Deus Necros

Chapter 414: Meow

Shades moved.

At first, Ludwig thought it was just the aftereffect of the dim light from the fungus-lamps scattered across the fortress walls, flickering in drafty tunnels. But then those shadows did not remain where they should. They deepened, pooling like ink across the cracked floor, sliding down jagged columns, clinging to the corners of the ceiling. The longer he stared, the more they shifted, crawling out from the seams between stone blocks as if the fortress itself were bleeding darkness.

It was not just an absence of light. These shapes carried weight, a greasy tang on the air, a smell of damp rot mixed with burnt hair and something older, something almost metallic. Ludwig could hear them, faint at first, a whisper that brushed the edge of his hearing, like wind through reeds. Then more voices layered over each other, until the whispers were an ocean of murmurs. Laughter bubbled up in uneven bursts, like something choking on its own glee. And then came the cackles, sharp and jagged, one voice scraping over another until the sound reverberated through the cavern.

Ludwig’s fingers tightened on Durandal’s grip. The leather binding squeaked faintly under the strain. “This is going to suck,” he muttered under his breath, the words lost in the growing storm of noise.

“They’re everywhere,” Thomas breathed. The spectral figure hovered at Ludwig’s shoulder, his voice almost drowned by the chorus of approaching horrors. “There’s…gods above, there’s no end to them…”

At the center of the chamber, framed by the faint glow of a runed circle, Celine slammed her palm against the shimmering barrier. “Ludwig! Get inside!” Her voice cut through the cacophony, urgent, sharp, like a sword drawn in darkness.

Ludwig glanced back, lips twisting into a grim line. The dome pulsed faintly, its light bending around Celine’s armored figure, but he could feel it even from here, the refusal. That barrier did not welcome him. He was not what it would accept. “Can’t,” he called back, his voice dry as dust. “Doesn’t matter how I look… I’m not alive.”

The truth sat heavy in his chest, not as pain, he hadn’t felt true pain in a long time, but as something deeper, a weight that never left him. The lantern on his hip might disguise his nature from mortal eyes, might even mask the scent of death to those with keen senses. But magic like that circle knew better. It would not be fooled by a trick. It bypassed it, not looking for the illusion but the source. And that was Ludwig’s dead soul, not just his body.

He turned back to the tide of Umbrites spilling into the chamber. They moved like a tide of living tar, melting and reforming as limbs and faces. A woman’s laugh bubbled from the throat of a beast with too many eyes. A child’s sob slipped from the slit of a jawless grin. It was all wrong, every sound, every movement. His mind cataloged them automatically, distances, angles, how many steps before the first wave would reach him. His thoughts ticked like clockwork beneath the growing clamor.

Inside, though, he felt something sink. If they kill me here… He thought of the last anchor. He would wake back at the Thorn Queen’s lair, losing every hard-earned gain since then. He’d have to fight through every wound, every death, every desperate battle again. The thought made his stomach knot in phantom nausea. “That’s… a fuckton of backtracking,” he muttered.

Celine struck the barrier again. Her knuckles left ripples of light that rolled outward and died. “I’ll help,” she said, her voice tight, almost cracking. She pressed her whole forearm against the barrier, trying to force her way through. For a moment the air quivered around her arm as though it might yield, then it seized, trapping her hand like a vice. She snarled, pulling back, and slammed her other hand against it. Sparks danced, the dome hummed, but it did not open.

Ludwig’s voice was steady, calm in a way that felt unnatural even to him. “Don’t. Stay there.” He shifted his stance, rolling his shoulder until the joint cracked back into perfect alignment. His left hand lifted, mana coalescing in his palm, faint and flickering like violet fire. In his right, Durandal began to hum softly, the edge trembling with restrained power. “I’ll figure something out.”

“It’s not that simple!” Celine’s voice cracked now, high and frantic. Her eyes burned with something raw. “Run! Get out! You can still make it out!”

“And go where?” Ludwig barked a short laugh. He turned his gaze toward the yawning bridge beyond. “We blew up the only way out, remember?”

Her lips parted as if to argue, but nothing came. He smiled at her, thin and sharp, because there was nothing else he could do. “It’s just shadows,” he said, lifting his weapon in a mock salute. “A couple hundred unkillable shadows. Nothing serious. I’ll handle it in a jiffy.”

Inside, though, a cold truth gnawed at him. He didn’t believe that. Not fully.

Think. Think like you did with the Queen. Bind them. Burn them. Don’t give them space to breathe… can’t be slow, can’t be sloppy, and never get surrounded. Time to get every spell and skill I know to use… might even have to yet half of them across the chasm to even have hope of winning, but getting there alive… or undead first is the real problem.

But before he could move, the Codex at his side shivered.

The Umbral Malvolume Codex Necros, its cover etched with black runes that writhed when no one was looking, quivered as though alive. A low vibration thrummed through the stone beneath his boots. Ludwig’s head whipped toward it just as the cover creaked open on its own. Pages turned in a flurry of whispers, faster and faster until they slammed still on the very first page, the page that had refused to release what was inside it no matter what he tried.

The ink bled outward, darkening, deepening, until it peeled away from the page itself.

Something clawed free.

It was shaped like a hound, but its body flowed like smoke, each limb a shadow wrapped in sharper shadow. Its shoulders rolled with feline grace, muscles that were not muscles shifting under a skin of night. Its eyes were pools of obsidian fire, calm and ancient. It sat before Ludwig, curling its tail around its paws with a kind of predatory elegance.

Celine’s voice was a whisper of awe and suspicion. “What is that?”

Ludwig’s mouth went dry. “Shadow Beast I was told, but have no idea what it truly is…” he admitted, because the truth was stranger than anything he could invent.

The Umbrites surged closer, their laughter fraying into shrieks, a storm of sound that pressed against his ears. The first of them reached the edge of his sword’s range, their shapes shuddering as they prepared to leap.

And then the ground itself split.

A shadow deeper than shadow unfurled at the hound’s feet, widening, widening, until it stretched from wall to wall. A massive maw tore through the chamber floor, its jaws lined with teeth the size of stone pillars, each one a wedge of darkness honed to impossible sharpness. The Umbrites screamed, one voice, a hundred, a thousand, their words twisted and meaningless, as the maw snapped shut.

There was no light. No sound of impact. No time to react. One heartbeat Ludwig was standing in a chamber full of horrors, the next heartbeat he stood alone with Celine, the air eerily still. The Umbrites were gone. Every shadow, every cackle, every trace of them erased as though they had never existed.

Not even the bones and remains of dead soldiers that were here before were left, only stone.

The fortress was silent.

Ludwig lowered Durandal slowly, eyes wide. “Gotta say,” he muttered, voice low, “I did not expect that.”

Celine’s knuckles were white around Palios’s hilt. “Did it just… eat them?”

“I’m as confused as you,” Ludwig said, watching as the hound calmly licked the back of its paw, utterly uninterested in them. He crouched slightly, extending a hand toward it. “Hey… buddy?”

The creature turned its head, those black-fire eyes meeting his for a heartbeat, and then turned away, tail curling idly. It ignored him.

Ludwig let out a breath, half a laugh. “Yeah. Definitely a cat.”