These Hallowed Bones - [Monster Evolution, Dark Fantasy, Heroic Undead]

A sluggish current seeps around these feet, carrying scraps of cloth and things too shapeless to name. Here, where men once huddled when all else was lost, no memory remains but grime and guilt.

This is the underbelly of Haven, where those who had nowhere else to go faded into darkness, forgotten by a city struggling to survive.

No dragon dreams of skies, no wolf to snarl.

Those fragments lie dormant, suppressed so nothing competes with the mission ahead.

Hollow eyes look across slick walls, indifferent to rot and filth.

The eel's corpse drifts somewhere behind me in the muck. Its black fluids linger, but the sewer's slow current will disperse all traces soon enough.

The only reminders of that brief clash are my own tattered bandages, stained darker where monster once gnawed.

An unseen pull tugs from the deeper tunnels, an echo older than hunger.

It's the same compulsion that roused these bones from the Field of Broken Banners, guiding me forward whether I willed it or not.

This time, it leads me through a corroded gate that wasn't meant to be locked.

I push the grate open.

Metal resists, bends, then folds.

Moldering hinges groan, stagnant air seeps out from spaces untouched.

Beyond lurks another corridor, narrower, older. The walls here bear no Haven stonework, no human craftsmanship. This passage predates the settlement above, carved when different powers ruled these lands.

Water rises at my ribs as I wade deeper.

Step by step, I move through water gone black.

The map in its lead case remains dry against my back, though I sense it may no longer guide true.

Some passages aren't marked in Commander Ikert's careful ink.

Their final guidance vanish into mire and sewage. A spot that wasn't on the map.

I know what I've found.

More of the forgotten of Haven, vagrants, outcasts, driven down here in desperation or choice.

At times, I see evidence of them , half-sunken crates, crude bedding made from rags that must have once been clothes.

A child's doll, faceless from rot, bobs in a stagnant pool.

A battered pot sits on a shelf of damp stone, rusting.

Beside it, a tin cup half-filled with hardened sludge, as if its owner set it down moments before calamity struck.

These were lives, once.

Not soldiers who chose their end, not warriors falling in noble battle.

Just the desperate, forgotten by a world too harsh to make room for weakness.

Chosen bones stir, urgent.

The eel's defeat weighed little on this form, but something else resonates here.

A presence. Or perhaps only echoes waiting to be claimed.

In a branching alcove where the sewer widens, the walls rise higher, forming a murky pocket of slightly drier ground.

The ceiling here bears scorch marks, old fire pits for meager warmth or cooking.

There, the remains of five or six people lie jumbled beneath collapsed timbers. A rotted plank scrawled with the word "HOME," now half-submerged in slime, lays awkwardly across scattered bones.

The collapse must have been sudden. No time to flee, only to die beneath crushing weight.

I kneel, letting lamp-oil residue drip from the lantern I salvaged. The murk parts enough to show skulls and scattered ribs.

One skeleton is smaller, likely a child's, fingers still clutching a carved wooden horse.

Another is tall, with snapped femurs. Still more lie half-buried in debris, their final moments preserved in the positions of their bones.

Desperation trapped them here.

I set the lantern carefully on a protruding stone, ensuring light won't extinguish. These dead deserve to be seen, if only by bones that walk to see their passing.

This form shift carefully, clearing waterlogged planks.

My hand uncovers a skeletal forearm, its owner sporting metal rings hammered into the wrist bones, likely shackles, not jewelry. A prisoner, then, escaped only to find a different prison below.

The spirit is long gone; no trace of a final vow remains. Nothing to claim. No echo.

But something in these borrowed fragments recognizes the injustice. Knight bones remember oaths to protect the innocent. Even wolf bones understand the wrongness of cages.

Another skeleton, half-broken, yields only shriveled cloth with pockets emptied. The skull faces upward, jaw stretched wide in what must have been a final scream. Did they see the beams coming down? Did they have that moment come with knowing?

The next is too far disintegrated to hold any resonance.

Water has worn away identity, leaving only hints of what once was human.

The child's skeleton rests curled against the larger one, perhaps parent and offspring. The small hand bones still clutch the wooden toy, a horse carved from harder wood. In death, a mother or father still shields their young, arm bones positioned protectively.

These fragments understand sacrifice. The bones within me know, how many fell protecting others on the Field of Broken Banners? How many gave their last moments to shield comrades?

Even here, in squalor and darkness, such nobility exists.

I set the remains back gently.

These are not bones I will borrow. Their purpose was protection, and to disturb them now would break that final duty. Let them remain together, these two who faced the end as one.

Finally, near the center, I find a torso pinned under a collapsed beam.

