The weight of the Lucerne sword should have been reassuring. It had always answered him, a weapon that bore his fury, absorbed his pain, and returned it as sharpened steel.
But now the handle seemed alien, its grip slippery not from sweat but from his own flesh rebelling. His fingers would not hold as he commanded; they curled and loosened in strange, stuttering patterns.
And beneath the surface, a voice coiled like smoke.
"I told you," it whispered, soft as marrow cracking. "I am not beside you. I am not in front of you. I am in you. You drew me in the moment you thought my name. Now every tendon, every thought, is mine to thread."
Darr froze. His jaw clenched, but not of his own will. His head turned slowly, scanning the empty horizon. His eyes dragged from stone to sky like they were marionette orbs yanked by strings. He tried to scream, but his throat only produced a soft hiss—mockery of his own voice.
"El Como…"
"Yes, vessel. Speak me aloud. Feel the shape of my name with what is left of your tongue. You are my cathedral, and I am the sermon in your bones."
El Como tilted his head, or at least tried to since he was confined to Darr's skull.
He shook his head further, licking his lips. He imagined himself activating his ability at least for the fun of it.
Suddenly, he paused—
Darr was already suffering enough...
The whisper filled every chamber of his skull, each syllable vibrating through nerves. Darr tried to grip his sanity as he had once gripped the hilts of swords—tight, unyielding. But his sanity was a rope already fraying.
"Get out," he thought. Not aloud, not even mouthed. But thought.
And the voice laughed, dry and hollow. "Out? No. You opened the gate the moment you faltered. I am the hinge and the lock now. There is no out."
Something shifted inside his right hand. At first it was only numbness, as if the blood had drained away. Then the nails tingled, burning with a faint frost. Darr tried to flex his fingers, but they spasmed in grotesque arcs. His thumbnail cracked down the center, splitting until a dark line of blood oozed outward. His index finger bent back too far—snap—and though pain screamed through him, the finger still clutched the sword with unnatural firmness.
His body did not collapse. It displayed its ruin proudly, because El Como demanded it.
"Yes," the whisper purred, "the first splinters. The skin is parchment; the bones are reeds. I take pleasure in each tear. We will not hurry."
Darr tried to shut his eyes, but the lids would not obey. He was forced to watch as black veins crawled up his arm, writhing beneath the flesh like worms burrowing upward. Blisters rose and burst, coating his wrist in yellow slime.
His teeth loosened. One wobbled in its socket, rocking like a rotten plank. He felt it detach, roll across his tongue, and slip between cracked lips. He could taste blood and iron and rot all at once.
And still—he smiled. Because El Como made him. His lips stretched over gaps where teeth should be, a hideous grin.
"Smile for me, knight of rot," El Como whispered. "The world should see the beauty of decay."
His chest ached next. The lungs, once proud and strong, dragged every breath like rusted bellows. The air scraped. He coughed, but the cough was not his—it was a convulsion pulled by another hand. Black flecks spat from his mouth, staining the ground.
"Listen," said the whisper. "The cage of your ribs sings when it breaks. Soon, one by one, I shall pluck them like harp strings."
His legs shook, skin sagging around the knees. Tendons twanged, snapping like bowstrings stretched too far. He tried to collapse, to fall into the soil, to curl into the last dignity of suffering. But his spine straightened, his shoulders squared.
"Stand," El Como commanded. "Stand as my effigy."
And Darr's body obeyed.
His eyes clouded. The right filled with blood until he could see nothing but red fog. The left bulged painfully, vessels erupting across its surface. Yet neither eye blinked. He begged his body to close them, to grant him darkness, but the lids remained wide, drinking in every horror.
Sounds magnified. He could hear pus dripping down his arm, hear sinews creak as they tore, hear the wet rasp of his ruined lungs. Every sensation was a weapon, and El Como wielded them mercilessly.
"End it," Darr pleaded silently. "If you must kill me, do it swiftly."
The reply slithered like oil: "Swift death is mercy. I am not merciful. I will hold you at the edge, trembling above the abyss. And when you beg for the final step, I will leave."
Time thickened. Minutes stretched into eternities.
His stomach bloated, purple veins spreading like a spider's web. The skin stretched tight, ready to burst. His arms withered, muscle shriveling into strings. His fingers curled into talons. Toenails blackened, then fell off one by one, clicking onto the stones like beads.
His tongue split, sagging in two halves that writhed against broken teeth. His throat constricted, each breath a strangled hiss.
Still he stood, sword raised, as though ready for battle. A knight's posture mocked by a corpse's body.
His heart stuttered. One beat, two skipped. Then another flurry. His ribs shook with the violence of it.
"Do you hear it?" El Como asked. "The drum of ending. When it falters, I will slip out. You will die not as my vessel, but as yourself—alone, broken, forgotten."
Darr felt it: the presence loosening, withdrawing from muscle and bone. The tendrils of alien will slipping free. His body sagged without its puppeteer, crumbling toward the soil.
"No!" he cried inwardly. "If you must take me, stay! Do not leave me to die alone!"
But El Como's laughter was already fading. "Delicious ruin. I have tasted enough. The last second is yours."
And then he was gone.
Darr fell. Knees shattered against stone. Skull cracked. Heart gave a final convulsion.
It came not from sky or sun, but from within.
A fissure of brilliance split his chest. White radiance burst through every wound, every pore. The rot was consumed instantly, seared away by impossible brightness. Black veins turned to glowing lines. The empty sockets of his teeth blazed like candles.
The light expanded, erasing shadow, sky, earth.
For one suspended heartbeat, Darr was not flesh, not pain, not prisoner. He was light alone.
And then—he was gone.