The flare of Damien’s binding lit the night like a bleeding sun, red fire spilling across the fog. The wyrm recoiled, its body lashing out, smashing mausoleums to dust, shaking the ground until the tower itself seed ready to topple. The dead shrieked in unison, their hollow mouths stretched in mimicry of Damien’s scream.
The Keeper staggered, clutching his staff to stay upright. “He draws too deep—he’ll tear himself apart!”
Zara knelt beside Damien, her hands trembling on his shoulders. His body convulsed as if every bone strained against invisible chains. His voice ca out cracked, layered with sothing vast and inhuman. “It’s... endless. A hunger without end.”
The wyrm’s eyes flared brighter, lanterns of hunger that bore into Damien’s mind. He saw visions not his own—oceans boiling away, cities crumbling beneath its coils, civilizations long erased. The wyrm had devoured worlds before mory. It had slept, but never died.
Blood stread from Damien’s nose, his eyes, his ears. Still, he forced his hand upward, palm open toward the abyssal beast. The army outside surged as though pulled by the sa unseen grip. Corpses climbed the wyrm’s neck, wedging themselves into its jaw, their rotted bodies plugging its maw even as they were crushed and flung aside.
“Damien, stop!” Zara’s voice broke through the thunder. “You’re not binding it—you’re becoming it!”
For a mont, his gaze t hers. Behind the crimson glow, a flicker of his old self surfaced—the boy she had once trusted, the man who once swore to protect, not destroy. His lips parted, and a whisper escaped. “Then... I’ll carry it.”
The wyrm reared high, higher than the tower, its coils blotting the stars. Its roar shook Damien’s soul, but he did not falter. He drove the binding deeper, threading the chains of the dead through its flesh, knotting hunger to hunger. Every corpse that fell beca another link, every scream another thread in the abyssal tapestry.
The Keeper raised his staff, chanting words in a tongue lost to centuries. Runes blazed across the cracked earth, circles of light locking into place around the wyrm’s body. “Anchor him! Anchor them both!”
The wyrm thrashed, but the dead clung tighter, their broken fingers embedding into its scales, their jaws fastening like iron shackles.
Damien’s scream grew into a roar that shook the chamber. His veins glowed like molten chains, his body convulsing as if cracking under the strain. Yet still he held, forcing the abyss into bonds not of steel, but of his own flesh and soul.
The ground split wide, fire spilling from the chasm as the wyrm’s body twisted in agony. For one terrible instant, it seed the whole world would shatter.
Then—silence.
The wyrm froze, its massive head bowing low, chains of glowing crimson running across its scales. The dead collapsed into stillness, their purpose spent.
Damien slumped forward, smoke curling from his skin. His eyes were still lit, but dimr now, like embers smoldering in ash.
Zara caught him as he fell, her tears streaking crimson dust from his face. “You’ve killed yourself...”
His lips moved faintly against her ear. “No. I’ve bound... sothing worse.”
Beneath them, the earth gave a final shudder, as if sothing deeper still stirred.
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