The road bends east around ancient hills.
League markers count down the distance to Candlekeep Monastery. Something pulls at these borrowed bones, not the raw need that first roused them from battlefield soil, but something other.
Books hold memory better than bone. Knowledge waits in those halls, preserved by wards these fragments half-remember. The shield pulses against my frame, recognizing familiar ground ahead.
I continue.
The ancient road splits and fractures, nature's fingers prying apart what man laid down. Roots breach the surface like broken bones piercing skin.
Dead trees line the path, their branches reaching toward a colorless sky. Black bark peels in strips, revealing gray flesh beneath. No leaves rustle. The branches stand bare.
The air hangs still. No wing beats disturb the silence. No birds call their territories. Empty nests rot in the skeletal trees, abandoned seasons past.
Even insects abandon this place, no webs stretch between branches, no beetles scurry through dead grass.
It is a dead place and a dead thing walks through it.
The road winds through a hollow where a stream once flowed. Dry stones mark its path, smooth from water long vanished. A wooden bridge spans the gap, its planks warped and splintered. My armored feet test each board before committing weight.
The wood groans but holds.
Moss grows in patches of sickly purple-black across fallen logs and stone. The moss recoils as shadows of these borrowed bones fall across it.
Haven's shield scrapes against my back as I duck under a fallen trunk. The bark crumbles at my touch, revealing tunnels carved by absent worms. The wood is hollow, like these bones that carry me forward.
A milestone emerges from tall dead grass. Characters carved into its face have worn smooth, but fingers of bone trace their shape. Three leagues to Candlekeep.
The distance means nothing to a form that needs no rest, yet something in these fragments remembers the weight of tired feet on ancient roads.
My bones know this road, though no single memory claims it. Fragments surface, the memory of win but not the memory of taste, the weight of scrolls in saddlebags.
Horse hooves on ancient cobbles.
These borrowed bones walked this path before.
Many times. Many lives. Merchants bringing paper and ink.
Knights escorting scholars. Pilgrims seeking wisdom.
But deeper knowledge stirs in these fragments.
These bones remember more than Haven forgot existed. Now I must reach those memories before they fade again.
The road curves between dead hills.
Mist clings to hollows, refusing to burn away though time must be passing. These bones feel the drift of hours but mark no difference between dark and darker.
Something moves in the fog. The shield pulses warning. My sword slides free without sound.
Not a threat. A memory. The mist shapes itself into ghost-forms of travelers long dead. Their edges blur and fade, leaving only impression of motion. They walk this road as they did in life, passing through these bones like water through sand.
The road continues its winding path. Dead trees thin, giving way to open ground. Broken walls emerge from darkness, boundary markers for monastery lands.
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The stones bear traces of protective wards, their power long faded.
First light touches the horizon. Gray bleeds into grayer. The shield pulses warning again, stronger now.
The ground shifts. Earth parts like water. Something vast moves beneath the surface, disturbing centuries of dead soil. The road buckles, ancient stones scattered like toys.
My sword comes up as the thing breaches the surface. Bone plates larger than shield walls emerge first, followed by a skull that could swallow a war horse whole. Empty eye sockets fix on my position. Jaw hinges crack wide, revealing rows of teeth carved with symbols these fragments half-recognize.
A wyrm of death rises, its skeleton assembled from the bones of a thousand lesser creatures. Corrupt magic pulses between its joints, holding impossible mass together. Each bone bears the mark of demon craft.
The shield steadies these borrowed bones. By the gray of morning day, day the creature rises to full heigh creature's bones in shades of gray as it rises to its full height.
My blade meets ancient bone with a sound like mountains splitting. The wyrm's head snakes down, jaws wide enough to swallow these borrowed bones whole. I pivot, shield braced. Teeth scrape against Haven's mark, sending sparks into the gray.
The creature's tail breaks earth behind me. Bone plates larger than castle doors scatter loose stone. I roll beneath the strike, sword finding gaps between massive vertebrae. No blood flows - this thing is as dead as these fragments that fight it.
Its head whips around. My shield arm shatters under impact. The wyrm's skull bears marks of demon craft.
My sword arm keeps moving. Aeternus finds purpose between ancient symbols.
The beast recoils.
Magic flares where steel meets bone. Its tail sweeps low, scattering a leg across broken ground. No matter. These arms still grip sword and shield, still cut and block as the wyrm's head darts in again.
Its teeth close on my ribcage. Borrowed bones crack. The shield pulses, rejecting corruption's touch. I drive Aeternus up through the roof of its mouth. Runes flare against runes. Power meets power.
The wyrm thrashes, taking half these bones with it. My skull watches the sword arm continue its work, cutting deeper into corrupt bone. The shield arm blocks strikes from massive tail and neck, each impact threatening to scatter remaining fragments further.
My scattered pieces pull together between the wyrm's strikes. Legs reform beneath torso. Spine remembers its shape. The beast's tail reduces progress to dust, but these bones know their purpose.
They return and return some more.
The wyrm coils around itself, bone plates grinding like continents at war. Its skull rears high, blocking dawn's gray light. Power builds in those carved teeth, in those demon-marked bones.
The sword pulses in these borrowed bones. Ancient magic recognizes ancient magic. My scattered skull watches from below as skeletal fingers grip Aeternus tighter. The blade knows what must be done.
I pull myself up the wyrm's massive vertebrae, climbing bone on bone. Its scales scrape against my armor. The creature twists, trying to shake these fragments loose.
No matter. Each handhold leads higher.
Finger bones finds purchase in the grooves of demon-script carved into its bones. The shield strapped to my back scrapes against massive plates as I ascend. The wyrm's head weaves through the gray morning, searching. It does not think to look upon itself.
Fingers of yellowed bone lock into the base of its skull. The creature feels the touch too late. I drag myself up as it thrashes, ancient runes pulsing beneath my grasp.
Aeternus lights against corrupt magic.
Power builds in the wyrm's maw, ready to unleash destruction.
My blade finds the seam where skull meets spine. Steel slides between bone plates, seeking the source of its animation.
The sword's runes flare bright against the wyrm's carved symbols. Light spreads through the creature's frame, racing along demon-script. Its jaw snaps shut, cutting off the building power.
My blade drives deeper.
Its skull begins to crack.
The massive skeleton convulses, each segment breaking apart in waves of dissolving magic.
I fall with the collapsing beast. Its bones scatter across the broken road, the corrupt markings burning away to reveal clean ivory beneath. The sword pulses in my grip, drawing me toward the purified remains.
Ancient bone calls to borrowed bone. My fragments respond, pulling toward the larger pieces. Where demon-script burned away, these bones recognize something familiar.
The wyrm's cleansed vertebrae crack and splinter, reforming to match my own. Massive ribs shrink and reshape, slotting between my own. Plates of bone armor fuse with my frame, strengthening yellowed segments with layers of ancient ivory.
My skull absorbs fragments of the wyrm's crest, forming ridges of natural armor. Spines emerge from shoulder blades, smaller echoes of the great beast's plates. The bones settle into place, each piece finding its purpose in this borrowed form.
The shield pulses against my enhanced frame, accepting the new additions. Aeternus hums in harmony with reformed bone. What was corrupt now serves protection's cause.
I flex fingers strengthened by wyrm-bone, testing joints reinforced with creature's essence. The new pieces move as if they were always part of these borrowed bones.
[Victory! Bone Wyrm defeated!]
[Level up! You are now level 4]
[Class Evolution: Grave Knight → Dragon Knight]
New Skill: Dragon Hardening (Passive): Your bones are reinforced with wyrm bone, making them harder to break or destroy.