Something circles above the Field of Broken Banners, casting a shadow too solid to be natural. Wings of corrupted stone scrape against twilight air. The creature banks lower, searching. Its head turns on a serpentine neck, scanning the ground where the dark heart once beat.

Here to investigate its master's loss. Here to find what ended the pulse of corruption.

Beyond the circling beast, Haven's people venture from their walls for the first time in memory. Children point at real sunlight. The elderly weep at colors they'd forgotten.

Scavengers grow bold, pushing further into the field of ancient weapons to gather supplies.

They don't see death coming from above. Not yet.

I rise from where ancient weapons had concealed these bones. The beast's stone eyes fix on my frame. Recognition flares - it senses the power that destroyed its kin.

I am enemy. It knows.

Wings spread wider than Haven's gates. Claws that could shear plate armor flex. A screech echoes, stone grinding against stone. The sound sends scavengers scrambling back toward Haven's walls.

Children freeze, then run screaming. The elderly stumble in their haste to retreat.

The hunt begins.

It dives. I charge. We meet where rusted spears thrust up like iron thorns. My blade catches the edge of a stone wing and lodges in.

The creature's momentum carries us both skyward, my sword lodged in its flesh, these bones refusing to release their grip.

Shouts rise from Haven's walls. Guards abandon their posts as stone wings pass too close. A child stands transfixed until her mother yanks her to safety.

Commander Ikert's voice rings out, ordering her people to shelter.

The gargoyle twists, trying to dislodge its unwanted passenger. Wind howls through hollow ribs. My arm separates at the shoulder, but fingers locked around the sword hilt keep these bones anchored to our prey.

Height means nothing to what cannot die.

Ancient runes ignite along my blade. The gargoyle feels them burn. It rolls, plummets, scrapes us both against Haven's outer wall. Plates of my armor tear free, raining down on panicked troops below.

Ribs crack. No matter. The sword remembers older ways of ending monsters.

A young guard stumbles over my fallen shoulder plate, drops his crossbow. Others fire wildly, more likely to hit their own than their target. Their bolts whistle past my scattered bones, lodge in vertebrae, snap against armor plate.

These missiles mean nothing to borrowed bones.

"Hold your fire!" The commander calls. More bolts fly despite her order. Fear drives their fingers to triggers.

The gargoyle banks hard right, scraping more of my bones against Haven's stones. Armor fragments clatter across the battlements. A section of wooden scaffolding collapses, sending defenders scrambling.

An old man falls, would have died if not for Commander Ikert's quick grip on his collar.

It is no matter. These bones have purpose.

We rise again, the beast's wings straining against our combined weight. I drag myself up its writhing back, borrowing climbing skills from borrowed bones. My free hand finds purchase in the junction of wing and spine.

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Pulls. Stone cracks.

The gargoyle screams. The sound shivers through bone and steel, shatters windows in Haven's upper towers. Glass rains down on those still fleeing below.

It flies straight up, beyond Haven's highest points. Then flips backward, meaning to drive us both into the earth.

Let it try. These bones know no fear of falling.

We fall. The ground rushes up. My sword pulses with remembered power. Aeternus awakens. The blade knows what must be done.

The impact shatters us both.

My bones scatter across the field like thrown dice. Ribs impale soft earth. Skull goes bouncing between ancient shields.

The gargoyle breaks into a hundred stone shards, each one still trying to move, to reform.

But my sword arm, still gripping its hilt, continues its arc. The blade remembers. Power flows.

A soldier who had ventured out to recover arrows stops, transfixed by the sight. Others gather at gaps in Haven's walls, unable to look away as death itself rises again.

The stone shards hang in the air, trying to reform. But my sword arm, still clutching its blade, arcs through their attempt at resurrection. Aeternus awakens - not light, but something darker than shadow.

The blade carves law into reality itself.

Ancient runes ignite along the blade's length, each symbol burning with purpose older than these borrowed bones. Power flows from hilt to tip, death's own decree made manifest.

The gargoyle's fragments freeze mid-reformation. Stone grinds against stone as the pieces fight the blade's command. But Aeternus remembers what these corrupted things have forgotten - the true meaning of ending.

The runes pulse once. Twice. A third time.

Light erupts from the blade, once more. It consumes the hanging stone fragments. It expands, then contracts, then unlight that erases corruption.

Where steel passes, the corruption binding stone together simply ceases. The gargoyle's fragments fall like dead stones, unable to remember what they once were. The power that gave them motion dissolves, cut away by edges that recall when death meant true ending.

[Victory! Corpse-Stone Sentinel destroyed!]

My scattered bones begin their slow crawl back together. A child points from behind her mother's skirts as femur finds pelvis. Spine remembers its curve.

Guards cross themselves as armor plates skitter across ground of their own accord, returning to reformed frame.

The last piece to return is my sword arm, still clutching its killing blade. Commander Ikert watches from the battlements, measuring what she sees. Others whisper, some fearful, some wondering.

They watched death fight death and win.

Let them see what guards their gates. Let them understand what walks the killing fields.

I rise once more, whole but changed. These borrowed bones understand better now what they have become. Not holy. Not blessed.

Simply death's own champion, wielding laws that even monsters must obey.

People slowly emerge from shelter. They gather supplies dropped in their panic, steal glances at the skeleton that fought sky and stone. A brave child approaches one of the gargoyle's fallen shards but her father pulls her back.

They fear the corruption might linger.

They need not worry. Nothing remains to taint their precious sunlight. Nothing remains to report back to its masters.

I settle among the broken weapons while dust that was once a gargoyle scatters on the wind. Time stretches toward my appointed meeting at Haven's walls. Nothing else hunts here, not now.

These bones rest where armies fell. Rusted swords rise from earth like grave markers, each one telling half a story. Here, a spear still pierced through decayed carapace.

There, a shield clutched by skeletal hands. Every weapon, every bone, carried purpose once.

A scavenger works up courage to approach closer than his fellows, studying my stillness. He reaches for a piece of the gargoyle but stops when my skull turns to track his motion. He retreats, but not in terror.

Already they learn - death guards, but death does not harm needlessly.

Perhaps pieces of this frame belonged to them. A rib from a banner carrier who died protecting his standard. A femur from a scout who warned of demons' approach. A skull that once housed desperate final thoughts of home.

I cannot know which fragments are mine, if any ever were. These borrowed bones carry too many deaths to count. Too many last stands. Too many final charges.

The compulsion pulses stronger as shadows lengthen. Haven's walls mean nothing now. Greater monsters will follow. The corruption I destroyed beneath them was minor, barely worth notice.

Darker things wait beyond the battlefield's edge. Monsters that turn forests into hunting grounds. Beasts that drag cities into lightless depths.

Beasts that allowed Haven to exist at leisure. A plaything and hunting ground.

My finger bones trace unnamed graves. No markers tell their stories. No monuments speak their deeds. Yet something of their purpose lingers, driving these assembled bones toward greater battles.

The sun touches horizon. Time to gather maps, to seek paths toward darkness that needs ending. Commander Ikert waits at her post, maps in hand.

She has seen what guards her walls now.

These bones rise, answering duty's call. Death goes to learn where it must walk next.