They ran.

  The team burst from the chamber into the open air of the ruined courtyard, boots crunching stone. The sky overhead twisted with coiling cloudlines, as if the storm had been peeled open from the inside.

  They stopped short. "Well that's different." Calen commented on the massive swirl of clouds that looked as if it was reaching down, towards the central chamber.

  Across the fractured stone, a dozen Carrion Wisps floated just above the ground. Translucent, pulsing with faint inner glow, like drowned lanterns drifting along an invisible current. Their tendrils dragged in slow spirals behind them, brushing over rubble, scraping dust into the air.

  Shadow Archive updated:

  Carrion Wisp

  Description: mindless floating gelatinous cuboid creatures with long trailing tendrils that trail along the ground.

  Behavior: they float around dragging thier tendrils along the ground in hopes of contacting prey. Once touched, the victim is paralysed with fear, reliving thier worst moments with intensified pain.

  "Carrion Wisps. Whatever you do, Don’t touch them," Eryx grunted, fists clenched tight.

  Kiva stepped ahead, scanning the walls. Her eyes locked on the glowing sigils burned into the masonry—some dim, others pulsing wildly now. She picked up a fist-sized rock and hurled it toward a cluster of glyphs.

  The stone touched and burst into blue flame and liquefied, the molten slag splattering and hissing as it slid down the wall.

  “Yeah,” Kiva muttered, jaw tight. “Not getting through there.”

  “Back the way we came?” Calen offered.

  They turned.

  The rushed down an alley between two collapsed buildings, opening like a throat—narrow, damp, the same route they'd used to enter the ruins.

  Eryx’s gut twisted. “Something’s—”

  The Pale gnashers apeared out of no where.

  Shadow Archive updated:

  Pale gnasher

  Description: guant long limbed humanoid creatures who's knees and elbows bend at unnatural angles, resembling spiders if they crawl along the ground. Thier mouths are full of what appear to be molars.

  Behavior: they shamble forward in lurching motions. Attempting to catch thier prey, which they painfully and slowly grind into thier flesh, eating directly off thier victims.

  They surged from both ends of the alley—thier movement quick and jerky, their teeth an impossible beastlike grinder. One landed on Jast’s back, biting down hard. Another slashed at Calen’s shoulder.

  Steel rang. Powers flared.

  [Threadbind]

  [Heavy strike]

  [Spiked Grasp]

  [A cuckoo clock]

  Four gnashers were caught in Kivas threadbind, tripping them and blocking the rear passage as Eryx brought his blade down in a wide arc, cleaving through a Palegnasher’s head, through its chest and out of its hip, cutting it in half—and still it clawed at his legs.

  Jast grappled a gnasher in front of him and slammed his back into the wall, pinning the gnasher grinding at his flesh between him and a magical inferno. He lept forward and pushed the grappled gnasher into the other side with a roar.

  Callen held up his clock as it struck midnight. The cuckoo shot out from the clock, piercing the chest of a gnasher and leaving a gaping hole. It fell to the ground, but a moment later it rose back up.

  “Downed doesn't mean dead!” Callen shouted shouted.

  Bodies they’d already felled twitched. One with a missing head spasmed, arms grasping the air. Another, its chest cleaved open, jerked upright and launched itself forward with a wet snarl.

  “Nothing’s staying down!” Calen snapped, bashing the clock against another head with a sickening crunch and pulling another rusted weapon from thin air and slamming it into a Palegnasher’s side.

  “We need out now,” Kiva said, eyes scanning again. Her pupils narrowed on a section of wall where the sigils barely glowed—burnt out, smeared in blackened soot. “There—north wall! That cluster’s spent.”

  “Go!” Eryx barked. “I’ll hold the lane!”

  “Don’t you dare get heroic now,” Kiva growled, casting another threadbind.

