Galthor had been fighting for what felt like days.

The shadow creatures came in waves, each one carrying its payload of sorrow, each death releasing memories that battered against his mind. He'd lost count of how many he'd killed. Hundreds. Thousands. It didn't matter. There were always more.

His divine aura flickered with exhaustion. His muscles burned with a fatigue he hadn't felt since his rebirth. The entity was wearing him down, not through strength but through sheer attrition.

"You're weakening," the entity observed. Its voice was almost gentle now, like a predator watching its prey tire. "Your anger burns hot, but even fire needs fuel. What happens when it runs out?"

Galthor killed another creature. A woman dying of thirst in a desert, reaching for water that didn't exist. He pushed the memory aside and killed another. A man drowning in a river while his friends watched helplessly from the shore.

"I've existed for millennia," the entity continued. "I have felt grief beyond your comprehension. What is your anger compared to that? A candle against an ocean."

Galthor tried to use Obsessed with Charm's earth manipulation to create fortifications, walls to channel the creatures into choke points. But the floating islands weren't made of earth. They were made of shadow-stone, a substance that resisted his control completely.

His bones, then. The relic could manipulate bones. There were bones everywhere in this realm, the remains of those who'd died here, fused into the architecture itself.

He called to them.

Nothing happened.

"Those bones are mine," the entity said. "Everything in this realm is mine. Your little relic has no power here."

Galthor gritted his teeth and kept fighting.

The memories were the worst part. Each one was a life. A person. Someone who had loved and feared and hoped and despaired. He couldn't block them out entirely, couldn't completely disconnect himself from the suffering he was forced to witness.

And that, he realized, was the point.

The entity wasn't just trying to exhaust him physically. It was trying to drown him in empathy. To make him feel so much sorrow for others that he lost himself in it.

"You care about them," the entity said, as if reading his thoughts. "The dead. You can't help but care. That's your weakness, little god. Your heart is too soft."

"Caring isn't weakness." Galthor drove his fist through a shadow creature's chest. A child dying of fever, calling for a mother who'd already passed. "Caring is what makes us fight."

"And what happens when you've cared so much that you have nothing left? When the weight of all that suffering crushes you flat?"

Galthor didn't answer. He didn't have an answer.

The creatures kept coming.

☆☆▪︎▪︎☆☆

The masters moved through the Abyssal land in formation, Karathra at the front, Brakthar at the rear, the others spread between them. Lady Pelica drifted alongside on her hovering relic, conserving her energy.

The terrain had changed since they'd crossed the canyon. The twisted trees and corrupted vegetation gave way to something far more disturbing.

A forest of bones.

Trees that weren't trees rose around them, pale and branching. But they weren't made of wood. They were made of skeletons. Thousands of them, fused together into towering structures. Skulls formed the trunks. Ribcages created canopies. Arm bones intertwined like branches, finger bones dangling like leaves.

"What is this place?" Grimvar whispered. His face had gone pale.

Lady Pelica was now holding some kind of instrument in her hand, it flickered and hummed, the runes dancing around it. Her head was down as she read something.

"The Bone Forest," Lady Pelica said. "One of the more unpleasant regions of this particular Abyssal land. The bodies here are from one of the major battles during the war. An army was massacred, and the Abyssal corruption fused their remains into these... structures."

Everyone looked at her with mild surprise. So....she really did know the Abyssal land they were in more than them. She had been holding back all this while!

Sly bastard!

"Are they dangerous?" Drakira asked.

"The trees themselves? No. They're just dead matter." Lady Pelica paused. "What lives among them, however..."

As if on cue, the ground beneath their feet crackled. Karathra looked down and felt her stomach turn. The forest floor was carpeted with finger bones, so many that they formed a solid surface. Every step produced a sound like dry twigs snapping.

"Bone Sentinels," Ashclaw said grimly. He'd fought in Abyssal lands before. "They're dormant until triggered by living presence. Then they animate."

"How strong?" Karathra asked.

"Individually? Cursed rank at best. But they don't fight individually."

A tremor ran through the nearest tree. Bones shifted and rattled. A skull that had been part of the trunk rotated slowly, empty eye sockets fixing on the masters.

"Move quietly," Karathra ordered. "Maybe we can get through without...."

The skull opened its jaw and screamed.

It was a sound that shouldn't have been possible from something without lungs or vocal cords. A shriek of pure rage that echoed through the forest, setting off a chain reaction. Other skulls took up the cry. The trees themselves began to move, skeletons pulling free from their fused formations.

"So much for quiet," Hrothgar growled. His blood searching armor was already glowing, responding to the violence in the air.

"Formation!" Karathra shouted. "Defensive circle! We fight through!"

The masters moved with practiced efficiency. They'd trained for this, drilled until the formations were instinct.

Karathra and Hrothgar took the forward position, their weapons ready to cleave through the first wave. Ashclaw and Zargoth held the flanks. Drakira and Rukar covered the rear with Brakthar.

Lady Pelica remained in the side, her expression one of detached interest.

The first Sentinel reached them, a collection of bones that had assembled itself into a vaguely humanoid shape. Karathra's axe shattered it into fragments. But the fragments kept moving, individual bones crawling toward her, trying to reach her flesh.

"Don't let them touch you!" Ashclaw shouted. "They'll try to fuse!"

Karathra stomped on a crawling skull, crushing it. More Sentinels were coming, dozens of them, pulled together from the forest floor and the trees themselves. The sound of rattling bones filled the air like a horrific rainfall.

They fought.

Karathra lost herself in the rhythm of combat, her axe rising and falling in deadly arcs. Each swing destroyed a Sentinel, but each Sentinel was replaced by two more. The forest itself was attacking them, an endless supply of bones animated by Abyssal corruption.

Minutes passed. An hour.

"There's no end to them!" Rukar shouted. He was bleeding from a dozen small cuts where bone fragments had grazed him.

Karathra's arms burned with exhaustion, but she didn't stop. Couldn't stop. If they stopped, they died.

"Keep fighting!" she roared. "We fight through or we die trying!"

The bone horde surged forward.

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