The tower floor groaned around him like a breathing, ancient corpse—alive, but just barely. Its walls were slick with condensation, the scent of mildew mixing with the copper tang of blood—his blood. Every breath Lin took stung with cold and tasted of rust and something darker, something that didn't belong in the world. Something alive and watching.
He stumbled back, nearly slipping on the slime-coated stone beneath his boots, his chest heaving. His vision blurred at the edges, flickering like a candle smothered in wind. There was too much noise—screeches, wet snarls, the skittering of clawed limbs on stone. But more than the noise, it was the silence beneath it all that haunted him. The tower was vast, a hollow colossus of black stone and iron bones, and yet he was utterly, sickeningly alone.
No comrades. No reinforcements. No escape.
Only them.
The mutated beasts circled again. Their flesh writhed like it still hadn't settled into its final shape—bones bulged in the wrong places, skin stretched taut over organs that pulsed visibly beneath. They had too many limbs, or not enough. Some dragged themselves with bone spikes. Others slithered, dragging behind a tail of viscera that left red streaks on the stone. And their eyes—if they had eyes—were pits of hunger, of endless, empty purpose.
Lin's arms trembled as he raised the Nam Ara daggers again. Their silver edges shimmered with a faint, unnatural light, as if the blades themselves resisted being in this place. They had tasted the blood of many things—spirit-walkers, cursed men, things birthed from shadow—but the blades had never felt heavier. They pulsed in his hands like they, too, doubted this fight.
He was not winning.
He was barely standing.
This isn't a battle. This is a sentence.
Blood soaked through his tunic, warm at first, now chilling against his skin. One of the creatures had torn into his side—deep enough to expose ribs, maybe, he couldn't tell. The pain had evolved. It was no longer sharp. It had become something deeper, a dragging weight that made movement feel like he was swimming through tar.
(Why am I still alive? he wondered. Is this mercy? No. It's mockery.)
The beasts didn't rush him all at once. They played with him, studied him. There was intelligence in their madness, and that was the worst part. They knew he was bleeding. They knew he was tired. And they were waiting for him to break.
He clenched his jaw so tightly it ached. (They can't die. Not really. Not unless… unless I find the seam. The core. Whatever's left inside that keeps them moving. If I can find it, if I can land just one true hit… then maybe I can win. Not the war. Just the moment. That's enough.)
He remembered dying before. The memory crept in now, uninvited and cold. That moment—when everything had slipped away, when the body ceased to matter, when he'd screamed and no sound had come—it wasn't something one forgot. And the worst part wasn't the death itself. It was that it had meant nothing. He'd died weak. Helpless. Insignificant.
He couldn't do that again.
(I didn't come back just to die again with no meaning. I didn't survive everything just to become prey.) His vision narrowed, sweat and blood burning in his eyes. His legs buckled, but he caught himself on one knee. The daggers scraped stone as he raised them again.
(I need to land one blow. Just one. Let the blade kiss their twisted heart. Let me see them bleed. Let me know they can bleed.)
Because if they couldn't…
Then there was no future.
The creatures stopped circling. One by one, they crouched, legs tensing like coiled springs. Their mouths opened—not to scream, but to smile.
Lin's heart hammered. Every inch of him screamed to run, to fall, to surrender.
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
Not again.
And then—they lunged and Lin moved—if it could be called that. It was less a dodge than a fall. His body collapsed to one side, barely evading the claws of the closest beast as it slammed into the wall behind him with the force of a battering ram. Stone cracked. Lin didn't hear the impact so much as feel it, a bone-shaking tremor that echoed through the platform. He rolled, or maybe was thrown, onto his back, staring up at the trembling ceiling as his ribs screamed protest.
Get up, he thought. Get up, you bastard. You'll die like this. On your back like some forgotten thing. Get. Up.
He spat blood. A tooth went with it.
One of the beasts was already on him. A heavy, malformed mass of muscle and eyes and jagged bone, breathing hard enough to stir the hair on his head. Its claws came down—he raised a dagger just in time. The impact jarred his whole arm. Something in his wrist snapped. His vision went white with pain.
