Chapter 1
Part III
The boy's body was a poor fit.
Too tall. Joints loose. Spine like rope. The weight distribution of a youth who had never worn armor or purpose. But Velrona moved him anyway.
No—herself, now.
She had always adapted quickly. Her earliest days were spent scraping flesh from bone in freezing riverbeds, weaving soul-script into threadbare rags to survive. This body was no different. Just another mask. Another vessel. A chance to live.
She blinked, slow. Calculated.
The shorter grave-robber still stared at her with furrowed confusion and a bit of fear.
"Erlin…?"
Velrona tilted her head. The name wasn't hers. It never would be. She said nothing. Speech required control she didn't have yet—her tongue a foreign muscle, vocal cords not wholly synced to her will.
Instead, she did what she had always done best.
She listened.
The chamber crackled softly under the torch's weak soul-flux. A shimmer along the crypt walls pulsed in reaction—residual bindings, ancient and faint. Her own bindings, perhaps. Her legacy was etched into these stones, though they remembered her now as something to be looted.
Above, in the upper cracks of the ruined ceiling, wind whistled like a distant sob. The world was still turning without her.
System Status: Daily Draw Active. Spirit Threading — Minor Sensory Tether enabled. Passive corpse detection radius: 12 paces.
That power again. The beggar's legacy. She hated that she remembered his name. She hated more that it was useful.
She reached.
Not with hands. With awareness. A sixth sense swelling in her chest like an organ forming mid-breath.
There.
One corpse—beneath the ritual dais.
Another—near the stairwell.
A third—small. Animal. Long-dead.
Their presence shimmered like glowing outlines behind her eyelids, each one tethered loosely to her awareness by invisible threads. She could feel the tension in those threads—the more recent the death, the tighter the pull.
And she could feel the tremble of possibility. Yes possibility to become while again.
Her borrowed hands flexed.
The boy's friend—still watching—shifted backward in fear.
"Erlin, what's… what's going on with your face, man? You look…"
Velrona tilted her head.
She could almost speak. The mouth was ready. The vocal cords finally syncopating with her control.
She opened her lips.
And said, in a slow, measured whisper:
"…Leave."
The boy froze. "What?"
She stepped forward. One pace. Two. The bones in her borrowed knees cracked, unfamiliar and loose.
"Run," she said. Louder. "Or you'll join me."
The boy's eyes widened.
Then he turned and bolted.
No hesitation. No questions. He fled into the dark corridor outside, torchlight flailing behind him like a bleeding shadow.
Velrona exhaled—not from necessity, but from habit.
She was alone again. Well almost anyway.
Spirit Threading at 71% stability. Possession sustainable for 19 minutes. Warning: Host consciousness may resist integration. Recommend transfer to inert vessel.
She glanced down at her hand—the one that had bled against her cage. The wound was already clotting.
But beneath the skin, something was waking up.
The original soul.
Velrona felt it like a ripple across her borrowed spine. A flicker of thought that wasn't hers. A whimper at the edge of awareness.
The boy—Erlin—was fighting back.
Not strong. But present.
She couldn't hold him long.
She had to find a better host.
Velrona turned her stolen gaze to the corpse beneath the ritual dais. It was older and less than ideal, but the spirit-thread still tugged. A female acolyte, judging by the size and faded robes. Died years ago, likely one of the guards who'd helped entomb her. How ironic.
Velrona knelt beside the remains. Her host's legs buckled with unfamiliar grace.
She pressed a palm to the bone.
Her spirit split.
One half held onto Erlin's flesh.
The other reached—twisting, tunneling, anchoring into brittle sinew and dried marrow. Like swimming again a strong current.
The world jerked.
She left the boy behind. His body slumping to the ground with a thud.
For a heartbeat, she was formless again.
Then—
Sight. Breathless. Ancient. Cold.
She opened eyes that had long since decayed, and stared through the visor of a rusted ceremonial mask.
A dead woman's body. Once part of her cult. Bound to her by oaths now faded.
But at least this body would not resist. She smiled.
System: Possession complete. Host viability: 23%. Duration limited. No vocal capability. Movement restricted. Recommend transfer.
Velrona stood—slow, cracking, uneven balance.
A puppet made of bones and whispers.
But it was enough.
She walked to her own corpse.
She looked down at it. At the obsidian beads in her eye sockets. At the folded hands she once used to bless, curse, kill.
The bindings were still intact. The iron cage not yet broken.
Her final prison.
And yet—cracks had begun to form.
Blood had opened the lock.
It would take only one more death to shatter it.
One more vessel.
One more kill.
She turned back toward the dark corridor.
The boy had run.
But not far enough.