Nightborne left Greenwood Hollow before sunrise, boots silent on the dew-kissed path. After mastering the Umbral Crescent and Void Weaving techniques at the quarry two days prior, he'd spent his time delivering lunch provisions and splitting firewood for the villagers. His muscles still hummed with the memory of shadow manipulation—each swing of an axe reminding him of the Void Scythes he'd unleashed against the training logs.
But mundane chores were finished. Now it was time to press the fight to the King Lich's own doorstep.
He tightened the straps on his cloak and checked the Pocket Abyss Cube secured against his thigh, its familiar warmth pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. Drawing breath slow and even, he felt darkness infuse his lungs—lighter, colder, steadier than air. His muscles felt spring-taut, bones hollowed of weight. Every step through the forest underbrush carried him faster, quieter, a wraith in mortal form.
By high noon he stood at the yawning mouth of the Obsidian Cavern, the rumored lair of the Lich King's thralls. Vines curled like fingers around its jagged entrance, and a chill mist drifted out. Within, the bones of adventurers and the detritus of long-dead battles lay half-buried in dust.
Nightborne paused, summoning his truce with darkness. No borrowed light glimmered on his ShadowSteel Daggers; only pure void pulsed at their edges. He inhaled and stepped into the gloom.
The torch in his hand sparked weakly but cast no light beyond a few paces. He struck it out, letting the cavern fall silent and black. Then he whispered:
[Dark Domain]
The world blinked into perfect night. Even the torch's ember winked out. Nightborne's vision shifted—not seeing light, but sensing the absence of it, every shadow now a beacon in his perception. He felt the thralls before seeing them: soft scuttles of bone, the low rasp of tattered cloth, distant chanting in a flat, hollow tone.
First came three skeletal warriors, metal-teeth clicking as they crept forward, rusted swords dragging along the stone floor. Their eye sockets flared with sickly green light as they detected his presence.
Nightborne didn't wait. He moved like wind—a technique he'd perfected after his battle with the Thornback in the northern reaches. He blinked behind the nearest skeleton, slashed with both daggers channeling the Midnight Edge, and watched the bones dissolve into motes of smoke. A second blink and the other two fell in quick arcs of shearing darkness.
From a side passage, a hissing sound erupted. A bone serpent, thirty feet of articulated spine with a skull the size of a shield, lunged from the darkness. Its fangs dripped with green ichor.
Nightborne leapt aside, one hand already flinging the Darkness Wire. The wire wrapped around the beast's neck vertebrae as he channeled an Umbral Crescent through its length. The serpent's skull separated cleanly from its body, both parts dissolving into oily shadow.
Deeper in the cavern, drums began to beat. Nightborne followed the sound, daggers at the ready.
In a vast chamber lit by braziers of green flame, he found a circle of robed figures. Twelve thralls stood with arms outstretched, chanting in a forgotten tongue. At the center of their circle, something was taking form—a swirling vortex of bones and tattered flesh.
Nightborne wove the Darkness Wire around a rocky pillar, anchoring himself, then spun another layer into an elaborate web:
[Void Weaving]
A tangle of razor-thin darkness formed a half-circle before him. He pushed it forward, expanding the web until it reached the edge of the ritual circle.
One of the thralls sensed the approaching darkness and turned, its face a yellowed skull with rubies embedded in its eye sockets. "Intruder!" it hissed.
From the shadows around the chamber, four bone-hound bristlers charged, jaws dripping mist, spines of petrified wood jutting from their skeletal backs. They struck the web and froze, each void-thread cutting through jaw and spine as Nightborne advanced, blade-whirls ending the pack with swift, merciful kills.
The chanting intensified. The thralls redirected their ritual, green energy now coalescing around their hands. Jets of necrotic power lashed toward Nightborne.
He spun, channeling darkness into the Blade of Forgiveness. With three precise slashes, he cast Void Scythes that intercepted the necrotic blasts, causing them to detonate in midair. The resulting explosion shook the cavern, stalactites crashing down upon two of the chanters.
