Logan could now see why the skeletons took so long to reach the cells. With limited dexterity, they were usually forced to walk down the stairs more slowly than a regular person to avoid falling. Now that they were on a deadline, though, they could somehow temporarily overcome this minor flaw.

James survived the climb up the stairs. Unlike everyone else, he was repeatedly being fed potion after potion as they made their way up the endlessly long stairwell. The elixirs didn't stop the burning. In fact, it only made it worse. By the time he was on his third potion, he fainted from the extreme agony of being burned alive and had to be carried up by two of the knights.

In less than a minute, they arrived in a massive stone cavern. The first thing Logan noticed were icicles hanging off the roof. He didn't understand how the place could be so cold until he saw the four large braziers in each corner, the massive tubs full of blue flames.

Logan had no more time to admire the room before he was pushed forward. He shuddered as a wave of icy air washed over him. It felt like stumbling into a walk-in freezer. Or a morgue. Unlike his own negative reaction, there were groans of relief coming from Amelia and her friends, the cool air soothing their dangerously high temperatures.

Each prisoner was escorted by two knights. As soon as they entered, all of them were brought to different corners of the cavern. All except for Logan. He was dragged to the middle of the room. He considered fighting back for a moment but didn't even know where to begin. Not only were the knights almost two metres tall, they were also skeletons and fully armoured.

Did he try to steal their weapon and try to fight back? Would that even work, or could they survive being beheaded? Eventually, he threw those thoughts away since he couldn't even wrench his arms free of their iron grips.

They hauled him to the middle of the room. Once there, he noticed a massive pit dug into the ground. It was easily twenty metres across, a massive stone pillar rising in the centre connected by a rope bridge. Atop that pillar was a smooth boulder. It took up about half of the space, which was saying quite a lot since it appeared to be several metres wide.

Logan stopped gawking once he was pushed forward. While everyone else was being led to different corners around the room, he was brought over the dangerously unsteady rope bridge.

Looking back, he saw what was happening to the others. They were all forced to kneel on strange circular patterns carved into the stone. That included James, the poor guy still burning alive. He had to be laid on the floor as he was still unconscious.

Despite the four braziers providing light, the cavern was quite dim. That was why it took Logan until he glanced at James to notice that the entire floor had been carved with strange symbols. The pattern was intricate and winding, spreading in a circle around the entire cavern.

Logan had no time to study it before he was forced to watch his footing on the rotting planks. The knights escorted him across the bridge without pause, allowing him very little time to get his bearings. When he did, however, he wished he never had the chance to see what rested beneath his feet.

Within the pit were countless bones. They had to be from thousands of different creatures, and that wasn't even close to the worst thing in the deep hole. Resting on top of the pile of bones were hundreds of corpses in various states of decay.

Hideous rats with mouldy fur, goblin creatures with grey skin, and even dinosaurs with rocky pelts could all be seen. Those were interesting and horrifying in equal measure, but then he noticed the six human bodies near the top of the pile. They were all blackened and charred, the cracks in their skin still burning with orange flames. They were just as he remembered before their corpses were taken from their cells.

Logan arrived at the stone pillar in silence. The knights immediately let him go, standing on either side of the rope bridge so that he couldn't leave. He had no idea what to do until a skeleton walked out from behind the massive boulder.

Unlike the other undead, this skeleton was obviously different. It wore pristine white robes and moved as fluidly as a human. While the other skeletons were close to behaving no differently than the living, their movements lacked the obvious grace that muscles and tendons could provide.

Of course, those details were nothing compared to the circlet. On top of the Skeleton Lord's head was a golden chain, an egg-sized diamond resting on its forehead. The gem radiated the same mystical quality that the painting had. Only instead of its aura being mysterious and profound, it was outright terrifying.

There was no doubt in his mind that this monster was the one in charge here.

"Uh, greetings," Logan said, a little unsure of himself. When the undead didn't respond, he continued. "May I ask why you have captured us… my Lord?"

The skeleton slowly approached. Logan waited for a response, but it didn't give him one. It simply walked over until it was standing within arms reach of him. The thought of trying to snatch the circlet flashed through his mind, but he didn't get the chance before the diamond began to shine.

A shudder ran up Logan's spine along with a terrible premonition. That thought immediately disappeared from his mind, both of his knees almost giving out for some reason. Despite the urge, he remained standing, his legs only bending a touch.

