Brute 280-

Atasha’s POV 

Undead. 

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225 vouchers 

That was the only word that fit as the thing wearing Nicho’s face kept coming, its body ignoring wounds that should have ended the fight already. Stabbing meant nothing. Pain meant nothing. 

I had heard of creatures like this before. 

Only stories. Exploited warnings passed around border camps and old records most people dismissed as superstition. Undead were said to exist in the West, far beyond the kingdoms that still pretended order ruled the land. They were not born. They were made. 

Witches made them. 

Not the kind that healed or bound wards, but the kind that tore bodies apart and stitched them back together, forcing something else to inhabit the remains. A mockery of life designed to follow commands, to imitate the dead closely enough to draw the living closer before striking. 

They were never meant to fight clean. 

They were meant to endure. 

That was when I understood why my blade had not ended him, why the seams along his skin pulsed instead of bleeding out, why his eyes followed me with awareness that did not belong to a corpse. 

You did not kill undead. 

You dismantled them. 

I stopped trying to stab him. 

The next time he lunged, I stepped inside the swing and cut across his forearm instead of his chest. Steel bit through stitched flesh with a wet snap, and the arm dropped to the ground still gripping the sword, fingers twitching like they had not yet been informed they were no longer attached. 

Nicho did not scream. 

He barely reacted. 

His remaining hand swung at me immediately, claws of bone and tendon tearing through the air where my throat had been. I ducked and hacked low, severing his leg at the knee. The body pitched sideways, crashed into the stone, then dragged itself upright with disturbing persistence, weight shifting incorrectly as if balance was a concept it had learned rather than possessed. 

So I cut again. 

I took the other leg, then the shoulder that lagged when he moved, then the arm that tried to reach for me even after it had been separated. Each strike was aimed to dismantle rather than kill, because killing had clearly stopped meaning anything here. Pieces hit the ground with dull thuds, twitching, fingers curling, jaws snapping uselessly at air. 

The torso still moved. 

It crawled toward me on elbows that were no longer there, ribs flexing under stretched skin, the stitched seams along his spine pulling and tearing as it advanced inch by inch. The head lted up, eyes still focused on me with something that looked like intent, the mouth splitting wider as it tried to form words it no longer had the lungs to speak. 

1/3 

18:49 Sat, Feb 7 D G • 

Chapter 280 

I ended that part last. 

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5 vouchers 

The blade came down hard, separating head from body in one brutal arc that left the skull rolling across the stone before coming to rest near the edge of the spring. The remains finally stilled, the strange energy animating it dissipating in uneven pulses until nothing moved anymore. 

Silence followed. 

I took in a deep breath just as the smaller beasts crept closer. 

They did not approach me. They went for the pieces. 

They swarmed the scattered remains with the same hunger they had shown carlier, tearing into stitched flesh and exposed bone, snapping at each other as they fed. The sight was too much to hold for long. I turned my head away and wiped my blade clean on stone, my jaw tight as I forced myself to breathe evenly. 

I did not let myself look back. 

Whatever had worn Nicho’s body was gone, and whatever was eating what remained was not my concern anymore. 

I sheathed my sword and took a step forward. 

Then another. 

I was not surprised when the pull returned at once. 

My heart accelerated sharply, each beat heavy enough to feel in my throat, my vision narrowing slightly as the sensation dragged me toward the deeper stretch of the chamber. 

I adjusted my path without thinking, angling away from the spring and the feeding beasts, toward the darker corridor Nicho had stood in front of earlier. The insects thinned as I moved, the glow fading into shadow, the air growing warmer with 

every step. 

The ground beneath my boots felt different here, denser, almost humming faintly underfoot. 

I kept walking. 

My heart did not slow. 

If anything, it beat faster the closer I got, reacting as if it recognized something before my mind could catch up. Whatever was down there was not calling gently. It was not asking. 

It was waiting. 

I took three more steps toward the dark corridor before my body betrayed me. 

The pain hit without warning, right in the center of my chest. My breath cut off mid–stride, and I staggered, one hand bracing against the stone wall as my heart spasmed instead of raced. The pull did not fade. It tightened but something inside me seemed to fight against it. 

I frowned, the movement slow, strained, as something finally slid into place in my mind. 

Cassian. 

The name hit harder than the pain. 

The promise followed immediately after. Watching the sunset. Standing side by side under a sky that was not made of stone and blood and rot. Horror flashed through me as the realization settled. 

2/3 

18:49 Sat, Feb 7 D 

Chapter 280 

How did I forget him? 

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8.5 vouchers 

The thought was not normal. It was not fatigue or distraction or fear. It was an absence, like a gap carved into my mind where urgency should have been. Whatever was deeper in this cave had not just been calling. It had been pulling me towards it, making me forget the things that I needed to do. 

I straightened abruptly, breath coming faster now, and stepped back. 

Then I stepped back again. 

There was something deeply wrong here. 

The pull resisted me immediately, pressure tightening in my chest as if the cave itself disapproved of my retreat. My heartbeat stuttered again, hard enough to blur my vision at the edges, but this time I did not slow. 

I turned fully and ran. 

My boots struck stone in uneven rhythm as I retraced my path, the darkness peeling back into dim light as the insects thickened along the walls again. The air shifted with me, colder, less dense, like I was breaking free of something that had already started closing around my thoughts. 

The corridor opened back into the clearing. 

The spring came into view. 

I slowed automatically, scanning for movement, for beasts, for anything that did not belong. The smaller creatures were still there, clustered near the water, their attention fixed downward as they fed on what remained scattered across the stone. 

Then I saw him. 

He stood near the edge of the spring. 

Whole. 

Stitched. 

Nicho’s body was upright again, seams freshly drawn across his neck, his torso, his limbs, the threads darker and thicker than before as if they had been reinforced. His posture was slightly off, shoulders set unevenly, head tilted at an angle that strained the line of his spine. One arm hung lower than the other, fingers flexing slowly, testing their grip like a craftsman checking his tools. 

My blood went cold. 

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