"I'm doing fine."
The words settled in him more firmly than he would have expected.
Not because they changed anything external.
The crypt was still burning in places, the air was still hot and dirty with smoke, and there were still undead trying to tear him apart.
Alex was still stronger than him.
The story was still a mess.
He still had no idea how much damage had already been done, nor how much worse things might become before he had the strength to keep up with them.
But none of that stopped this from being true.
He was doing fine.
A skeleton lurched toward him through the firelight and Soren met it head-on, not with the lingering edge of fear from before, but with something steadier.
He caught its reaching arm, twisted, and used its own momentum to pull it off balance, then drove his knee into its hip and let the whole frame crumple sideways.
Before it could finish hitting the ground, he dropped divine power into its chest and reduced it to ash.
Another came in from the left.
He stepped in close enough that the thing had no room to swing properly, jammed the haft of the axe across its ribs, and shoved hard.
The skeleton slammed backwards into a second one just climbing over a broken coffin.
Their bones locked together in a clumsy tangle for half a breath, and he used that half-breath without hesitation, smashing the side of the axe into the first skull and stamping the second's ankle out from under it when it tried to separate.
He was still breathing hard.
His arms still burned.
His head still ached in that dull, persistent way that had become far too familiar lately.
Yet now that he had stopped treating every flaw in himself like proof of failure, the fight felt simpler.
There were only so many directions skeletons could attack from in a cramped room full of wreckage and fire.
Only so many ways brittle bodies could move before their own lack of weight and balance worked against them.
They had numbers, but not coordination, and numbers only mattered so much when half of them had to climb over burning wood or each other to reach him.
Soren moved accordingly.
He gave ground when it made sense, circled when that bought him room, and stepped forward aggressively when hesitation would only let them surround him again.
He fought like someone who had no interest in looking proper.
One skeleton reached with both hands, jaw hanging wide as it stumbled over a pile of burnt planks.
Soren kicked the planks out from under it, watched its footing vanish, then buried the back of the axe into its sternum hard enough to break the spine behind it.
He shoved the collapsing body into another skeleton's knees and used the opening to send a pulse of divine power through a third one that had wandered too close to his right side.
A fourth tried to get at him from behind a leaning coffin, but he didn't wait for it to fully emerge.
He slammed his shoulder into the coffin itself, tipping the rotten thing sideways. Wood and old cloth crashed down over the skeleton, pinning it awkwardly enough that its limbs only managed to flail.
He stepped over the mess and crushed its skull through the broken lid with a short, ugly downward strike.
That should have felt ridiculous.
Instead, it felt good.
Not in some grand heroic sense.
He was not suddenly enjoying combat for its own sake, nor was he forgetting where he was or why he had come.
It was simpler than that.
There was relief in being allowed, for a little while, to stop thinking about everything else.
Relief in reducing the world to angles, timing, impact, breath, and the immediate fact of the next enemy in front of him.
Relief in the honest clarity of it.
A skeleton closed in from the front while another dragged itself over splintered wood to his right.
Soren grabbed the nearer one by the throat and shoved it into the second before either could properly set themselves, and he stepped around them, planted one foot against a lower back, and drove them both face-first into the floor.
The impact shook loose a forearm.
He ended the one underneath with divine power and split the other's skull with the flat of the axe as it tried to rise again.
Ash and pale fragments gathered around his boots.
The room that had looked crowded at the start now had gaps in it, real gaps, stretches of floor where only blackened coffin remains and scattered bone dust remained.
Fire still crawled along broken timber in the corners, bright enough to keep the crypt lit and the shadows honest.
Through it all the wraith remained near the sarcophagus, hovering and watching in that same patient way, as though the skeletons had merely been the first part of a problem it expected him to solve or fail.
Soren spared it one glance, then dismissed it again.
It was there.
He had not forgotten it.
But there was still no reason to divide his attention too much while lesser enemies were close enough to touch.
He moved into the next exchange before the thought had fully finished.
One skeleton managed to get its fingers around the edge of his sleeve.
He caught its wrist with his free hand and yanked it forward, using the pull to drag the rest of the body into the path of another one.
Their skulls knocked together.
He followed with the pommel of the axe to the temple, then swung low into a shin rather than aiming high and wasting force.
The leg snapped.
And by the time the body hit the floor, he was already burning it away.
Another came at him with one arm missing and half its ribs charred from the earlier spread of flame.
It looked worse for wear, but still kept coming because that was all it knew how to do.
Soren planted his palm against its face and let [Heal] answer.
Divine light flared, and the skeleton collapsed into powder beneath his hand.
He exhaled through his nose and found that the smile from before had not quite disappeared.
This really was stress relief now, wasn't it?
A little ugly, perhaps, but that had never disqualified anything useful in his life.
