The shadows still whispered, but now they whispered for him.
Alaric moved through the labyrinth of ruin and bone, guided by voices that had once threatened to consume him. The pact had been sealed, yet he did not feel ownership—only the weight of a contract whose full terms had yet to be revealed.
He had been sent here for one reason: to find the key.
What it unlocked, he did not know. But its absence was felt like a missing heartbeat, a void in the very fabric of this twisted world.
The terrain shifted as he walked—cobblestone dissolving into sand, then into jagged rock, then into something softer, something that pulsed.
The walls of this place were not built from stone but from flesh, thick and veined, pulsating with unnatural life. When he touched them, they recoiled, as though aware of his presence.
This was not a dungeon.
This was a tomb.
And something inside it was still breathing.
The Doors of Bone
He came upon a massive gate, built not from wood or iron but from rib bones fused together, forming an archway that loomed like the skeletal maw of some ancient beast.
Etched into the ivory was a symbol he recognised—the same sigil burnt into his palm during the pact.
His mark.
A test.
His fingers brushed the gate, and the world shuddered. The bones cracked apart, folding inward as if devoured by an unseen force, revealing a corridor swallowed in black.
And then—a sound.
Not footsteps. Not whispers.
Something is dragging.
Alaric drew the dagger from his belt, though instinct told him it would not be enough. The air reeked of decay, not the scent of something dead, but something that refused to die.
He stepped forward.
And the darkness moved.
The Keeper of the Key
It was not a man.
It was not a beast.
It was both and neither.
A figure wrapped in tattered burial cloth, its face hidden beneath layers of fabric stained black with age. Chains rattled around its wrists, yet it moved as though unbound.
And in its skeletal hand, it held the key.
Not made of metal. Not something crafted by human hands.
It was carved from shadow itself.
Alaric knew without being told—this was what he had come for.
But nothing in this world came without a cost.
The figure tilted its head, as if studying him. Beneath the wrappings, something clicked and chittered, an insect-like sound that did not belong inside anything human.
"You come for the key," it rasped, voice slithering like a blade across stone. "But do you know what it unlocks?"
Alaric held his ground. "No."
"Then why seek it?"
"Because I must."
The Keeper let out something between a laugh and a death rattle. "All who seek keys believe themselves worthy of doors. Few ever return."
Its grip tightened around the artefact, and the air twisted, thick with unseen force.
"If you want it, you must earn it."
Alaric felt the pact stir within him. The shadows coiled at his feet, waiting, sensing what was to come.
The Keeper's form convulsed. The wrappings split open, revealing something beneath—something that should not exist.
A face that was not a face.
A mouth that was too wide, too deep, too full of teeth.
And eyes.
Hundreds of them.
Black, lidless, staring.
Watching.
The Trial of the Key
The world collapsed inward.
Alaric was no longer in the corridor. No longer in the tomb.
He was inside something.
A space that was endless and yet suffocating.
The sky was made of screaming mouths.
The ground was breathing.
And all around him, shadows bled into form, shifting, crawling, changing.
This was the Keeper's realm.
And he was trapped.
A voice echoed—not from a mouth, but from everywhere.
"You carry darkness within you now. But do you control it? Or does it control you?"
The shapes lunged.
Alaric moved.
The shadows at his feet surged upward, forming weapons of night. His dagger elongated, shifting into a blade not made of metal but of void.
The first creature reached him—a thing of bone and rot.
He slashed.
It shrieked.
But there were more.
They swarmed—crawling, leaping, tearing.
He fought.
The darkness obeyed him.
It became armour. It became fury. It became a storm.
Yet the voice did not cease.
"Power is not enough. Power without control is destruction. Show me that you are not a beast."
Alaric gritted his teeth. He had felt the abyss. He had tasted despair.
But he was not a mindless force.
He was more.
His mind focused.
The chaos slowed.
His blade did not swing wildly but precisely.
Each strike was deliberate. Each movement, controlled.
The creatures fell.
The realm shuddered.
And suddenly—he was back.
The tomb. The corridor. The Keeper.
Its many eyes narrowed.
"You are not lost," it murmured. "Yet."
It opened its hand.
And the key fell.
Alaric caught it.
It was weightless, yet it hummed with something deeper than power—something ancient, inevitable.
The Keeper stepped back into the dark.
"You have earned it. But beware..."
"Not all doors should be opened."
Then, it was gone.
Alaric stood alone.
The key pulsed in his palm.
And in the distance, beyond the tomb, something waited.
Something that did not want to be found.