  [Brace]

  Eryx held his shield in front, feet planted as gnashers crawled over the struggling bound monstrosities on the floor. Many bumped each other into the walls, causing deep burns they didn't notice. The air wreaked of burnt flesh and hair.

  The team surged forward, hacking, blasting, dragging each other toward the scorched passageway. Carrion Wisps drifted nearer now, and the very air grew sharp with remembered pain. Eryx’s could hear something. A voice.

  "You're fault. They died because of you." Another voice from somewhere else. "Run Eryx! Take your brother and-"

  Gnashers fell upon him, pushing against his shield, biting and clawing for thier meal, taking his focus back to the fight.

  Jast and Calen had pushed to the end of the ally way, clearing the path for Eryx and Kiva. As they burst through, Eryx dropped his Brace and sprinted for the end of the hall.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  They were right on the parties tail as they rushed through the small crowd that remained on the other side. There had to be about 40 in total with more than half burned, cut up messes, most of which continued to try and move toward thier prey.

  Kiva turned and pushed a fist forward

  [Resonant Pulse]

  A shockwave knocked most of them to the ground, staggering the few that retained thier footing. It was just the breath they needed to escape.

  Turning, they rushed for the outer wall.

  ———

  They were harried by small groups of gnashers the entire run back. Kive searched in desperation for an area where the warding had failed, somewhere they could climb up and escape.

  "Uh, guys. That's OK right?" Jast asked, pointing at the strange funnel cloud, which had now made contact with the central chamber the orb had resided in. There was a pulse of electricity, like lightning, but too uniform and direct. A loud roar could be heard as the central chamber as something large, something very very large stood from within the rubble.

  "Not OK! Not OK!" He yelled as they doubled thier speed.

  "There!" Kiva pointed at a ten foot section of wall where the sigils were dark. She picked up a rock and tosser it. With a small crack the stone hit the wall and bounced harmlessly off. "Up the wall, quick!"

  "Well, unless you just conveniently have a ladder handy, I'm open for suggestions!" Eryx was looking wildly back and forth at multiple groups of gnashers closing in on them. Luckily the Carrion Wisps seemed content to just float along the breeze instead of actively attacking them.

  "Better! Probably." Callen reached into his vest and fumbled around for a minute before aproducing a colorful scarf and handing it to Kiva. "Pull!"

  She groaned but did as she was bid. Scarf after scarf tied together came from inside his vest until finally a plunger came with them

  "What the hell and I supposed to do with this?!" She yelled and tossed it to the ground. With a chuckle, Calen swept it off the ground and in one fluid motion three the plunger.

  It stuck to the wall about a foot from the top. "You climb it!" One of Kiva's eyes twitched as she stared daggers into Calen. Without hesitation Jast grabbed the scarves and began to climb. Clearly the plunger was holding. Somehow.

  "We're going to have a long talk about your abilities if we survive this" Kiva seethed

  ———

  "Will the wall hold whatever that thing was?" Jast asked Kiva. They had started the jog back to the valley entrance. Jast had declared the mission over, they needed to report this immediately to command.

  Even here groups of gnashers roamed the fields, turning and shambling toward them as they passed. "Why do I always get such messed up monsters? Is a fire breathing dragon too much to ask?" Eryx thought bitterly

  "Look out!" Calen had shouted but it was too late. Eryx was lost in thought, eyes lowered to the ground. Just as he looked up, long thin wires touched his face and the world went black

  ———

  Eryx Kael was thirteen the night he lost everything.

  His family lived on the outskirts of a rural satellite town called Tammel’s Verge— His father, Corren Kael, was a forager and Echo technician, someone who worked with scavenged echo tech fragments to power and repair minor tools. His mother, Sella, ran a trading post out of their home. They weren’t Resonants. Just people. Quiet, kind, and good.

  Tammel’s Verge was a farming town in a tucked-away clearing, surrounded by low hills and whispering reed fields. The village wasn’t notable—no powerful Resonants, no Echo Beacons, no proximity to any dungeons. It was the kind of place where people believed their isolation was their protection.