The skull tips forward as if in final submission, yet something in the posture speaks of authority even in death. Crude etchings near its hand, tally marks, perhaps to mark the passing of time while trapped. Around the neck, a necklace of sorts with a rusted badge still hangs, preserved.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

A faint insignia shines in lantern light. Not Haven's mark, something simpler, cruder.

I pry the beam aside.

The skeleton's bones remain relatively intact compared to the rest.

When my gauntleted fingers lift the skull, a faint presence lingers beneath consciousness. It's not a warrior's echo, nor a beast's hunger.

Something else, the authority of one who enforced order in desperate times.

These bones hold memory, not of battle glory or monster fury, but of something equally powerful, survival against all odds.

Leadership when hope abandoned all else.

No single flash of memory surfaces, only the vague notion of how it guided and ruled other.

This one made hard choices when no good options remained.

The badge that dangles from a rotted cord shows half a crest, once an emblem of petty leadership for control among exiles. Memories swirl, an echo organizing, holding others in line, bargaining scraps of food to keep them alive.

Heavy hands and hardened hearts.

A fist and a dirk. Hard choices in the dark.

Yes. This is the one.

These chosen bones do not kneel in false reverence. There is no grand ceremony among the forgotten. Merely a subtle shift in the magic that binds me. I slide my hand across the skeleton's sternum, fragments separate, responding to the compulsion deep in my core.

A hum resonates, faint, intangible, acknowledging this new echo.

Merging pieces, these fallen vagrant's bones integrate into my ribs and spine. The older fragments rearrange, making room for this new addition. At once, the memory stirs: not an image, but a sense of navigating tangled corridors, forcing others to follow.

A will that once wrestled chaos underfoot.

It leaves behind a sense of direction, how to choose the correct path in gloom.

Echoes of command decisions surface, which passages flood first during heavy rain, which alcoves remain dry longest, where sewage flows slowest. Knowledge born of harsh necessity, not maps or formal training.

Quietly, I let the rest of the skeleton settle back into the sewer's sludge. An empty shell now. I claimed what I needed, but something compels these borrowed bones to arrange the remains with dignity. Arms crossed over chest, head straightened.

A position of rest, not the contortion of violent death.

The occupant is gone. Only this small echo remains, now part of the collective that drives this frame forward.

I straighten, ignoring the silent protest from older bones. This borrowed sense of direction bleeds into awareness, bringing clarity where the map shows only guesswork.

The half-shattered lantern flickers, revealing a sloping passage to my left. Instinct, or that new memory, suggests the route to the catacombs might lie there, not through the main drainage channel marked on Haven's charts.

Where others once sheltered from both sewage and authority, a secret passage awaits.

So be it.

No fanfare. No hesitation.

I set down the lantern on a jutting stone ledge, checking its flame. The sputtering wick remains alive enough to guide a few more steps.

It's enough.

I drag a half-rotted plank over the scattered bones of the others, a brief gesture of respect. Let the water rise and fall as it will, these remains deserve whatever meager rest remains after I've borrowed their final spark.

On the beam, I scratch a single mark with the tip of Aeternus, not words, simply a line to show these souls were acknowledged. That someone saw them, knew they existed, recognized their end.

I leave the lantern burning beside the makeshift grave.

These bones understand abandoned duty. The fragments within me know what it means to be forgotten, to fade without witness. Each piece carries its own silence - soldiers who fell without glory, beasts who died without names, and now these lost souls of Haven's depths.

My fingers trace another line beside the first mark on the beam. Two lines. Two acknowledgments.

Not enough.

I kneel again in the murky water, listening to its gentle lap against stone. Somewhere in these borrowed ribs, a vagrant's memory recalls prayers. Not warrior's oaths but simpler plea, for warmth, for food, for one more dawn.

I take the child's wooden horse and place it atop the plank covering the smaller skeleton.

Let it remain where it belongs, with tiny fingers that carved meaning from scrap.

The shackled one deserves freedom in death. I break the metal rings from bone-thin wrists, snapping iron that once held flesh captive. The fragments scatter across stone, no longer binding anyone to anything.

Last, I retrieve the badge from the leader's remains. Not to take it, but to clean centuries of grime from its face with careful, methodical movements.

When it gleams as much as it ever will again, I return it to rest against sternum.

No grand burial. No sacred ground. But acknowledgment. Recognition.

These were not warriors who chose glory's path. These were the cast-aside, the unwanted.

Yet they lived. They mattered. They were.

And now, a fragment of one will continue forward, carrying knowledge earned.

The lantern gutters but holds as I rise. Our purpose differs, these bones and mine. They found their rest. I must continue.

But I will remember.

Then, without words or breath, I continue deeper.

What once took vague guesswork and old maps is now guided by surety. A new piece in these chosen bones shows me the subtle differences in each corridor's slope, the way water drains, the cues of stale air.

