The thick fog began to thin, thread by thread, as if some unseen hand was peeling it back.

Then the ground rumbled. Radeon, Fay, and the bison all shivered at once.

Pressure rolled in like a tide, heavy enough to make lungs feel small.

It pressed from above, from around, even from below.

The dead answered. Corpses jerked and rose in patches, not as men but as puppets.

Flesh golems clawed their way upright, stitched from hundreds of bodies into towering heaps of meat and bone.

They loomed in the thinning fog, and there were more of them than Radeon cared to count.

Their cultivation was clear even at a glance. Nascent Soul at least. Possibly higher.

Skeletons followed, cleaner in their horror. They stood in neat rows, bows and swords and staves held motionless.

Nothing in them shook. Nothing in them feared.

Radeon dismissed his arts and let his disguise settle in place. He returned to the form he had taken from Rai.

A mangled body. One eye missing. Tongue gone. An arm absent at the shoulder.

Burned scars traced him like ugly scripture, leaving his veins too visible, pulsing with each heartbeat.

Beside him, Fay closed her eyes. Tears slipped down her cheeks in silence. She did not sniffle.

She did not dare make a sound. She did not want to invite attention.

The being that led the undead saw sincerity, and chose to probe.

"What is your purpose here?" the voice asked.

It knew at once the man before it was no ordinary man. In a single look, it read the shape of the story.

This was someone who had survived a tribulation not by luck, but by wit and logic, by refusing to die when the world insisted he should.

Radeon lifted his chin. He pushed qi behind his words until they cut through the fog and the rumbling ground alike.

"I am here to have my body reconstructed," he stated flatly.

Radeon channeled qi into the fibers of his cloak until the stitched pattern took on a faint, steady glow.

A symbol emerged, a man looking up as he scribed, gaze lifted toward what could not be reached by hand.

The badge of the Everwritten Archivists Court.

The being behind the voice recognized it at once. Radeon felt the shift in the air, the smallest change in attention.

The academic court was in a dilapidated state now, reduced, scattered, mocked by those who liked their power loud.

Yet the voice did not sneer. It did not dismiss. Instead, the undead ranks parted with sudden discipline, a corridor opening through bone and rot.

The speaker stepped forward. He was neither human nor undead. Skin the color of old ash, stretched tight. Eyes black, and within them the pupils swirled as if flames had been trapped behind glass.

From the chest down, he was something made rather than born, bone armor fitted and reinforced until it shuddered like steel when he moved.

Runes pulsed along the plates in a muted gold, brightening and dimming as qi flowed through them.

"My name is Claudius," he said. His voice held neither warmth nor cruelty, only rule and routine. "I am but a humble guard of the Necropolis. We have no beverage, no sustenance. We also do not provide our necromantic arts as if it were river water. We can only offer you a cave abode."

Radeon did not argue. He had not come seeking comfort. But he also knew better than to let a door stand open without stepping through.

He still carried a debt to a being from the void, and if there was any place that might hold even a sliver of immortality, it was here among the dead who refused to stay dead.

He drew out a stick of top grade incense from his spoils and bowed, the gesture crisp and measured.

"May I pay a visit to the esteemed shrine of the First Holy Necromancer?" he asked.

The elven lichkin pointed to where the altar lay. A sign of permission.

Radeon, Fay, and the bison were led first to the cave abode.

It was dry. Too clean for a place that belonged to the dead.

The air tasted faintly of mineral and old incense.

"Stay here," Radeon said. "Both of you. For now."

Fay did not protest. The bison only huffed, slow and uneasy. Lady and beast watched his back as he left.

He headed toward the altar. But the farther he went, the stranger it became.

Radeon felt no one with his qi. He ran for more than twenty minutes, boots striking stone, breath steady.

His qi was clearer than a mortal's vision. Even so, he met no guard, no zombie shambling out of habit, no cultivator keeping watch. Yet the place did not feel abandoned.

Houses stood intact. Lamp posts remained lit. Candles burned with fresh, steady flames, their wax clean and recently trimmed.

No dust drifted across the road. No cobwebs claimed the corners. Someone tended this necropolis the way a priest tends a quiet shrine.

Radeon felt the question trying to hook into his ribs. He let it slide off. Thinking too hard at a mystery like this only fed anxiety.

Anxiety made mistakes. He kept his eyes on the path ahead. When he crested a peak, the shrine finally revealed itself.

A pagoda rose more than three hundred meters into the fog, tall enough to make the world feel smaller. Its age did not match its surroundings.

The brickwork along the road leading up to it looked new, as if it had been laid yesterday. The shrine itself gleamed with the same unnerving freshness.

The roof tiles still held their luster. The edges were sharp. Nothing sagged. Nothing cracked. Nothing surrendered to time.

As Radeon drew closer, a massive double door stopped him, twenty meters of sealed stone and carved bone.

He paused before it, suddenly aware of how loud his heartbeat sounded in the quiet.

He looked around. At the side of the path sat a low stone basin, its center filled with ash. Radeon knelt and touched it.

He traced the indentations with scarred fingers. He studied how it stood, how it was meant to be approached.

The wear marks did not fit incense. The shape was wrong. The edges were too broad.

'Not an incense altar. A flower box. Someone's testing devotion. If fear's living in their hearts, they'll bring incense and set it here.'

Radeon rose and stepped closer to the door. He bowed low, deep enough that his damaged body protested, and then he waited.

He knew the door would open. Radeon just did not know how and when.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.