  It started with flickers on the horizon. Faint distortions that made the winds stutter. Then animals started vanishing. Dogs howled all night. And one evening, Corren brought home a sliver of twisted glass—one that hummed even when powered down. He joked it was a “haunted shard.” Eryx still remembers the color: black, with streaks of red that pulsed like veins.

  Whatever it was, they wanted it back.

  The creatures came just after sunset. The skies were bruised purple, windless, silent. Then the sound—like a choir whispering through metal, too low and too layered to place. And then the darkness came alive.

  They weren't like any dungeon spawn anyone had seen. Not beasts. These things seemed… unformed. Eryx would later learn they were called Hollowskint, half-birthed entities that slipped through unstable tears near Unstable Zones. They didn’t move like animals. They skittered, collapsed, and reassembled. Some slithered on broken limbs; others glided without ever touching the ground.

  One creature—a broad, centipede-like thing made entirely of peeling, translucent faces—coiled around the well in the center of town and screamed. The sound cracked windows and drove birds from trees. Another, all writhing hair and sunken sockets, drifted from rooftop to rooftop like smoke, pulling light out of every room it passed.

  Eryx remembers one most of all: a lean, crawling humanoid made of stitched-together arms—arms that clapped as it moved, echoing mockingly off the wood walls of the town.

  When they reached the Kael household, Corren and Sella barely had time to react. Corren shoved the shard into a hidden compartmentin the floorboards and told Eryx to take Bror and run, no matter what. His mother turned, eyes wide, and tried to hold the door.

  She didn’t make it. A creature burst though, six legs ending in Spiked talons. The moment it came through it impaled her on two spikes and tossed her to the side, hissing at Corren.

  Corren's screams came next.

  Eryx took his brothers hand and ran. Past the creature, through the door. Around the house and into the fields.

  His hand slipped as he tried to drag his brother along, his legs too short to keep up. "Eryx!" He yelled, just a few paces behind. Eryx turned. The crops shuffled. Something jumped out and wrapped around Bror.

  It drug him off too quickly for Eryx to keep up. He followed Bror screams until they abruptly cut off. He paused to listen, but he wishes he hadn't. All he could hear was the sicking wet crunching of something feeding, and the gentle breeze.

  Again he ran. Through the reeds. Across the stream. Into the hills. He didn’t stop until Tammel’s Verge was nothing but distant smoke and silence behind him. For days he wandered, half-starved and in shock, until a patrol caravan found him near a collapsed Echo line.

  They brought him to Breakspire.

  He never spoke of what he saw that night—not in full

  ———

  Eryx watched as his mother was impaled. Listened as his father screamed with his final breath. Then static. His mother standing at the door, his father hiding the shard.

  The door burst open, the creature rushing his mother, impaling her. His father screaming. Then static.

  His mother stood at the door.

  ———

  Calen helped heave Eryx onto Jasts back. "Head for the forest, west! Maybe we can lose them in the trees, and for fucks sake, don't touch those damn floaters!"

  They cut through the field of high grass, making for the trees. They had quite the run ahead of them and both of thier front line fighters were incapacitated.

  Kiva had very basic damaging spells but they weren't her focus. Most barely inflicted damage to the Pale Gnashers, but it slowed them enough to keep them away.

  Calen was using his cane sword to fend off the few grasslurkers that came thier way, slashing them as they hopped toward Jast. They seemed smart enough to target the slower weaker members of the party.

  "Stamina is getting low!" Jast called to them, " I need a rest!"

  "How low, were almost to the trees!" Kiva questioned as she blasted another gnasher away.

  "Too low, carrying Eryx is draining me at twice the amount!" He set Eryx down, not too softly and dropped to a knee. Eryx groaned and stirred.

  Kiva knelt beside Eryx and dumped cold water from her waterskin on his face. He bolted upright. "Nooo!" He screamed and clutched his head, breathing hard.