The wolf or dragon might once have stirred at odd scents, but their howls lie dormant beneath my will.

In their place stands only duty, reinforced by a vagrant's grim leadership. For all the squalor that soul endured, it now helps me navigate these tunnels with certainty born of desperate survival.

Sludge churns around my knees. The walls weep black rivulets. Muffled echoes hint at distant chambers. Soon, I sense a space ahead, perhaps where sewers merge with catacombs. This is where Haven once gathered its dead, layering them below the city in more dignified rest than the forgotten I leave behind.

The vagrant's memory pulses with recognition – this passage was avoided, spoken of in hushed tones. The dead lie beyond, and even the desperate respected their domain.

Deeper still, the dwarven roads might wait.

Lamp flame dims, reflection dancing on the dark water. I tighten my grip on Aeternus.

Another shape might wait beyond the gloom, some corrupted guardian of the catacombs, or more sewer beasts prowling new territory. But fear does not exist in these bones.

The borrowed vagrant's memory carries caution born of survival, not cowardice. That echo whispers of strange sounds from the catacombs in darkest hours, of those who ventured there and never returned to the sewer community.

Only the hush of lifeless air greets these bones, and that unwavering pull driving me onward.

Once more, I let final bits of bandage fall away from my arms. They serve no purpose here in the black. Let those who feared me above remain comforted in ignorance. Down here, I need no disguise.

The corruption that rules the world above holds no sway on the forgotten below. Here, only purpose matters. Only duty endures.

Step after step, I descend until the water recedes. A sloping curve leads above sewer level. Less sludge, more ancient stone. The vagrant's memory flutters in half-glimpses, reminding me of secret gatherings, warnings to keep quiet near certain walls lest the dead take offense.

The passages grow narrower, but I follow exactly where the sense leads. Past a collapsed side tunnel where floodwaters once claimed three lives. Around a junction where an old trap still waits, rusted spikes designed to keep something in rather than out.

Far overhead, Haven fills with flickering torches and anxious watchers. Beneath, in this silence, I alone move through a stillness broken only when water drips from centuries-old pipes.

Soon, the corridor opens into a low-vaulted chamber, its entrance bricked off in spots with old mortar. An arch once sealed lies partially collapsed. Broken steps descend from behind that rubble, likely the first rung of the catacombs.

The vagrant's memory grows more cautious here. They ventured this far only in dire need, when sewage backflow forced their community to higher ground.

Yes, forward. Always forward.

I step around the fallen stones. Moss and fungal growths cling to every surface, pale and colorless in the dim light. The catacombs wait beyond, silent. Their threshold beckons.

With each stride, the echo from the skeleton's command fades, as though it served its sole purpose to guide me here. Its awareness of the sewers stretched only this far. Beyond lies knowledge it never possessed.

Bracing for whatever lurks in the depths, I tap the final dregs of the lantern's oil. It sputters, coughs, then springs to life one more time, casting a sickly glow that barely penetrates the gloom.

Enough to see the first row of stacked alcoves brimming with old remains. The catacombs spread before me, a grid of stone shelves cut into the walls, each holding what remains of Haven's dead.

Unlike the forgotten in the sewers, these dead were remembered, honored. Their bones rest in ordered rows, some wrapped in tattered cloth, others now bare. Small tokens lie with some , clay cups, bent coins, symbols of faith or status.

These are not the forgotten. These are the mourned.

I move among them, borrowed bones passing those who received proper rest. No pull of magic, no echo of final purpose emanates from these remains.

The catacombs stretch onward, a labyrinth of the honored dead. The iron mask still covers my skull, a final shield against the indignity of a monster walking among those properly laid to rest.

Knight fragments within remember funeral rites, honor guards standing silent as comrades were interred. Dragon bones recall ancient burial grounds where wyrms returned to die among their ancestors. Even wolf bones understand territory marked by the dead.

I exhale nothing, no breath. My borrowed bones move as always, forging ahead into the gloom. Above, a city that can't spare living men sends a single skeleton to claim the path. That is the cost of survival in a world that mercy forgot.

The living above need the dead to survive. The dead below need only remembrance.

Then, something else, where noble bones should lie, only empty space remains.

Another crypt tells the same story. Four generations of master craftsmen, their final works their own resting places, now lie exposed.

The bones are gone. No signs of violence mark the remaining fragments. No tool marks or animal gnawing.

Not even a fragment these bones might borrow.

The pattern repeats.

Something passed through these halls, something that left no trace save hunger satisfied.

I press on, letting the last scraps of lamplight guide me toward the unknown darkness where the dwarven roads, and deeper horrors, must lie. The borrowed vagrant's knowledge fades entirely, leaving only Haven's map and my own purpose to guide the way forward.

Deeper. Always deeper.