Most of the titans I had encountered had been magnificent in their own way. Even the fell beast that had destroyed Sanctuary valley had been great and awe inspiring.

The only things this creature inspired was horror and revulsion.

The beast’s dark purple and red flesh looked like it was twisted and melted onto its form. Its pointed teeth, each longer than I was tall, didn’t fit within the creature’s maw. Instead, they interlocked outside the mouth, in a twisted parody of a grin. The beast’s several sets of eyes were each like pools of contaminated blood.

Worse than the creature's twisting horns or grotesque maw was the greenish cloud which hung about it. Vile shapes twisted and writhed amid the sickly miasma. The plants caught in the awful mists wilted and crumbled within moments.

Though exceedingly panicked, I held still. The monster’s gaze darted around, as though searching for prey. I was quite sure any motion would draw its attention immediately.

A long tongue, which resembled a thousand rotted ropes of flesh twisted together, tasted the air. To my great dismay, the horrific creature’s head turned directly towards me.

I needed to escape immediately. I doubted that any of the crumbling buildings around me would hold against such a monster.

With no other options, I redoubled my efforts to figure out how to open the sealed door. Footsteps like earthquakes sounded behind me as the beast ponderously approached.

I desperately felt out the mana form in the center of the door. One seemed to receive some form of input from the center of a circle carved into the stone. The other looked like it would relay the information to the rest of the door.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any clue how to correctly activate the first mana form. With no better ideas, I drew a large quantity of mana from my mana pool. If I couldn’t activate the enchantment correctly, I was just going to have to bypass the controls.

The door proved resistant to my intrusive mana as I tried to manually activate the second mana form. With each passing moment, death loomed closer.

Just as I was preparing myself for the journey to the realm of shades, a wisp of my mana managed to sink in.

With a shuddering groan, the doors slowly started to open. I didn’t bother looking inside before diving through the gap.

Turning around, I saw a colossal leg of twisted flesh slamming down a few paces from the doorway. Wisps of the vile green aura wormed their way towards the opening.

Forcing out almost the last of my mana, I reversed the direction mana flowed through the control for the door. With greater speed than they had opened with, the stone doors slammed shut once more.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Something incredibly heavy slammed into the doors, but they held. I didn’t know how long that would be the case as I shuddered in the dark.

I needed to find another way out.

Digging through my pack, I withdrew my jar of sigil paint. Drawing in the dark proved difficult, but I traced out a sigil of light onto the back of my hand.

The sight that greeted me banished any lingering hopes I had harbored of finding the descendants of the villagers. It was unlikely that anyone had escaped, as the number of bones in the room easily accounted for the missing people.

I choked out a sob as I gazed upon what must have once been at least a hundred people. I truly was alone in the world.

Collapsing to my knees, I realized that if all of these people had met their end trapped in here, it was likely that there would be no escape for me.

In my despair, I failed to recognize what my mana sight was telling me at first. Slowly, I came to the realization that I was surrounded by many extremely dense mana constructs. Inside each of the skulls was the now familiar form of the system.

As I hesitantly reached a hand towards one of the skulls, I felt something from my own system.

Legacy codex discovered. Progress to assimilation: 2%

I let out a bitter laugh. At least I was going to die with a codex full of old knowledge. If I needed to wait for the information of how doomed I was to finish assimilating, I had plenty of time to have a look around.

By the dim light of my sigil, I picked my way over the bones towards a wall. The paint was extremely faded, but I could kind of make out a picture on the wall. It seemed to depict people trying to fight monsters and losing.

The image seemed to continue further along the wall. Appreciative for the diversion from my plight, I looked at the next scene. This picture baffled me however.

I wasn’t sure if I was missing some context, but the next scene appeared to show a group of people lighting another person’s head on fire. The scene after showed a bunch of people with their heads on fire charging into battle with the monsters from the first scene. Apparently they were victorious, because the flame-headed people were standing on the mangled bodies of the monsters in the next picture.

As I stepped over a mana-filled skull, I realized that the pictures didn’t represent fire. Instead, I was looking at the history of the system.

Fascinated, I continued walking around the room. The pictures continued around the corner. The next wall focused on the people building many great villages and spreading out across the land.

The final wall showed some people riding wood across a large lake. On the other side of the water, the people lost a fight to much bigger monsters than the first picture contained. The last two pictures showed the people building villages on the top of three mountains and finally living happily.

It was a pity that the history of these people hadn’t stopped there. The peaceful life these people had evidently had at one point had somehow led to the pile of remains I now shared the room with.

I felt something click into place as I wondered what had happened to these people. With the assimilation of the legacy codex, I was able to find my answer.

The world spun as I was pulled into a memory that was not my own.