The descent began in silence.
The old slaughterhouse loomed like a petrified beast—long-abandoned, its chimneys clogged with centuries of dried blood, its crumbling stone walls slick with a fungal sheen that pulsed faintly in the dark. A sour wind stirred through the flayed iron gates as Zevrak approached, cloak trailing, boots soundless over the gravel-strewn path. Rusted meat-hooks swung lazily on creaking chains, their arcs carving invisible wards through the mist.
Behind him, Serana followed, armor creaking. Her gauntleted fingers clutched the hilt of her sword, her lips drawn in a grim line. "You've dragged me through plague pits and blood cults," she murmured. "But something down here smells older than rot."
Zevrak's voice was calm. "That's because it is."
They passed through the slaughterhouse's ruinous foyer—a cathedral of violence. Tiles patterned with butchering runes were cracked and soaked with black ichor. The walls were a collage of meat-themed murals, depicting heretical sacraments to gods of hunger. Bones cluttered the corners like dead leaves.
Zevrak led them to a false wall behind a rack of flensing knives. A sigil carved in the Old Glyph tongue hissed when he touched it. The wall parted, revealing a narrow stair spiraling downward—a tunnel swallowed by the earth.
"There were rumors," Serana said as they descended. "A war hero entombed here after he lost his mind."
"Not entombed," Zevrak corrected. "Caged."
The deeper they went, the colder it became. Moisture coated the walls. They passed ossuaries twisted into banquet halls.
Skulls arranged in pews. Tables made of vertebrae. Flesh curtains stiff with ritual wax.
The light of Zevrak's torch flickered as though it feared to shine too brightly. Shadows curled in corners where light refused to linger.
They reached the base: a chamber so vast its edges were lost in shadow. At the center rose a mound—bones, sinew, and spines, stacked with ceremonial precision. Atop it hovered the soul crystal, glowing violet, veins of silver threading through its core.
Zevrak took one step forward.
And the darkness growled.
Chains rattled. The walls breathed. Something enormous stirred above them. Hooks shrieked as they swung inward.
A massive figure emerged.
He stood eight feet tall, wrapped in bone-plated armor and dried muscle. His apron was stitched from faces—some still whispering. A cleaver the size of a coffin rested in his hand, its edge blackened from use.
His eyes glowed gold.
"Zevrak Kain," the giant intoned. "The Godbreaker lives again."
Zevrak's gaze narrowed. "And the hero of the Ashen Crusade now cleaves meat for ghosts. How far we fall, Rhagos."
The Butcher-King grinned with filed teeth. "The gods told me you'd return. I waited in blood and darkness. I remember you."
"You were always their weapon. Now you rot on a broken chain."
Rhagos raised the cleaver. "Then come cut it."
Rhagos charged with impossible speed, cleaver crashing into the earth like a guillotine. Zevrak weaved aside, glyphs spiraling around his fingers. Fire snapped from his palm, forming a net of burning lines.
Rhagos snarled and tore through it with brute force, skin searing but unflinching. Serana leapt, her blade slicing across his side. Gold-threaded blood spurted.
He backhanded her into a pile of bones.
Zevrak traced sigils mid-air—binding runes shaped from forgotten mathematics. Chains from the ceiling descended at his command, wrapping Rhagos's arms.
But the Butcher-King laughed, pulling free with a roar, dragging the chains behind him like trailing veins. "You were clever once," he hissed. "Now you're just afraid."
Zevrak stepped back, drawing a circle around them.
"No," he said. "I'm prepared."
The floor collapsed beneath Rhagos.
Dozens of preserved corpses spilled from hidden compartments, their cursed blood mixing with sacred salt to form a trap circle. Divine energy twisted into nullfire.
Rhagos screamed as his legs melted.
Zevrak advanced. "You forgot one thing, old friend."
"Wh-what?"
Zevrak raised a blade—not steel, but memory, formed from the soul crystal's whisper.
"I never forget."
He plunged the blade into Rhagos's chest.
The Butcher-King shrieked, body convulsing as memories were pulled like silk from bone:
Endless wars fought in holy fire. Kneeling before divine thrones. Betrayals behind stained-glass altars. A sky turned black—not night, not storm.
A Black Sun, devouring light.
Zevrak's body arched as visions surged:
A gate made of bone and sorrow. A name carved out of existence. A laughing woman in a field of corpses.
Rhagos fell silent. Ash poured from his mouth.
Serana crawled to her feet. Her armor was dented, her face bruised, but her eyes held awe.
"That was a hero?"
Zevrak nodded. "He was more than that. He was proof."
He took the soul crystal.
It melted into his palm, sending arcs of violet light through his veins. His mind palace expanded: halls once closed burst open, echoes of past lives marching into focus.
He remembered languages dead to the stars. Rituals that could bend causality. Gods he'd slain in previous cycles.
And always, always, the whisper:
"The One Who Was Erased."
His chest tightened. He had been hunting names.
Now, he knew there was a name missing.
They ascended slowly. Zevrak dropped glyphs along the path—fire triggers tied to decay and memory.
By the time they reached the surface, the slaughterhouse had begun to burn, fire crawling over its flesh-stone walls like a purging wound.
Serana looked back only once. "He feared you."
Zevrak's gaze remained forward. "They all will."
"Where next?"
He pointed to the horizon.
The Cathedral of Sighs loomed, its bells tolling with no wind.
"A priest waits for me."
Elsewhere, In the obsidian tower of the Black Dawn, a veiled woman dipped her quill into blood and wrote:
Name: Zevrak Kain Status: Active Reincarnate Priority: Erasure
She paused.
Then added. The Laughing One – Unaccounted
And the ink on the page shivered.
To be continued…