'Huh, that doesn't feel right' Thanatos thought to himself as he lay bare on the cold ground.
The darkness enveloped him, leaving him adrift in a sea of unknowns.
He lay unmoving, wary of the oppressive silence that surrounded him.
The air was cold, but he felt no discomfort. He simply existed in this void, aware of the change within himself, yet unable to comprehend it.
He desperately tried to get his bearings, but something felt off, and he could feel it in every fiber of his being.
His senses, once so familiar, now seemed somehow...alien.
He struggled to understand this change within him, this unknown transformation that left him feeling adrift in the darkness.
'Come on, 1,2,3…argh!' Thanatos thought, frustration building within him as he tried to will his body to move.
He could sense a strange heaviness in his limbs, as if his very bones were rebelling against him.
Gradually, as if his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, Thanatos began to notice something strange.
It was as if the air itself was filled with tiny, glowing particles, like the sparks of a dying ember.
They danced around him, forming patterns in the darkness, casting a strange, almost ethereal light on his surroundings.
'What are these particles? Where have they come from?' he thought, as he tried to make sense of them.
As his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, Thanatos became aware of the subtle contours of his surroundings, as if each of the particles carried their own unique map of the area.
What had once been an impenetrable void began to take on shape and form as he slowly deciphered the patterns of light, using them like a blind person's cane to navigate the unfamiliar territory.
He lay motionless, and the world around him remained shrouded in mystery.
The strange landscape of particles offered no answers, only deepening his confusion.
One thing was certain: this was not the place he had fallen asleep, and he was certainly no longer the person he had once been.
In the eerie stillness, a faint sound reached Thanatos' ears: a soft, rhythmic clicking, like the delicate steps of a spider.
He turned his head, and there in the distance, he saw them: rows of skeletal forms, devoid of flesh and life, pacing back and forth like soldiers on patrol.
After what felt like a century of lying still, Thanatos found himself inexplicably energized. In a frenzied scramble, he crawled towards the wall, glancing over his shoulder to keep an eye on the creepy skeleton parade.
Just as he reached his destination, a single droplet of water chose that precise moment to break free from the ceiling and fall with a splat directly onto Thanatos' skull.
'Aaaaghhh!' Thanatos shrieked.
And so Thanatos leaped to his feet, ready to sprint away from the eerie skeleton dance party, when his legs gave way and he tumbled to the ground.
As he sat, dazed and confused, a glint of something white caught his eye. He looked down, only to see that his hands were…BONE. Pure, white, bony goodness.
Frozen in place, Thanatos stared in horror at his newly-discovered skeleton hands.
'NOOOOOO!' He howled, as if his wail could somehow melt the bones back into flesh.
'This can't be happening! What on earth is going on?!' His heart—well, the general area where a heart would normally be if he had one—hammered in shock.
In a panic, Thanatos began to prod and poke at every part of his body, as if he could reverse the inevitable.
First, his arms. Yep, bone. His legs. Definitely bone. His head. Well, that one was obvious. In a frenzied act of self-exploration, he confirmed that he was, indeed, one hundred percent skeletal.
"Nooooo!" Thanatos shouted. 'No no no no no! This can't be happening! I was a human!
And then, in a moment of sheer desperation, Thanatos searched for the one part of his body he hoped would remain unaffected. His hands fumbled around his pelvic area, until he felt...nothing.
'AAAAAAAAARGH!' Thanatos let out a blood-curdling scream. Well, if he had blood it would be curdling, but alas it only came out as a huff of air.
The realization hit him like a sledgehammer.
'My...manhood...it's gone! Just like that, poof! What kind of undead life is this?!' he wailed, clutching his nonexistent crotch in despair."
In truth, all of this panic and shrieking was happening inside Thanatos' undead mind.
Of course, he couldn't actually scream. He didn't have lungs, nor a tongue, nor even a mouth.
He was just a pile of bones experiencing no physical sensation whatsoever, but that didn't stop him from having a full-blown mental crisis.
Just as Thanatos' mental breakdown reached its peak, a thunderous boom echoed through the cave, nearly jolting him out of his imaginary, incorporeal skin.
The sound, like an explosion of pure magic, shook the very foundations of the chamber, causing his bones to rattle—metaphorically, of course.
'What in the depths of Hades was that?!' Thanatos thought, his panic rising like a zombie from the grave.
A battle was raging in the chamber, with the undead being decimated by the fierce humans. Thanatos watched in horror as his 'brethren' charged headfirst into certain death, or, rather, certain re-death?.
'What are you doing, my dear brothers and sisters?!' Thanatos cried out in his mind. 'This is madness!'
But his pleas went unanswered. Undeterred, the humans slashed and sliced their way through the horde of skeletons, leaving a trail of bone dust in their wake.
In a flash, Thanatos spun around and darted away from the scene of carnage. His long-dormant survival instincts had miraculously kicked in, and he was running for his metaphorical life. But his retreat was short-lived.
"There's one getting away! I'll go after it!" a voice called out, the urgency and determination unmistakably feminine.
Thanatos froze, realizing that his escape had been discovered.
He whipped around to face his pursuer, and there she was: a human woman, adorned in the trappings of a mage.
She held a staff in one hand and a grimoire in the other, her eyes narrowed behind her spectacles.
She began chanting, and Thanatos could feel the energy of her spell gathering at the tip of her staff.
Desperation flooding through his incorporeal form, Thanatos lifted his bony hands above his head in a gesture of surrender.
"Wait!" the mage exclaimed, startled by Thanatos' unexpected response.
But her hesitation was short-lived, as the ground beneath their feet gave way in a deafening rumble.
The two of them fell into the depths of the earth, caught in a tangle of bone and robes. The world turned to darkness as they plunged into the unknown.