The first time he tried to scream, spines sprouted from his nonexistent mouth.
The change was tearing at him. The parasitic egg didn't sleep; it grew inside him, tangling with what remained of his humanity. Each time the visions assailed him, he lost pieces of himself—memories of his past life vanished like smoke, replaced by those fragments of the White City and the Devourer of Aeons.
But the dead prisoner had given him a clue.
He crawled toward the corpse and wrapped the still-glimmering runespear fragment in its wound. As he absorbed it, the voices in his mind became clear:
—...those who walk among the strata are nameless flesh... only those marked by the Primal Teeth deserve to be called...
The knowledge burned like acid. In this world, names were power, but not arbitrary words: they were sounds stolen from the ancient monsters.
And now, the parasite inside him demanded one.
The ground shook.
From the depths of the tunnel through which the humanoids had fled, came a sound that was not a roar, nor a chant, but something worse: a name being spoken.
"Kyr'thas" echoed off the walls, making the stones bleed.
He knew at once it was a summons. Something had sensed the egg's corruption and was coming to claim him.
He moved instinctively toward the opposite exit, but then the wall came to life.
The runes etched into the rock glowed blood red, and from them emerged a skeletal figure, so tall it touched the cavern ceiling. It was not a humanoid, nor a beast, but an amalgamation of the bones of a thousand different creatures, held together by an invisible force. Where its head should have been, a single black tooth floated, slowly turning.
"Kyr'thas," the creature repeated, and this time the word lashed out like a whip, tearing a chunk out of his body.
The parasite inside him stirred, responding to the call.
"No," he resisted, digging his new spines into the ground to avoid being dragged away.
The bone creature raised a hand, and the corpses of the monsters scattered around the chamber rose, assembling themselves into grotesque imitations of life.
He had no lungs, but he gasped anyway. He had no heart, but it beat strongly.
And then, in the midst of his panic, he acted human for the first time since his reincarnation.
The sound of its vibrating spines had become a deafening buzz, like that of a swarm of insects trapped beneath the world's skin. Every step it took—or rather, every convulsive shuffle of its corrupted mass—left molten marks in the stone. The fragment of runebone it had absorbed from the dead prisoner burned to its core, a constant reminder that what it was about to attempt could destroy it.
But the bone creature followed.
It didn't run. It didn't need to.
The very walls buckled before its passage, the runes etched into the rock glowing like embers as the creature drew closer. It no longer repeated that name—Kyr'thas—but its silence was worse. It was the silence of a predator that knows its prey has no escape.
He chose to absorb.
With a movement that tore away part of his consciousness, he launched himself toward the black tooth that hovered where the creature should have had a head.
The impact was like a lightning strike.
Visions pierced him:
— A circle of humanoids kneeling in a mirror-polished chamber, chewing their own tongues and spitting the pieces onto an altar made of teeth.
— The Devourer of Aeons writhing in its bone prison, spitting out fragments of itself that tumbled through the layers of the Abyss like cursed seeds.
— And him, but not him. A version of himself made of shadow and teeth, standing atop a mountain of humanoid corpses, answering to the name of...
Kyr'thas.
Pain pulled him from the visions just in time to see his body—that shapeless mass that had been his prison and his tool—erupt into dozens of black filaments. The egg parasite was trying to rebuild him, to make him into something suitable.
The bone creature raised both hands, and the corpses scattered across the tunnel rose. A headless Skitterfang, a cracked-shell Crawler, even the remains of the humanoid prisoner—they all assembled into a grotesque armor around the floating tooth.
"You are unworthy," echoed a voice that wasn't a voice, the sound coming from bones that crunched as they moved. "But the Tooth recognizes your sacrilege. You will die as the nameless die: in silence."
He writhed, trying to escape, but the black filaments that now formed his body responded to the tooth, not to him. He was losing control.
That was when he remembered.
Not a vision of the Devourer, not a fragment of stolen knowledge.
The memory of how he had died.
He stood on a circular platform, surrounded by hooded figures. It wasn't the Abyss—there was sky, a green-tinged night sky. Someone held his arms while a woman with a bone knife recited words in a language that made his ears bleed. "The pact requires a volunteer," she said. But he hadn't volunteered. He had been chosen. The knife descended into his chest, and then…
…then the pain. The same pain I felt now.
The memory galvanized him.
If that death had been a sacrifice, what better way to desecrate it than to survive at all costs?
With an effort that caused him to lose almost a third of his mass, he separated himself from the black filaments. It was like tearing off a limb, but the parasitic egg no longer had total control over him.
The bone creature hesitated.
He didn't wait.
Taking advantage of the distraction, he launched himself at the reanimated Skitterfang and swallowed it whole. Rotting flesh, splintered bones, and all. Not from nutrition, but from the trace of energy that animated it: a thin thread of darkness connecting the corpse to the floating tooth.
When he bit into it, he knew the creature's true name.
"Gholash"—the syllables burned as he spoke them, but the effect was immediate.
The bone creature disintegrated.
Not in a dramatic burst, but like a pile of bones having their threads cut. The black tooth fell to the ground, vibrating furiously.
He leaned closer, feeling the parasite inside him yearning to absorb it. But now he knew the truth: that power wasn't a gift, it was another prison.
With a final act of will, he buried it beneath an avalanche of stones triggered by its vibrating spines.
The tunnel fell silent.
But in the distance, far below, something responded to the name he'd spoken.
And this time, it wasn't hostile.
It was an invitation.