The tower shook.A crack split the ceiling above. Dust rained across the chamber. Church soldiers were trying to force their way inside. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.Every eye remained fixed on the man sitting atop the stone pedestal.Saint Aurek. Alive. Or something close enough to it. Draeven's grip tightened around Mournhook.The saint's eyes tracked the movement immediately. Not hostile. Not nervous. Simply aware. Like a man noticing a bird land on a fence.The difference made Draeven more uncomfortable than fear would have. Outside, another impact echoed through the tower.The walls trembled. Time was running out. Aurek glanced upward."They found this place faster than I expected."His voice sounded ordinary. That was somehow worse. Legends weren't supposed to sound ordinary. Legends were supposed to feel larger than life.This man sounded like a traveler commenting on a delayed meal. Severin recovered first."You know about the Hollow King?"Aurek looked at him. Then nodded."I

The corpse exploded before it hit the floor. Black fire burst from its chest. Draeven threw himself sideways.Fragments of bone slammed into the stone wall behind him. A second body rose from the crypt floor at the same moment. Then a third. Then six more."Move!" Severin roared.The executioner's axe tore through the nearest dead man. The blade split ribs and spine. The corpse kept coming. Its ruined hands clawed for his throat. Not dead. Not alive.Something in between.Draeven rolled to his feet and yanked Mournhook free. The scythe carved through a skeletal arm. Dark mist poured from the wound instead of blood. The thing staggered. Then kept advancing.Wonderful.The deeper chambers beneath Saint Aurek's tomb had already been wrong. No dust. No decay. No signs of age despite centuries passing overhead.Now they knew why.Something down here was preserving the dead. Something powerful. Something hung

The tunnel collapsed behind them. Stone thundered through the darkness. A wall of dust chased Draeven and the others up the ancient passage."Faster!" Oric shouted.Nobody needed encouragement. The floor shook beneath their boots. Cracks raced along the walls.Chunks of the ceiling crashed down without warning.Draeven ducked beneath a falling slab. It shattered against the ground where his head had been a heartbeat earlier. The tomb was dying. Good. The thing beneath it should have stayed buried.Unfortunately, Draeven doubted a few thousand tons of stone would solve that problem.The ancient monster had survived centuries in a black coffin. A cave-in wasn't likely to finish the job.Another violent tremor hit. Severin stumbled. Blood dripped from a deep cut across his forehead. His left arm hung lower than it should. Broken or close to it. Still moving. Still fighting.That alone said enough about the man. The

The skeletal hand locked around the edge of the coffin and pulled.Stone scraped against stone. A skull emerged from the darkness.Then shoulders.Then an entire armored skeleton climbed from the ancient tomb. Its armor was an old hunter plate. Its chest carried Aurek's sun.Empty eye sockets burned with silver light. Around the burial hall, more coffins opened.Dozens. Then hundreds.The sound rolled through the chamber like an avalanche. Stone grinding. Bones rattling. Ancient warriors rising.Oric backed toward Draeven."Tell me these things are friendly."One skeleton stepped fully from its coffin. It drew a rusted sword. The blade shouldn't have survived centuries. Neither should the warrior holding it.Draeven tightened his grip on Mournhook."Let's not assume."The nearest skeleton turned its skull toward them.Silver fire brightened.For one terrible second, Draeven expected a charge. Instead, the warrior looked past them.Toward the entrance. Toward the collapsed tomb above.

Ash-grey fingers curled around the edge of the crack, each one longer than a man's arm, tipped in something too smooth to be bone and too jointed to be metal.The light behind them wasn't fire. It didn't flicker or breathe. It simply existed, cold and patient, the way a held breath exists right before it's let out.Nerez didn't see it coming. He was on one knee, spent from the binding, when the hand closed around his ankle and pulled.He hit the ground hard, dragged a full body-length toward the widening gate before anyone reacted. His notebook no, not his, Draeven remembered a half-second too late, his own skittered across the stone and vanished into the dark beyond the altar."Nerez!" Oric was already moving, axe raised, but the hand was faster than anything that size should have been.Draeven didn't think. He swung Mournhook in a single downward arc, aiming for the wrist-thick joint where fingers met palm.The blade connected. Black ichor sprayed across broken stone, hissing where