  He looked around in a panic, no longer seeing his parents corpses, the smell of a burning town, the screams that echoed in his head subsiding.

  "What's happening? Where are we?"

  "A daring escape from the hordes of presumably undead and a giant monster that likely wants to eat us!" Calen explained.

  "Fleeing for our lives. Got it. But what happened?"

  "You attacked one of those, what did you call them, Carrion Wisps, with your face. It wasn't very effective." Calen extended his hand to Eryx, pulling him to his feet. "Good now?"

  "No. No, I'm far from good. Is Jast OK? Whys he breathing like that?"

  "Cause you're bloody heavy! I carried your sorry hide out here." He stood and pinched a grasslurker square in its face, green blood covering his torso and face. "Brilliant. Just ..let's go."

  ———

  They finally reached the trees, Calen in the lead, Jast on rear guard. Now and then Kiva would launch a threadbind to stop the gnashers.

  The ground had started to slope upwards into the mountains, becoming rocky and uneven.

  Eryx had a small flashing pop up in the corner of his vision. He looked around to make sure they were sage, relatively, and opened it.

  "Level up! New skill aquired:

  [Gravedigger’s Mark]

  Type: Active

  Cooldown: 15 seconds

  Description:

  Mark a single enemy with a shadowbrand that subtly pulls the flow of combat toward them. Marked enemies are more susceptible to critical strikes and suffer increased damage from finishers. If the marked target is slain within 10 seconds, recover a portion of stamina and briefly gain a stacking damage buff.

  Marked Target Damage Taken: +20% from Eryx

  Critical Chance vs Marked: +15%

  Stamina Refund on Kill: 10%

  "Sounds useful" he thought and mentally willed the prompt to disappear. As he did, Kiva let out a yelp.

  She fell to thenground, something long slithering up her leg to her thigh.

  Shadow Archive updated:

  Latchroot

  Description: Long slender living vines with piercing thorns that act as hypodermic needles, sucking the blood from its victims.

  Behavior: they lie in wait for anything unfortunate enough to watch by then bind them before latching on with it's long needles to drain them.

  "Bad! That's bad!" Eryx yelled as Kiva screamed.

  He knelt beside her and slashed at the vine. It shrieked andnstopped moving, but it was still attached to her.

  "Get it off!" She yelled, panicking, grasping at her leg. "Stop moving and don't pull, it has needles in your leg, they have to come straight out or they could break. Watch for these, they're called Latchroots!" Instructed eryx as he pulled a section of vine straight out. The needles were a good 2 inches long.

  Kiva groaned every time he moved a section. Pale Gnashers had caught up to them, Jast and Calen holding them back, barely.

  Eryx helped Kiva up to her feet. "We desperately need a healer she said through clenched teeth.

  "Can you walk?"

  "I should be able.to. we need to go, they're starting to surround us again."

  She was right, it seemed like there were more here than in the fields. Maybe the forest wasn't such a good idea, especially with the...

  Calen yelled as he went down, latchroot wrapped three times around his waist. Kiva shuddered. "That's definitely not good."

  "Bad one might say." Calen quipped. Always time for a joke, no matter how dire the situation.

  Kiva ran to help Calen, eryx drew his sword.

  [Analyze]

  After a moment the hips and shoulder joints of the gnashers lit with a soft yellow glow. He knee they didn't die and incapacitating them was the only move already, the information didn't help all that much.

  He swung twice at a gnasher in an X pattern, lopping off both of its arms, followed by a [Heavy swing] that cut it in half at the waist. The torso and head of the creature rolled away, growling but powerless to do anything now.

  Kiva had removed the Latchroot from Calen and gotten him to his feet, but blood soaked through his patchwork leather vest..

  Something large and loud crashed in the distance behind them, in the ruins. The Pale Gnashers screams echoed through the forest and plains below in unison.