That one's gone, he thought, the left dagger now hanging limply in his hand. Fingers won't listen. Shit.
He twisted, screaming as he forced himself to his feet. The muscles in his thighs locked, trembling under the strain. Everything inside him begged for rest. Just one second to breathe, to stop bleeding. But that second would cost him his life.
The beast came again, faster this time. It was learning. They all were. They moved differently now—more coordinated. Less animal, more predator. They smelled his fear. Tasted his pain in the air.
The tower itself felt like it was rooting for them. The very stones underfoot shifted just slightly, subtly off-kilter. The platform sloped more than it should. The chains hanging from above swayed in a wind that wasn't there, casting long, skeletal shadows that distracted and confused. Every element of the space pressed in against him, like the world itself wanted to see him end.
Why do I fight? he thought, as the next beast swiped a limb longer than a man's height at his legs. He jumped—barely. The claws nicked his ankle, tearing deep enough to sever something important. He collapsed again. Why do I keep getting up? What am I proving?
There was no honor here. No glory. No story to be told of this place. If he died, his bones would join the others in the cracks. Forgotten. Swallowed.
No one's watching. No one cares.
But still, he forced himself to stand.
The pain was constant now, a living thing that gnawed at every joint and nerve. His heartbeat was erratic, slamming against his ribs like it wanted to escape his chest and run away on its own. His thoughts had to fight just to hold shape. He was thinking in fragments. In flashes. In ghosts.
This isn't fair.
I'm not ready.
I was supposed to have more time.
I don't want to die like I did before.
And that last thought rooted itself.
Not like before.
That death had been quiet. Cold. A slip into darkness with no struggle, no defiance. He had felt the light go out in his eyes, and worse—he had accepted it. That was what haunted him. Not the pain. Not the fear. But the surrender. The slow, passive letting go.
This time, he would not go gently.
The beasts came again—two this time. One low, aiming for the legs. The other arcing high, fangs wide, teeth shaped wrong, like shards of a shattered mask. He could only block one.
He chose the high one. It was instinct, not strategy.
The other beast hit him full in the stomach, claws digging into his gut, lifting him off the ground and slamming him against a column. Something cracked—his spine, maybe. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream. He dropped the left dagger. It clattered uselessly against the stone, skittering away like it didn't want to be part of this.
The beast didn't kill him.
It watched.
They were all watching now, the pack slowing. Surrounding. They knew.
They know I'm almost done. They want me to know it too.
He slid down the pillar, leaving a streak of red behind. He hit the ground and didn't move for a long moment. Long enough to hear his own pulse thudding in his ears. Long enough to imagine what it would be like to let it all go again.
Then, his eyes fell on the dagger.
The Nam Ara blade lay a few feet away. Just out of reach. But not impossible.
He crawled.
Every inch was agony. His fingernails tore as he dragged himself forward. Blood from his stomach wound painted a trail behind him. The beasts let him move. Maybe they thought he was done. Maybe they were curious. Or maybe they were letting him hope, just to take it away again.
He reached it. Closed his hand around the hilt. His fingers didn't want to close. He forced them. Cried out as his broken wrist screamed in reply.
One blade.
One working arm.
No legs that would listen.
He turned just in time to see one of them pounce—massive, glistening, a patchwork of mouths and exposed muscle.
He swung.
The blade connected—barely. He wasn't aiming. Wasn't thinking. He just moved, wild and panicked.
The dagger slid into something soft. Not the chest. Not the neck. Somewhere along the creature's side, just beneath the armpit-like hollow where a malformed limb jutted.
There was a pause.
A sound like tearing silk.
Then—the beast screamed.
It was the first time any of them had made that sound. Not a roar. Not a screech.
A scream. Pure and horrible and wounded.
The creature stumbled back, dragging its ruined side behind it. Black blood—if it could be called blood—poured from the wound. Thick, smoking. It hissed where it hit the stone. The other beasts froze, their heads tilting, reacting to something unseen.
Lin blinked.
It can die.
He didn't smile. Didn't celebrate. He couldn't.
But in that moment, slumped in his own blood and sweat, his face broken, body ruined, lungs filling with fluid—he believed.
And that was enough.