A soft hum echoed throughout the chamber. Three wraith-priests in tattered vestments emerged from the ritual circle, their forms only partially corporeal, eyes glowing like coals. They raised skeletal hands and spoke in unholy unison, summoning a wave of shadow that rushed toward Nightborne.
"My domain," he whispered, meeting the darkness with his own. The colliding shadows sparked like negative lightning.
He dashed forward, Void Weaving still humming around him. Summoning every shred of his strength, he unleashed a barrage of Umbral Crescents into the cluster. The wraiths wailed as their forms unravelled, tendrils of spirit drawn into the void.
The remaining chanters scattered, but Nightborne was faster. A Midnight Edge through the torso of one. A Void Scythe that decapitated two more as they fled. The Darkness Wire coiled around the ankles of another, dragging it screaming into his waiting blades.
Only one priest remained—tall, gaunt, its voice echoing inside his skull: "You cannot save them, night-heir. All must serve the King."
Nightborne blinked behind the priest, two daggers at its throat. "Tell your King," he whispered, "darkness answers to a new master now."
He cut the final chord of its chant, and the creature collapsed, evaporating without a sound.
The half-formed monstrosity at the center of the ritual circle gurgled and twisted, trying to complete its manifestation without the sustaining energy of the ritual. Nightborne approached it cautiously.
Eight limbs, a torso of mismatched bones, three partial skulls fused together—this would have been the Lich King's general, had the ritual completed.
Nightborne crossed his daggers before it. "Return to dust," he commanded, unleashing a concentrated Umbral Crescent that sliced through the creature's core.
The abomination shuddered, its bones clattering to the ground like rain. The green flames in the braziers flickered and died.
A final sentry emerged from a hidden recess—a knight in blackened armor, its helm bearing the insignia of the Lich King himself. It wielded a massive greatsword that pulsed with death magic.
"The King knows your name now," the knight's hollow voice resonated within its helm. "There is nowhere on this island you can hide."
Nightborne smiled thinly. "I'm not hiding."
The death knight charged, its blade leaving trails of green fire in the air. Nightborne met the attack with both daggers, the impact sending shockwaves through his arms. The knight was strong—stronger than anything he'd faced in the northern wilds.
They exchanged blows in a deadly dance, sparks of shadow and necromancy illuminating the chamber. The knight's armor deflected most of Nightborne's strikes, while the greatsword came dangerously close to ending him with each swing.
Nightborne feinted left, took a glancing blow to the shoulder, and spun behind a pillar. The knight's sword embedded in stone. In that moment of vulnerability, Nightborne unleashed everything—Void Weaving around the knight's legs, Midnight Edge slashing at the joints of its armor, and finally, a point-blank Umbral Crescent at the base of its helm.
The knight staggered backward, armor cracking. "The King... rises..." it gurgled before its helm split in two, revealing nothing but empty darkness within. The armor crashed to the floor, lifeless.
Silence fell over the cavern. The mass of fiendish shapes flickered and dissolved. The shadows repented of their summons; the Domain wavered.
Nightborne stepped back and willed the night to loosen its grip. The cavern's natural gloom returned, pale torchlight flickering at the entrance where his discarded torch still lay, but the deeper tunnels remained dark—guarded by void's own memory.
He exhaled, feeling the last tremors of triumph in his veins. The thralls of bone and spirit lay vanquished, their cries silenced by pure darkness. His body felt tired but not weary—charged by the pact he bore, each breath a whisper of night.
At the far end of the chamber, a dark passageway beckoned, leading deeper into the mountain—closer to the Lich King's true sanctum. Nightborne approached it, peering into the impenetrable blackness. Not today. He needed to heal, to strengthen his abilities further before facing what waited below.
Outside the cavern, the sun had dipped low. Fireflies blinked among the ferns as he made his way back to Greenwood Hollow, his shadow stretching long before him. Bertha and the villagers would be preparing supper; he carried in his pack nothing more than fading echoes of his power and the knowledge that, at the threshold of shadow and light, he alone commanded the void.
And soon, very soon, the Lich King would learn to fear it.