He had spent days twisted around thoughts that led nowhere good, replaying the duel, replaying Alex's [Divinity], replaying his own failures until the memory of them had started to feel like a second skin.
He had worried over the plot, over Amelia, over Olivia, over every possible outcome that might have already shifted because he had existed in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He had carried the old, familiar belief that if something went wrong around him, it must somehow be because he had not been enough, not careful enough, not useful enough, not strong enough to stop it.
Now there was a room full of things he could actually hit.
It was difficult to resent that.
A skeleton reeled toward him through the smoke and Soren side-stepped it, hooked one foot behind its ankle, and shoved the back of its skull with the heel of his hand.
The thing folded forward into a burning coffin edge, spine bending too far.
He brought the axe down across the base of its neck and scattered the upper half of it across the floor.
The remaining undead were sparse enough now that they no longer came as a wave.
They came in twos, then ones, each forced to cross open space littered with ash and broken wood to reach him. That only made it easier.
Soren advanced rather than waiting for them.
That choice changed the feeling of the fight even more.
Instead of standing at the centre of the crypt and bracing for what came, he cut the last of the skeletons down where they were still trying to organise themselves.
He strode through the firelit wreckage and met one halfway, smashing the side of the axe into its skull before it had fully cleared the remains of its coffin.
He seized another by the shoulder and drove it hard enough into the wall that the spine came loose at the pelvis.
He kicked a third down onto a heap of blackened planks and pinned it there with his foot while divine power disintegrated its chest.
A fourth lifted both arms and staggered at him from near the sarcophagus.
Soren was close enough now to see the wraith more clearly in the corner of his vision, its tattered form drifting above the stone lid like smoke that had learned how to hate.
He ignored it for one last moment, stepped into the skeleton's space, and laid his hand against the top of its skull.
"Stitch thy flesh, I end thy agony. 「Heal」."
Light washed over the thing, and bone gave way to ash beneath his palm, collapsing inward and then down through his fingers.
He let the remains spill from his hand and straightened slowly, chest rising and falling with heat-thick breaths.
Silence did not follow, not fully.
Fire still crackled around the crypt, and old wood continued to collapse in on itself here and there as the flames ate through weakened planks.
But the press of bodies was gone.
There was no more rattling limbs.
No more empty sockets closing in from the edges of the room.
Only him.
And the wraith.
For a second, they simply regarded one another across the burned and ruined crypt.
Then the wraith moved.
It drifted off the sarcophagus without haste at first, almost gracefully, its shredded lower half trailing through the air like torn fabric underwater.
That measured motion would have been eerie enough on its own, but what struck Soren more was how little pressure accompanied it.
He had expected something worse from the real threat in the room, something sharper or heavier, some instinctive warning that told him this was where things truly became dangerous.
Instead, it felt… manageable.
He did not relax, that would have been stupid, but the difference between what he had feared and what now approached him was immediate enough to register.
'Right,' he thought, watching the shadowy shape glide closer. 'A low-level monster is still only low-level.'
The wraith reached the middle of the crypt and stopped just beyond axe range, hovering in the hot air while firelight passed through the thin edges of its form.
The darkness where its face should have been remained fixed on him.
Soren kept the axe in his left hand anyway, though he already knew it would be useless against this thing.
His right hand gathered mana instead.
He shifted his stance, light on the heels of his feet despite the exhaustion in his legs, and studied the wraith the same way he would have studied any opponent.
No theatrics.
No underestimation.
Just information.
It floated, it turned cleanly, and it watched him.
When it moved, it did so in straight surges rather than feints.
Even its stillness had a certain emptiness to it, less predator than malice given shape.
Soren raised his palm and cast first.
"「Ignition」."
A compact burst of flame crossed the space between them.
The wraith twisted aside, but not quickly enough.
Fire kissed one edge of its body and the spectre recoiled at once, its outline shuddering where the magic had touched it.
Good.
That answered one thing.
The wraith darted forward in response, faster than before but still readable.
Soren stepped off-line rather than back, letting the thing pass across the front of him by a narrower margin than was comfortable, and sent divine power through his right hand as it turned to come again.
He could feel the difference already.
Against the skeletons he had needed impact, timing, control of space.
Against this, all that mattered was whether he could place a spell before the thing reached him.
It was simpler, in some ways.
The wraith swept in a second time.
Soren met it with a quick cast of [Ignition], not a wide blast, only a narrow tongue of flame aimed through its centre.
The fire struck, and the spectre jerked back as though a wire had been yanked through it, its body warping around the impact before pulling itself together again.
It did not look durable.
That helped more than he had expected.
For all the unease the creature inspired, it still belonged to the same broad category as the skeletons.
It was not some hidden boss waiting in the dark.
It was an early enemy in an old crypt, dangerous because of its curse and incorporeal body, not because it possessed overwhelming force.