There was no tangible force weighing down on him, but it felt like his knees couldn't fully extend anymore. The thought itself refused to enter his mind even if he wanted it to, but that didn't mean he couldn't stop himself from remaining in place. Half of his mind was dedicated to this while the other was overcome with a desire to submit.

For some reason, it felt like it was a bad thing to stand up and a good thing to kneel. Logan just didn't know why, making him think that something was wrong. He resisted out of instinct rather than reason. Everything came to a standstill for a moment, the deadlock only breaking when the gem grew brighter.

Suddenly, an endless weight began to bear down on Logan. He resisted that as well. Muscles strained against the force, but he soon noticed that his body wasn't heavy. The weight was all in his head. Thankfully, his willpower could remain whole under the assault, but his powerful mind didn't matter in the end.

A boot came down on the back of his knee, forcing Logan to kneel. The pressure massively increased the moment his physical body submitted. It felt like he had been dragged to the bottom of the sea, an ocean of power trying to crush him.

And yet he still resisted.

In fact, he was doing so well that he could even perceive his surroundings. The knights had started moving once the gem on the skeleton Lord's forehead ignited. One grabbed the arm of their captive while the other pulled out a potion. They unsheathed their swords and cut deeply into the arms of each person.

Blood poured out of their wounds and sunk into the floor, seeping into the carvings and spreading out in red lines. Once their skin grew pale, the other knight would force-feed them a potion before cutting their newly healed arm open, a burst of freshly generated blood spurting out.

Like that, the carvings on the floor gradually filled with blood. The bright red colours spread out from each of the nine victims. Eventually, they connected together and saturated the entire floor, the excess spilling down into the pit in trickling waterfalls. Minutes later, lines of red began to climb up the sides of the pillar.

Thousands of intricate scripts lit up beneath Logan's feet. They were glowing red with blood, tiny flakes of gold interspersed throughout the liquid to create a magical and horrifying sight. It continued spreading as the few humans in the room were continually fed more potions and bled dry by the knights.

The blood reached the base of the boulder. It trembled as if awakened from a deep slumber, the blood rousing it like a steak held in front of a sleeping dog's nose. Flakes of stone began to fall off the outside, revealing a few inches of glowing golden shell. Just a fraction of its surface was exposed and the entire cavern grew over ten degrees warmer. Despite his mind being impacted, Logan immediately knew what the boulder really was.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

How could he not after drinking its blood for the last month?

The vitality and heat of the egg washed over the room. It was like an endless wellspring of life, making him feel like a puddle before an ocean. He could even feel the monster's blood inside his body. It grew hot as it began to move, outright refusing to stay within his body.

It began to drain something out of him. Logan didn't understand until he saw his hands becoming wrinkled like an old person's. It was consuming his life force as it rebelled, obviously trying to kill him so that it would be free.

Logan's body temperature rose with each passing second, which made him realise why they had given them the potions in the first place. Reviving them was just a side effect. The real purpose was to drain their life force, using them as some kind of battery to feed the egg.

He did his best to resist. If he didn't, the foreign blood would consume him from the inside out before leaving him as a charred husk. They were nothing more than vessels to feed the skeleton Lord's pet so it could hatch. As for why Logan had been separated from the rest, he could only assume that he was the main sacrifice due to his greater resistance to the monster's power.

Seconds turned to minutes as events reached a turning point. The weight bearing down on Logan's mind was constant, but the burning inside grew stronger. That made it much more difficult to resist. It felt like he was going to fail at any moment. He almost did several times, but whenever his mind came close to collapse, his crumbling willpower condensed by a tiny amount. It was like sand turning into mud. The pressure would eventually be his undoing, but thanks to the attack being evenly spread over his entire consciousness, it was unintentionally refining the quality of his mind; his willpower.

All good things came to an end. When Logan's mind condensed a fourth time, the life force spread throughout his flesh was fully absorbed by the golden blood, leaving only a thin line of energy in his spine that was slowly eroding to keep his body alive. Fire erupted from his skin as nothing was left for the foreign blood to feast on. It could only break down his muscles and bones to get a few more drops, which were being burned away and absorbed as well.

Logan's willpower was nearly solid by that point, but what did that have to do with his body? There was nothing that could be done. As he rolled across the floor, a distant part of his mind noticed that he was screaming. His mental defences slowly crumbled. The power of the diamond began to seep into his mind, causing his body to move on its own as he stood up off the ground.

