I locked my eyes onto the corpse sitting upon the massive stone throne as I slowly approached. When I was about halfway there, it twitched and then moved. The head rose slightly as two white, milky eyes met mine, and the face stretched into a grin.

"Welcome," said a hoarse, ancient voice. "Welcome to my tomb, traveller."

I stopped and extended myself to the creature, wondering about its power. I expected to sense a relatively strong opponent. The golem was probably almost at the fifth circle. The logistics of keeping something like that up through the last thousand years were another matter, but I assumed this was a test like the construct before.

"Who am I?" asked the corpse.

Was that the test?

"A corpse. One reanimated by magic," I answered, looking for any clues about the identity of the creature as I stopped myself from just scanning it. Considering whose tomb it was and the placement upon the throne, calling it the Butcher might be the obvious answer. Still, it should be impossible depending on the definition of 'being'.

It looked at me as my eyes darted all over the place, scanning for something useful.

"Hehehe." A raspy laugh, more akin to a cough, echoed in the air. "It's not a trick, boy. Let me give you a hint. You can scan me as much as you want. I won't do anything."

I frowned, but after some consideration, I took the time to turn my consciousness into as thin a thread as possible in case it was attacked. Once happy with the result, I extended it into the corpse.

I expected to sense something interesting—some sort of clue hidden in the undead flesh or another set of soul runes to decipher. But as my consciousness touched the creature, I froze on the spot like a stone statue. It wasn't any cipher or magical signature I sensed.

No, I sensed a spark. A spark of a living being.

It was impossible. No one from that long ago should be able to survive. That was against the very rules of the world.

The thing's mouth now stretched into a full smile.

"Yes, boy. You know the answer. It is written all over your face."

"...You're the Butcher of Karhirs," I half-whispered.

"Correct!" shouted the man upon the throne. "Now—" His face changed into a mask of indifference and cruelty. "Bow to me or be destroyed," he said in a voice cold as ice.

My muscles tensed. I couldn't feel his magical signature, but with a difference of this many circles, that wasn't a surprise. Should I bow? I didn't like that—my pride didn't like that—but I could ignore it for my own sake, no problem.

The real question was: was that the correct response? Was he really the Butcher, or was it a trick? I knew I sensed a spark in him, and the tomb was supposed to be sealed for over a thousand years, so it didn't make any sense.

"You'd better hurry, boy. Or you'll be turned into a golem next," the corpse urged me.

'It shouldn't really be the Butcher. Having a spark should prevent him from living this long,' I thought.

So if it was a trick or a test, what was the solution? My eyes darted to the massive spell in the room. This was the only obvious thing, with the corpse sitting in the middle of it. It should contain a clue.

"Well, if you won't bow out of your own free will, I'll just get up, take that hook from you, pull out your soul, and teach it to bow. You have ten seconds to make up your mind, boy."

I started analysing the massive spell. The runes on the floor, written on concentric discs, caught my eye first.

"Nine."

The first layer spoke of a soul spell of sorts.

"Eight."

But I couldn't get its whole nature, not without getting to the discs underneath.

"Seven."

The upper layer should be one of the most important. I saw soul magic. I saw a massive symbol of the spark in the central node—so a spark-related magic.

"Six."

There wasn't an illusory component… Was the spark I felt real then? Was I standing in front of the Butcher himself?

"Five."

Should I bow? Was that the solution?

"Four."

No, there had to be more. Any coward could bow. I directed my gaze at the runes covering the throne.

"Three."

The corpse sat in a strange position. It was tilted to the left, resting its chin on its hand, and showing part of a massive runic circle etched in the backrest behind it.

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"Two," it said, as it moved its hand as if to get up.

Was it a clue? It had to be. I looked closer at the rune. I recognized the upper shape—a sealing rune.

"One."

This and the spark rune, combined with the multidimensional nature, suggest space magic—

"Zer—"

"The answer is—" I interrupted, "go fuck yourself. I'm not bowing."

There was a slight pause as the corpse seemed ready to rise.

"And why would that be?" it asked, and I could hear slight curiosity colouring the cold voice. "You don't think I'm the Butcher?"

"No, you are the Butcher. I just don't think you can get up from that throne."

A tense silence spread between us as he looked into my eyes.

"...Correct," he said, falling back onto the seat, hands resting on the stone armrests to the side. He then straightened back up, his head covering the sealing rune.

I smiled happily, still keeping my guard up.

"So, what now?"

"Now we talk. And if I like what I hear, you get this," he said as he swiped a hand over the whole laboratory.

"Sounds good," I said and approached the throne.

"So why do you think I can't rise from the throne?"

"Is that a magic exam?"

"Yes."

Oh, exciting. The last one I took was prepared by my father, years ago.