Soren circled left, keeping the firelit centre of the room between himself and the darker edges.
The wraith tracked him and surged once more.
This time he answered with divine power.
"Stitch thy flesh, I end thy agony. 「Heal」."
Purplish-silver light tore through the spectre's chest.
The wraith convulsed in the air, edges fraying apart into strips of shadow before dragging themselves back together.
If it had possessed a face, perhaps it would have shown pain, but as it was, the change was visible only in the violence of its movement.
Soren's brows lifted slightly.
That was easier than he had expected.
Not trivial.
The thing was fast enough to punish sloppiness, and if he let it touch him more than once, that curse it held could still turn the whole exchange into a problem very quickly.
Even so, the actual process of hurting it was straightforward.
He did not need some brilliant insight or reckless improvisation here.
He just needed to stay calm and place his spells correctly.
After the skeletons, that felt almost generous.
The wraith lunged again, crossing the distance in a dark blur.
Soren pivoted on instinct, cold air brushing the side of his face as he moved, and sent a short burst of [Ignition] into its flank as it passed.
The flame caught more solidly this time, and the creature twisted hard in midair, scattering shreds of black mist that evaporated in the firelight.
He didn't smile yet, but some quiet tension in him had undeniably eased.
So this was it.
This was the thing that had sat at the back of the room while the skeletons did the obvious work, and it was still something he could kill.
The thought was steadier than triumphant.
There was no arrogance in it, only a certain tired appreciation.
After the duel, after the spiralling fear and humiliation and desperate hunger for something, anything, that proved he was not hopelessly behind, there was a strange comfort in being reminded that not every challenge in the world existed to humiliate him.
Sometimes an enemy was simply an enemy, a being that could be defeated with an ample amount of effort.
The wraith gathered itself for another rush.
Soren planted his feet, let mana flow into the familiar shape in his palm, and waited until the last useful moment.
Then he cast.
"「Ignition」."
The flame punched through the centre of the spectre's body.
This time the wraith did not twist free cleanly.
Fire spread through it in crawling veins of orange and white, the tattered shape lighting from within as its form began to come apart in earnest.
It recoiled, writhing in the air above the scorched stone, and Soren understood at once that this was the end of it.
He took a step forward to finish properly rather than watch and hope.
That was when the wraith lashed out.
It was not a renewed attack so much as a final convulsion of hatred, a dying surge with no shape but urgency.
The burning spectre hurled itself at him in one last crooked rush, too damaged to be fast enough to fully evade and too desperate not to try.
Soren brought his hand up, but the timing was half a beat short.
The wraith's fading body passed through his chest.
Cold hit him first, a deep, invasive cold that ignored the heat of the room entirely and sank straight into bone and blood.
Then came the drag, heavy and immediate, as though sleep itself had been poured into his limbs.
A system message appeared before his eyes.
.
[Curse of Nightmares has been applied!]
.
Soren's breath caught.
His knees dipped, not from injury exactly, but from the abrupt weight settling over everything.
His arms felt slower, and his eyelids heavier.
The mana in him did not vanish, yet it seemed to move through syrup now, sluggish where it had been fluid a moment earlier.
Across from him, the wraith's body finally failed.
Fire consumed the last of its shape, and the dark remnants dissolved into drifting ash and scorched mist that vanished in the hot air above the crypt floor.
Gone.
He had won.
Soren stood there for one unsteady second longer, swaying faintly in the firelight as the curse spread its dull heaviness through him.
His grip loosened on the axe
He forced himself to breathe once, twice, and felt each breath arrive more slowly than it should have.
His thoughts were thickening.
Not panicked, just slow.
He looked across the crypt, at the ruined coffins, the scattered ash, the blackened stone, the place where the wraith had burned away.
Somewhere in the haze pressing down over his mind was the quiet, absurd satisfaction that he really had handled that well.
'I was right,' he thought, the idea already blurring at the edges. 'I'm doing fine.'
Then, as if on cue, his legs finally gave out.
He dropped onto the cold stone floor on his back, the impact jarring through him but not sharply enough to matter.
The handaxe slipped from his fingers and landed somewhere beside him.
Above, the ceiling of the crypt swam in and out of focus through smoke and flickering orange light.
His body felt impossibly heavy now.
Every instinct that would normally have told him to get up, move, clear the room, find safety, do something sensible, seemed to sink beneath the curse's slow pull.
He could still think, a little, could still recognise the danger of lying down in a half-burning crypt underground, but he simply could not make himself care enough to fight sleep.
His eyes drifted shut, then opened again halfway.
The last thing he registered clearly was the warmth of the fire against one side of his face and the lingering ache in his limbs from the fight, not unpleasant now, only there, proof that he had moved and struck and cast and won.
Then even that slipped.
Darkness took him whole.
————「❤︎」————