He continued fighting despite it being too late to change anything. If he hadn't discovered the painting, he would've died the second his mind was assaulted by the gem set into the circlet. It had given him a strand of hope at the beginning. He didn't regret working so hard, and now that it was allowing him to continue resisting the mental invasion, he only wished that he had worked harder.

By now, the egg had lost all of its stony shell, becoming a sea of flames trapped in a boulder-sized egg. Logan felt his body move as he walked over to the egg and pressed his hand on the shell. His life force was almost depleted when his skin brushed against the warm surface, causing something strange to happen. A gentle power flowed into his arm and began to supplement his vitality.

There was no way for a regular human to perceive their life force, but thanks to the violent way it was burning from his body, Logan could sense a line of power running from the base of his spine to his head. It had almost disappeared when the egg's power began to flow into his back and merge with it.

His life force almost instantly recovered. Logan felt a strand of hope, but that all changed when the power overflowed and spread out of his spine. It started burning him away from the inside. Skin, muscles, bones, nothing was spared. It felt like his blood had been replaced by magma. And yet despite being so overwhelmed, Logan still had enough mental strength to process what was going on in his surroundings.

Everyone was dead. They had been sapped of all their blood and life force, and now the blood of their flesh was also on fire. The flames spread out from their bodies. It started with the lines in the ground, the fire dancing over the cavern before igniting the tiny runes with reddish-orange tongues of flame.

Once the outer perimeter was ignited, the blood leaking into the pit also caught alight. The flames melted all the bones and corpses into ash before ascending up the pillar. Logan watched in shock as the bloody flames turned gold after destroying all the sacrifices in the pit.

They spread to the base of the egg. Logan waited for it to also catch alight, but the egg had different plans. It began to drink the blood. He watched as the liquid was pulled through the runes and scripts beneath his feet, disappearing into the shell.

Once it was done consuming the sacrifices, the shell began to droop. It took a moment to realise that it was melting. From the top of its shell, the egg collapsed into a liquid as it flowed into Logan's outstretched arm. Drop after drop. All of it sunk into his flesh and blood, merging with him until the entire boulder was somehow contained within his body.

Nothing made sense, but it didn't have to.

Not when the egg was flowing into his stomach. Drop after drop, a tiny egg with a lustrous golden surface reformed itself inside him. It wasn't in his physical body so much as it was resting inside the centre of his being; his core. If Logan cut himself open, the egg simply wouldn't be there.

Hopefully, the Skeleton Lord knew that fact. It stood over Logan's prone body with a crystal dagger. He tried to resist as the blade descended towards his stomach, but nothing happened. With its tendrils piercing deep into his consciousness, the circlet was still thoroughly controlling his mind.

That was when something changed, the Skeleton Lord flinching as a ripple spread out from his stomach.

Logan tried to take that opportunity to fight back against the circlet, but a horrific tearing force spread throughout his body. It was so painful that he entirely forgot about the pressure on his mind or even the fact that he was on fire. Everything simply went blank, his senses disappearing.

He couldn't even think anymore. There was just emptiness, reminding him of the time when he had died a month ago. Then, a ripple spread out as the pain suddenly disappeared. Logan opened his eyes and realised that everything had gone back to normal. Even the flames dancing on his skin died out.

Everything up until this point had gone to the skeleton Lord's plans. The only reason Logan could tell that something had gone wrong was in how it behaved, the dagger falling out of its hand as it stood up and retreated to the edge of the pillar in fear.

The skeleton knights immediately ran towards the bridge to save their Lord.

Logan had no idea what was going on until he felt another ripple. Now that he could think, he realised it wasn't just a shockwave. It was the beating of a heart. The monster's heart, which made him realise that the egg was alive. Logan hadn't even thought about it until now, but the egg had been lifeless the entire time. He hadn't noticed because its vitality was practically endless.

It was nothing more than a corpse. Or it had been until the skeleton Lord's ritual failed. Now Logan didn't know what was going on. He tried to find some kind of answer, but the two skeleton knights that had escorted him were charging over from the other side of the pillar.

One of them unsheathed its sword and was about to slash it at him while the other stood protectively before the Skeleton Lord. The sight of the gleaming blade made Logan flinch. He raised his hands and felt something move within him, the egg feeding him a stream of power as golden flames erupted from his skin.

Only this time, he didn't burn.