‘Misty?’ Del’s voice rang through his mind, sharp with urgency.

  The cat didn’t answer. Instead, her fur bristled, standing on end until she seemed to swell in size, her sleek frame now a mass of rippling muscle and sharpened angles. A low, rolling snarl vibrated through the air, deeper than it had any right to be, more like something that belonged to a creature twice—no, three times—her size.

  Del watched, transfixed, as her claws extended, curving into wicked points that caught the dim light. Her teeth, already sharp, seemed to lengthen, gleaming like tiny daggers. And her eyes…

  Her eyes burned gold, molten and alive, like twin suns set in the face of something no longer entirely feline.

  A shiver licked its way down Del’s spine.

  ‘What the fuck happened to my little kitty?’

  Swallowing against the dryness in his throat, he tried again. This time, his voice came out hoarse. “Misty?”

  ‘I hunt.’

  The thought came through the bond—raw, guttural, not the usual lazy amusement or sarcastic quips he was used to. This was something primal, stripped down to instinct and intent.

  ‘Protect the kitten.’

  And with that, she was gone—one fluid movement, her powerful form springing into the darkness below, swallowed by the gaping maw of the trapdoor.

  Del barely had time to process before instinct took over. Without hesitation, he scooped Naomi up, ignoring her startled gasp, and set her securely atop Myrrith’s statue. She clung to the stone shoulders, wide-eyed, her fingers gripping the cold surface in terror.

  “Stay,” he ordered.

  Naomi gave a jerky nod, her gaze locked on the darkness Misty had disappeared into.

  “Elara, stay with her,” Del added, glancing back at the elf. “I need to help Misty.”

  “But—” Elara hesitated, her brows knitting together. “What if you need me?”

  Del’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t sure what was waiting for him down there, but Naomi couldn’t be left unguarded. If something—anything—got past him, Elara was the last line of defence.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, though the words felt like a lie the moment they left his lips. “Naomi needs you more. Do you have anything I can use for light?”

  Their torches were still packed away, and fumbling with flint and tinder now would waste precious seconds they might not have.

  Elara exhaled sharply, then reached out, pressing her fingers to the back of his hand.

  A whisper of mana curled around his skin, and suddenly, soft light bloomed from the point of contact. It wasn’t fire, nor heat, nor even something tangible—just a quiet glow, like a piece of starlight trapped beneath his skin.

  Del flexed his fingers, fascinated despite himself. Neat.

  The glow wasn’t harsh or flickering. It simply was. Illuminating his hand and casting a gentle radiance over the surrounding air.

  He drew his sword with one hand, the other retrieving a venom dagger. He had no idea what waited below, but he sure as hell wasn’t going down unarmed.

  Elara had already positioned herself near Naomi, bow at the ready.

  Without another word, Del turned and descended into the dark.

  The stairwell stretched before him, a narrow tunnel of rough-hewn stone, its descent seeming to lead endlessly downward. The moment he stepped beyond the trapdoor, the air changed.

  Thicker. Heavier.

  Cold crept over his skin, burrowing deep into his bones. It was more than just temperature—it was wrong, a stillness that pressed inward, making the very air feel dense.

  The further he went, the worse it became.

  The scent of rot, already foul above, was suffocating here. Decay clung to the damp walls, thick and cloying, like a thousand years of death had settled into the very stone.

  His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword.

  Ahead, the light from his hand stretched just far enough to show the end of the stairwell—a jagged archway leading into deeper blackness. The darkness beyond it felt thicker, more solid, like a living thing watching him approach.

  And then—movement.

  Something shifted ahead, just at the edge of his light. A shadow, too rigid to be mist, too still to be alive.

  Then it moved again.

  A shape began to emerge from the stairwell below, dragging itself upwards with slow, deliberate motions.

  Del stopped.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The thing that crawled into his light was… wrong.

  At first, he thought it might have once been a beast of some kind. The structure of its limbs, the hunched posture, suggested something animalistic—perhaps an ape, or something similar. But there was no flesh, no muscle, nothing to give it weight.

  Just bone.

  Bleached white and cracked with age, its skeleton was held together by a faint, pulsating glow. Purple light clung to each piece, a thin veil of energy connecting the bones where sinew and ligaments should have been.

  And then it lifted its head.

  The skull was elongated, too large for a human but with just enough similarity to be disturbing. Deep-set eye sockets burned with eerie, violet fire, twin points of unnatural light that flickered and pulsed.

  Del’s breath shallowed.

  One of its legs was missing. It had been torn free at the hip, leaving a jagged gap in its form.

  It didn’t seem to care.

  It just kept crawling.

  ‘Did Misty do that?’

  The thought barely had time to register before the thing dragged itself another step forward, its remaining hand clicking against the stone as it pulled its ruined form up towards him.

  Click. Scrape. Click. Scrape.

  The sound was slow. Steady.

  Relentless.

  And in the silence of the stairwell, it was deafening.

  Del swallowed against the sickly feeling curling in his gut.

  His fingers tightened around his blade, and he exhaled, forcing himself to move.

  Below, snarls and the crunch of breaking bone echoed through the chamber, a symphony of chaos that sent a sharp pulse of urgency through Del’s veins. Misty was fighting. He had no idea how many of those things were down there, but she wasn’t holding back.

  The creature in front of him pulled itself higher, dragging its ruined body up the steps, its single skeletal arm clawing for purchase. The glow in its eyes burned brighter now, as if it had fully registered his presence.

