. It came from somewhere inside him, from the core of whatever he'd become. The pulse came again, stronger this time, and with it came a word that burned itself into his mind.
UNDYING
Power erupted from that core. Dark energy that felt nothing like the goddess's golden light. This was ancient, the fundamental force that waited at the end of all things. It surged through the void, dragging Cael's consciousness back toward something solid.
The system interface blazed to life in the darkness.
HIDDEN ABILITY UNLOCKED: DEATH MARCH
Necromancer Class Unique Ability
Effect: Upon death, resurrect as undead
Current Form: Skeletal Revenant
All stats recalculated
Sensation returned in a rush. Cold stone beneath him. Air moving through passages he could somehow sense. Cael's eyes opened.
The darkness was gone.
His vision had changed. Everything appeared in shades of grey and bone-white, like looking at the world through a filter that stripped away color but revealed shape and form with crystal clarity. He could see the labyrinth corridor stretching in both directions. Stone walls. Uneven floor. Details that had been invisible before now rendered in perfect clarity.
Cael tried to push himself up and his hand slipped. He looked down and his mind went blank.
Bone. Just bone. No flesh. No skin. His hand was skeletal, nothing but white phalanges and metacarpals moving according to his will. He raised it in front of his face, turning it over. Watching tendons that didn't exist somehow articulate joints that shouldn't work.
No. No, no, no.
He scrambled backward, and his other hand came into view. Also bone. He looked down at his body and the reality crashed over him like ice water. His chest was a ribcage with nothing inside. His legs were femurs and tibias held together by dark magic instead of muscle. Tattered remnants of his clothes hung from his frame.
His entire body was gone. Eaten. Consumed. All that remained was skeleton.
"No." The word came out as a rasp, air pushed through a throat that no longer existed. "This isn't real. This can't be real."
He touched his face. Felt the smooth curve of a skull. Empty eye sockets. Teeth with no lips to cover them. A scream built in his chest but came out as a hollow rattle.
I'm dead. I'm actually dead. I'm a skeleton. A fucking skeleton.
Cael tried to stand, but his legs folded wrong. He crashed back to the stone, bones clattering against rock. The sound echoed through the corridor. He tried again, struggling to make limbs work that had no muscles to coordinate them. Everything felt wrong. Too stiff. His centre of balance was completely different.
He finally managed to get upright, swaying unsteadily. His skeletal hands reached out to the wall for support. This couldn't be happening. He was supposed to be dead. Actually dead. Not this. Not walking around as a corpse.
The goddess had abandoned him and now he was a monster. The exact thing everyone had feared. A necromancer who'd died and come back as undead. If they'd been horrified before, what would they think of him now?
Movement in his peripheral vision. Something small and fast.
Cael turned his head and the world spun. His new vision was too sharp. He could see every detail of the corridor but his depth perception was wrong. He stumbled, catching himself against the wall.
A hiss echoed from somewhere nearby.
His death sense flared. That was new. He could feel something alive close by. A small presence. Weak. It felt like a flame in the darkness, pulsing with life.
He tried to focus on it but his mind was still reeling. He was a skeleton. He was undead. He was exactly what the priests had called an abomination. Every nightmare they'd warned about had come true because the goddess herself had made it happen.
The hiss came again, closer. He turned toward it, his skeletal feet scraping on stone. His movements were clumsy. He didn't know how to walk anymore, didn't know how to control a body that was just bones held together by magic.
Something small rushed from the shadows. Cael barely registered it before claws raked across his ribcage. The impact sent him sprawling. He hit the ground hard, bones clattering against stone.
A lizard-like creature stood over him. The size of a small dog, scales the color of wet stone. Its eyes reflected his bone-white vision with a dull gleam. It hissed again, preparing for another strike.
Cael raised his hands instinctively to protect himself. The creature lunged at his exposed bones.
Dark energy erupted from his palms.
He hadn't meant to use it. Hadn't consciously tried. But his body responded to the threat, and necrotic magic poured out in a desperate wave. It hit the lizard mid-leap, splashing across its scales like acid.
The creature crashed to the ground beside him. Immediately, its scales began to blacken where the magic touched. The flesh beneath started to rot, peeling away from muscle in strips. The lizard shrieked and thrashed, claws gouging furrows in the stone as it tried to escape the burning.
Cael scrambled away from it, pressing his back against the wall. He stared at his skeletal hands. Wisps of dark energy still curled from his finger bones. He'd done that. The magic had come from him.
The necrotic energy spread across the lizard's body like fire. Scales crumbled to ash. Flesh dissolved, revealing bone beneath. The creature's movements became jerky as the rot ate through muscle and tendon. Its breathing turned to wet gasps as the magic consumed its lungs.
The smell hit him then. Decay. Rot. The stench of flesh breaking down in seconds instead of weeks. Cael watched, unable to look away. He could feel the life draining from the creature. Feel it dying because of him. Because of what he'd become.
The lizard's flesh continued to slough off in blackened chunks until only bone remained. Then even the bone began to crumble, eaten away by the necrotic magic. The creature finally went still, reduced to little more than ash and fragments.
The small flame of life his death sense had detected guttered out and disappeared.
Cael stared at the corpse. Then at his hands. Then back at the corpse.
He'd killed it. Defended himself. Used death magic like it was natural.
The system interface updated in his vision.
LEVEL UP
Skeletal Revenant: Level 2
Name: Cael
Age: 18
Class: Necromancer
Race: Undead (Skeletal Revenant)
Rank: F
Level: 2
Health: N/A (Undead)
Mana: 120/120
SKILLS:
Raise Dead (Rank F) Death Sense (Rank F) Inferior Undead Control (Rank F) Death March (Passive - Hidden Ability) Necrotic Touch (Rank F) - NEW
STATS:
Strength: 9
Agility: 10
Intelligence: 15
Vitality: N/A (Undead)
Magic: 20
STATUS: Labyrinth Level 50
CONDITION: Undead - No need for food, water, or sleep
Cael read the screen numbly. Level two. A new skill. His health bar replaced with N/A. His stats were pathetic for a level fifty zone. He was still rank F. Still weak.
But he was undead. Actually undead. A skeleton animated by death magic.
He looked at his skeletal hands again. They didn't shake. He'd just killed something and felt nothing but cold emptiness.
What's happening to me?
Cael stared at the dead lizard. Then at his own skeletal body. The bones that made up his fingers. The hollow ribcage where his chest used to be. This wasn't possible. People didn't come back from death. They didn't wake up as skeletons with magic flowing through their bones.
But he had.
The system screen still floated in his vision. Undead. Level two. Health N/A. All of it confirmation that this was real. He was dead and walking around anyway.
His mind struggled to process it. He should be panicking. Should be screaming or crying or breaking down completely. But he couldn't do any of those things anymore. Couldn't cry without tear ducts. Couldn't scream with lungs that didn't exist. All that came out when he tried was that hollow rattle.
He looked down the dark corridor that stretched into the depths of the labyrinth. More creatures were out there. His death sense picked up their presence like distant flames. Some small. Some much larger.
What was he supposed to do now? He was a skeleton. Undead. The exact thing the priests had feared. He couldn't go back to the surface. Couldn't walk into a town looking like this. They'd destroy him on sight.
Cael took one unsteady step forward. Then another. His skeletal feet scraped against stone. He didn't know where he was going. Didn't know what he was doing. He just knew he couldn't stay here staring at the thing he'd killed.
The darkness stretched ahead of him. Empty. Endless.
He was alone in it now. Alone with a body that shouldn't exist and magic he didn't understand.
Alone at the bottom of the world with nowhere else to go.