The Valley of Bewilderment, Soulweep Castle.
Aside from the hushed whispers of wandering spirits, a faint scratching sound stirred the air—a quill scribbling furiously across the pages of a book, yet no hand held it.
A closer look revealed that the quill was carved from a human finger bone, and the tome was bound from smooth sheets of cured skin.
Dipped in fresh blood, every stroke and slash it etched was crimson, gradually darkening to a deep dried maroon as the blood met the air.
"September 12, Year 1786 of the New Calendar. Clear skies. Harvested another thirteen fresh souls today, but seven or eight among those who stumbled into the Valley of Bewilderment possessed no souls at all. Truly bizarre."
"More and more of these things have been appearing lately. They seem to call themselves... the Starfallen."
"Too many variables. That red dragon has united Anzeta. I must exercise greater caution. I cannot afford to be discovered by it again; every magic circle in Antonio City has already been purged."
"Perhaps... I ought to activate the concealment wards and veil this place from sight. Yet my soul reserves run low—if my phylactery goes unfed for too long, I will degenerate into a demilich, to say nothing of attaining stable immortality."
"Perhaps it is time to consider entering a deep slumber."
"Wait. Someone has entered the tomb..."
The finger-bone quill froze mid-stroke.
The human-skin pages slowly slid shut. Stitched across the cover was an ancient, withered face—Orestes's own visage from before his death. Across the brow, blood-red characters were carved: *The Diary of the Great and Immortal Orestes*.
Scattered across the dim, frigid secret chamber were disemboweled organs, rotting flesh, and stray bones, blood pooling and congealing on the stone floor.
Lining the shelves of black bone were various potions, scrolls, an immense collection of spellbooks, numerous wands, and even several staves.
Liches hoarded spells and magical artifacts; they delighted in collecting anything tied to immortality, the singular pursuit of their eternal lives.
"Intruders in my tomb, at a time like this...?"
"That bodes poorly."
Amidst shimmering dust and a mist of blood, the master of Soulweep Castle, the lord of the Valley of Bewilderment—Orestes—finally materialized.
The lich took the form of a gaunt, skeletal humanoid, shriveled gray flesh clinging tightly to exposed bone.
His eyeballs had long since rotted away, leaving only pinpricks of pale light and swirls of necromantic vapor drifting within his hollow sockets.
He was clad in the luxurious red finery and jewelry he had worn in life, but centuries of neglect had ravaged them, leaving the fabric ragged and rotting and the gems tarnished—though he seemed entirely oblivious to his own decay.
Liches pursued power at any cost, utterly indifferent to the affairs of the living unless those affairs encroached upon their own interests.
They routinely laid plans spanning years, decades, or even centuries to achieve the greatest possible outcomes; after all, a lich had long since slipped the shadow of mortality.
Orestes was no exception.
Indifferent as he was to the living world, the recent upheaval in Anzeta had grown so immense that even he had felt its tremors. He had even weighed sinking the entire Valley of Bewilderment deep beneath the earth to escape any potential disturbance.
Extending a withered, skeletal arm, Orestes took a crystal skull down from the shelf, his voice chillingly cold as he spoke:
"Who could it be...?"
"Let us see which fool has come seeking death."
A phylactery was the vessel that anchored a lich's soul.
Unless the phylactery was destroyed, no one could truly kill a lich.
Whenever a lich's physical form was shattered, its will and intellect withdrew from the lifeless husk.
Days later, its body would reconstitute itself, coalescing from the shimmering motes of dust that drifted from the phylactery.
Because the destruction of a phylactery meant permanent death, liches took extraordinary measures to hide them in secretive, heavily guarded sanctuaries. Orestes had chosen the Tomb of the Death Sacrificer.
It was the resting place of a former high priest of Myrkul, teeming with powerful undead and guarded by hundreds of lethal traps and high-circle wards Orestes had placed with his own hands.
He possessed supreme confidence in his phylactery's security. Even if a legendary wizard descended upon the place, they would never easily lay hands upon it.
"..."
"*Aaaah—*"
The soul trapped within the crystal skull wailed as a magical image formed from necromantic mist coalesced across the crown of the cranium.
"Is it you?"
"Ignorant mortal."
The mist revealed a human noble draped in lavish robes. Aside from an exceptionally handsome countenance, he appeared little different from the countless adventurers who had perished within the crypt.
Yet for reasons he could not fathom, catching sight of the man stirred an inexplicable flutter of panic within Orestes—even though his chest was hollow, devoid of any beating heart.
"Why would I feel this...?"
"No, this threat must be eradicated at once."
Orestes caressed the crystal skull, and black necromantic fog spilled from his skeletal palms.
Miles away within the Tomb of the Death Sacrificer, winged stone statues began to stir, shaking stone chips and gray dust from their stony hides. Gargoyles—predators that relished tormenting their prey, whose claws had claimed the lives of countless interlopers.
Yet the man in the scrying mist suddenly smiled, his pale golden eyes bottomless, his gaze seemingly piercing across the void of space.
*Can he see me?*
The thought flashed through Orestes's mind unbidden.
For a spellcaster of his caliber, intuition was often uncannily accurate, sometimes surpassing the most rigorous reasoning.
Fortunately, the sensation vanished in a heartbeat.
The man in the image seemed to avert his gaze, turning his focus toward the approaching foes.
Beyond just the gargoyles, hideous ghasts exuding the stench of rot crawled from sarcophagi and dark corners, while wailing specters drifted into the air, swooping toward the solitary human.
"*Grooowl...*"
A chorus of rustling noises arose, interspersed with wailing, metallic scrapes, and heavy footsteps...
Suits of death armor shoved aside stone coffin lids, hefting rusted greatswords as muffled battle roars reverberated through the slits of their visors.
Bodaks crawled forth from piles of rotting corpses, their faces twisted into masks of madness and sheer terror.
The heavy stone doors ground shut.
Not even the radiant light of Mount Celestia could penetrate the depths of the earth to reach this chamber.
Within the cramped tomb, hundreds of undead of every shape and form surged from all directions, converging upon the lone adventurer. Dense, suffocating death energy choked the air—a doomed struggle by every measure.
Not even a bishop of the Church of Amaunator would dare claim they could walk away from such peril unscathed.
Over the past several centuries, hundreds upon thousands of adventurers had ventured within, only to perish and nourish the man-eating crypt.
The tomb seldom saw living flesh.
These ravenous undead were so starved they frequently devoured one another.
Sensing an intruder, their voracious lust for living flesh could no longer be contained, eager to tear this fresh prey limb from limb and feast until nothing remained.
"Yes, that's it..."
"Kill him. Kill him!"
"Flay his skin, strip his flesh, shatter his bones, and devour his soul..."
Orestes's raspy voice echoed through his chamber.
Any mortal who dared intrude upon his tomb, seeking to strip him of his immortality, deserved the lich's most venomous curse.
He loved watching the terror and despair on their faces; to him, it was the ultimate tribute to his eternal life.
Yet the man within the mist merely offered a disdainful smirk.
"Tsk, tsk... So many of them."
Unhurriedly adjusting the collar of his fine robes, he slowly raised his right hand.
*BOOM—!*
Chapter 396