The transition from the silent dread of the upper tunnels to the cacophony of the Catacombs was instantaneous. One moment, they were staring at a lone, puppet-like sentinel; the next, the very walls seemed to exhale death.
The undead did not rise with the slow, cinematic groans of a graveyard tale. They arrived with the frantic, rhythmic clacking of thousands of yellowed teeth and the dry scrape of bone on stone. First, they appeared in ones and pairs, flickering on the edge of Effie's radiant light like pale ghosts. Then came the small groups, and finally, a literal stream of animated remains poured from the darkness—a whirlwind of jagged ribs, sharp-fingered claws, and that same, eternal, eerie skeletal grin etched into every skull.
Effie, Kane, and Nephis formed a wall of living steel at the front.
Effie was the anchor. She exerted her inhuman, monstrous strength, her body becoming a juggernaut of ancient fury. Her round shield didn't just block; it functioned as a wrecking ball, shattering the skeletons into fine white dust and splintered shards with every impact. She didn't fight the horde; she bulldozed through it, the sound of pulverizing calcium echoing like thunder in the narrow passage.
Beside her, Nephis was a vision of lethal grace. She fought with the fluidity of water, yet her strikes carried the crushing weight of a flash flood. In a display of brutal pragmatism, she held her longsword by the blade—her hands protected by the starlight of her armor—using the heavy crossguard and pommel as an improvised mace. White flames danced in her eyes, reflecting off the polished bone of her enemies. She moved with surgical precision, deflecting a claw here, crushing a skull there, her movements a dance of refined destruction.
Kane, however, was the most unsettling to witness.
He had fully activated his dormant [Realmheart] ability alongside the [Sleeper Killer]. To the others, he appeared to be moving like a dark, shifting blur, but in Kane's vision, the world was a map of Mind Threads. He saw the translucent, pulsing umbilical cords of necrotic energy that tethered the skeletons to their distant master.
His weapon, the [Sleeper Killer], lived up to its name. It shifted with terrifying fluidity—one moment a jagged Jian, the next a massive Odachi, then a heavy Longsword. Because he could see the threads, Kane didn't waste energy on the bones. He struck the air where the energy gathered, severing the puppet strings. Under his assault, the skeletons didn't just break; they collapsed as if the very concept of "life" had been erased from their marrow. He moved like oil on water, slipping through gaps that shouldn't exist.
If any skeleton managed to slip past the three front-liners, Caster was waiting. His blade hummed with a ghostly green light, an aura that seemed to bypass the physical density of the bones entirely. He fought with the arrogance and precision of a Legacy, immobilizing enemies with single, clean strikes before they could even compute his presence.
The four powerhouses made the slaughter look easy, but the Catacombs were a living trap.
The tunnels were a labyrinthine nightmare. As they pushed deeper, the path fractured into complicated crossroads and branching veins. The undead began lunging from the side passages, bypassing the front-line barrier to snap at the more vulnerable members of the cohort.
Sunny, Cassie, and Kai were relatively safe at first, but the situation deteriorated with every passing yard. The air grew thick with the smell of old dust and rot. Worse still, the skeletons they had already "destroyed" didn't stay down. After a few minutes of lying in heaps, the bones began to twitch. They crawled toward one another, reassembling in the darkness and dashing in pursuit of the party's rear.
They were being swallowed.
Kane's mind raced as he cut through a ribcage. He sent a mental pulse to Missy, who was currently phasing through the walls, acting as a ghostly bottleneck to prevent the cohort from being completely flanked.
'Missy, how does it look on the other side of the tunnel wall?'
Missy's voice echoed back, distorted by her phasing state, sounding like wind through a ribcage. 'It is the worst, Master. The numbers are infinite. The threads lead to a central node. We need to end this as fast as possible... but I think I found a way to stall them.'
The pressure was mounting. The cohort was now being assaulted from all four cardinal directions. The light from Effie's Memory was being choked by the sheer volume of white bone pressing in.
Suddenly, just as a massive wave of reassembled giants prepared to lunge, every single skeleton in the tunnel fell.
They didn't break. They simply dropped, becoming heaps of inanimate calcium in a heartbeat. The silence that followed was more terrifying than the noise.
The cohort froze, stunned. Kane sharpened his [Realmheart] focus and saw it: the Mind Threads had been severed in a wide radius. They were already beginning to regrow, twitching like severed nerves in the air, seeking their hosts.
"What the...?" Effie shouted, her shield raised in a defensive crouch.
Missy materialized in a cloud of white mist in front of Kane. Her stitched mouth remained closed, but her voice rang out with urgent telepathy. "I have cut the connection temporarily, but the master of this place is reweaving the web. It will take only seconds for them to rise."
Kane didn't wait for a second explanation. He grabbed Nephis by the shoulder and looked at the others.
"We don't have time! Run! Now!"
The cohort broke into a desperate sprint, their boots thundering over the very bones that were already beginning to twitch and reform beneath them.
*******
Far above the suffocating dust of the catacombs, Harus stood at the entrance of the descent. The massive, hulking assassin watched the retreating forms of the cohort disappear into the shadows of the lighthouse ruin. His face remained a mask of cold, unbothered arrogance.
"Worms," he rumbled, his voice like grinding stones. "Only good at escaping into holes. They think the dead will protect them from me."
As he turned to follow, prepared to descend and finish his grisly task, a female voice drifted through the ruins—sharp, cold, and laced with an underlying wheeze.
"So... you are the one hunting him. I expected something more... impressive."
Harus stopped. He turned slowly to see a woman leaning against a jagged pillar of masonry. Her hair was a striking turquoise, but her skin was pale, marked by the faint, pulsing veins of the Blight. Despite her sickly appearance, she held herself with a terrifying, predatory poise.
It was Philanias.
Harus let out a dry, rasping chuckle. "You are allied with the runaways. A pity. You look like you're already halfway to the grave."
Philanias looked at him, her eyes tracking his every movement with a scholar's precision and a warrior's hunger. "Not exactly. I am allied with him. And he has a very long list of things to do that don't involve dying at the hands of a Gunlaug lapdog."
Harus's laughter grew louder, a dark, booming sound. "Then you are dead meat, girl. You can barely breathe, yet you stand in my way?"
She coughed once, a harsh, painful sound, and wiped a trace of blood from her lip. She smiled, and it was a look of pure, suicidal defiance.
"Well, I am sick, it's true," she whispered, her voice dropping into a chilling register. "But here is a piece of advice, assassin: never berate a dying wolf. We have nothing left to lose, and everything to tear apart."