"Fine," I said and pointed at him. "The first thing that got me was your spark. You were already an old man when you were building this tomb. Another thousand years wasn't possible. Even if you were much younger when you sealed yourself here, that wasn't happening."

"Maybe I was at the ninth circle?"

"No. No new ninth-tier mages ascended after the war. And the mana concentration was so low you would have needed to build this tomb much sooner if you were that powerful."

The corpse nodded. "Good. But you thought I was undead. The undead don't age. So why bet on the passage of time?"

Oh, that was a tricky one. The question was a trap based on a false premise. A lesser mage could choke on that.

"But you had a spark. It gives the ability to change, but in turn, it makes us finite. No matter the power, a ninth-circle mage would have trouble living past a thousand years. Even Abdul Alhazred himself lived to one thousand two hundred."

As I spoke the words, I watched for any reaction when I dropped my grandfather's name. He could have known him—or my father. However, I didn't pick up anything, so I continued my reasoning.

"There are ways to stretch one's life, sure. But in the end, you can't cheat the eternal spark." I lied smoothly. My father did just that, but he was a special case, so my point still stood. "Even if you change your flesh into undead or perform rituals, the universe will reclaim the gift given to us. So you changed your flesh to that of the undead to get rid of decay and somehow sealed your spark inside that body, preventing it from leaving. A seal like that should be impossible in the first place. Allowing you freedom of movement is unlikely. I would assume it works only in the place of the ritual. You changed something about the throne itself."

"You have sharp eyes. But I could have used magic to kill you without getting up."

"If your spark still had rings around it, there was no amount of mana that would allow you to seal it for so long. Once you ascend, even undead flesh will consume mana. For over a thousand years, no mana storage could sustain you." I was sure of that one. Even my father, with his unconventional way of dealing with time, had to give up almost all his orbits. "So you shattered your rings and turned your flesh undead, getting rid of the effects of ascension, and then sealed your spark to this throne."

"Correct once again. However, your grasp of multidimensional sealing is lacking. I didn't seal just myself. I was able to seal three people's sparks."

"What?" I almost shouted, and then looked at the cylinders in the room.

"Yes," he said. "They are still alive."

I turned to them and, looking at the stone floor, saw that they really were part of the runic circle, with separate nodes. I had a guess about what was in them, almost reaching out my hand toward the white sheet on the closest one.

"No!" shouted the corpse, and I could hear desperation in the voice—almost fear. "N-not yet. It's not the time. I'm not ready," he said, and for the first time, the ages seemed to catch up to him as the tone of the mighty Butcher was gone, replaced by that of a feeble old man.

I turned back to him. He was still on the throne, slightly tilted forward, his hand outstretched toward me, his mouth slightly open, and his eyes… they were so sad, even with the milky whiteness filling them, I could see it clearly. He changed from the once-mighty mage in such a short time to someone looking… lonely. My curiosity about the man grew. All I heard were stories, so who really was the infamous Butcher?

"I guess you have questions for me," he said, noticing the look in my eyes.

"Quite a few, yes." I thought about asking who he really was, but then decided to fill the gaps in the investigation first. Start with the small talk. "How did the hook arrive outside this tomb?"

"Huh," he chuckled. "Is that what you want to know? One of the golems carried it out once the mechanism outside sensed ambient mana."

The dumb creature must have arrived at the slaughterhouse and simply hung it with other hooks, I realised.

"But how did you know someone related to soul magic would find it? It seems like quite a gamble."

"What does it matter where the hook was found?" asked the man, tilting his head slightly. "The artefact has natural attraction, and this one is even stronger. You should have felt it—a practical intelligence, an artificial soul that drives its power. It would have been found, and if it were, it would be used. And then the mages would get their hands on it. Someone with talent would have to come and pass the tests sooner or later."

"How could you know a mage wou—" I started asking, but then realised something. The Butcher disappeared a thousand years ago. It was before the Age of Inquisition. "You think the Shadow Gallery is still around," I said, more to myself than him.

It was the Butcher's turn to frown. "Still around? Why wouldn't it still be around?"

I chuckled at that. "You still think we run things outside, don't you?"

"Even with the lack of ambient mana, how could we not? A simple thought of a mage is stronger than any sharpened steel in mortal hands."

"Yeah, but once that steel is joined by gunpowder, it's another story."

"Gunpowder? What, did the Chinese fire lances scare the mages?" he laughed.

"It's… complicated. Let's just say the world changed quite a lot."

He looked at me in silence until finally nodding slightly. "So be it. But here you stand, so in the end it turned out as intended."

"But I still don't get it. Why the tomb? Why seal your spark? Why the tests? And how does the hook work? How were those souls using magic? And… what do you want with all of this?" I fired question after question as my curiosity finally overflowed.

"You want answers, and I'll give them to you. But by the end of that story, I want you to do something for me," he said as his eyes drifted to the covered containers.

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