  ‘This one’s mine.’

  Del adjusted his grip on his sword, preparing to take the offensive. Charging down at the thing was reckless, but the itch in his muscles demanded action. He pushed forward, steps quickening—two at a time, then three—momentum building as he raised his sword for a downward slash—

  And then his foot slipped.

  The world lurched violently.

  “Oh shiiit—!”

  The step beneath him was slick—moss, or maybe just condensation from the thick, stagnant air. Either way, he was airborne before he had time to register it.

  His arms flailed, reaching for something—anything—to slow his descent. Nothing but damp stone and empty space. His dagger wrenched from his grip, spinning off into the darkness, lost before he even had time to curse.

  Gravity claimed him.

  He went down headfirst, hurtling towards the skeleton, whose glowing eye sockets somehow widened in what looked like—

  “Shock? Oh, fuck no—"

  The impact was nothing short of catastrophic.

  Del collided with the undead monstrosity at full force, his shoulder driving straight into its ribcage. The thing had no weight to it, no flesh to absorb the momentum, and together they tumbled down the rest of the stairwell in a chaotic mess of flailing limbs and clattering bone.

  Stone steps slammed into him from every direction, bruising ribs, knees, elbows—he lost count of how many times he bounced before they finally reached the bottom.

  The last hit cracked something loudly, and for a horrible moment, he thought it was his own bones—until he realised the skeleton beneath him had shattered.

  The thing’s skull rolled away, jaw clicking open as the violet glow in its sockets flickered and faded. A breathy, unnatural sigh escaped from the remains, and then—nothing.

  Just stillness.

  Del groaned, face-down on the cold stone.

  ‘How the hell does a bunch of bones sigh? No damn lungs!’

  A sharp ding echoed in his mind, followed by text blinking into his vision:

  [Congratulations; You have slain Skeleton Warrior Lv. 5. Experience gained.]

  He closed his eyes for a second. Then let his head drop back against the floor.

  ‘Oh, piss off.’

  Every inch of him throbbed. The bruises were already forming—he could feel them blooming beneath his skin, each one a complaint against his utter lack of grace.

  Rolling onto his side, he spotted his dagger a few feet away, resting in a shallow pool of something dark. He stretched out, grimacing as his ribs protested, and snatched it up before pushing himself into a crouch.

  Beyond the arch, Misty’s battle raged on.

  The snarls. The relentless crashes of impact.

  Del exhaled sharply, forcing his aching body to move.

  ‘Not a zombie apocalypse, but fuck, man—skeletons?

  He wasn’t sure if his inner voice was thrilled by the thought or absolutely horrified.

  Him? Definitely the latter.

  But there was no time to sit around and process his existential crisis. He had work to do. He had people to protect.

  And he needed to figure out what the hell was going on with his damn cat.

  He stepped through the archway—and into sheer chaos.

  The chamber beyond was vast, larger than he had expected, its walls lined with crumbling stone pillars wrapped in creeping tendrils of something too dark to be ivy. The air was thick—charged—not just with the oppressive magic that had hung over the shrine above, but with something else. Something raw.

  And at the centre of it—

  Misty.

  She moved like liquid fury, weaving through the skeletal horde with impossible grace. Her body twisted, claws carving through ribs and spines as though they were paper. Bones shattered beneath her strikes, purple mana flaring wildly as it fought to reassemble its broken vessels—only for her to tear them apart again.

  ‘It has to be Misty. It’s ginger and killing things.’

  But gods, she was bigger.

  Not just slightly.

  Easily more than three times the size he’d always known her to be; more like the size of a small leopard, her presence now almost unnatural in its intensity. Every movement had a weight behind it, her strikes hitting with an impact that shouldn’t belong to something her size.

  Her fur, that familiar deep ginger, looked different too. Not just vibrant—more real.

  Like everything else around her was faded, dulled by time and decay, and she alone had stepped forward into some sharper reality.

  Mana thrummed through the air, crackling between the competing forces.

  The skeletons—each one burning with that deep, wrong purple energy—were feeding off something. The desecration of the shrine, the lingering corruption that had been carved into its bones.

  And above, Del could feel the energy of Myrrith.

  Weak, struggling, but still present. Fighting to push back the darkness that had tainted her shrine.

  But there was a third force here.

  Something boiling, rippling through the air like heat haze, pouring out from his damn cat.

  A different magic entirely.

  It rolled off Misty in waves, twisting the atmosphere, pressing against both the shrine’s lingering holiness and the corrupted mana of the undead.

  It was hers.

  A force separate from the gods, separate from the defiled sanctuary they stood in.

  Del’s fingers tightened around his sword hilt. His mind scrambled for an answer, for a way to understand what he was seeing, but it just—

  Didn’t make sense.

  ‘What in all the hells has Misty gone and done now?’

  His internal voice—always unhelpful—cut in with its usual brilliance.

  ‘Who gives a fuck? It’s working, and she’s on our side. Now damn well fight before you get clonked and die.’

  Del exhaled sharply.

  ‘Fair point.

  The skeletons weren’t slowing.

  Misty could handle herself, but this wasn’t just about survival anymore. There was something happening in this shrine—something bigger than a simple battle—and he had the sinking feeling that if they didn’t stop it now, they weren’t going to like what came next.

  Rolling his shoulders, Del adjusted his grip on his sword and charged into the fray.