Reborn with a Necromancer System-Chapter 223: Darkwalkers

The pale creatures did not speak as they led Kai, Vepice, Orlin, and Seyren through the twisting, fungal-slick tunnels. Their footsteps were oddly quiet, their bare feet whispering over stone with a disquieting softness. Every now and then, they would stop and sniff the air, their skeletal heads tilting in unison.

When they reached the edge of the abandoned city, the passage widened into a cavern of enormous breadth. A hush fell over the group. Towering ruins, half-submerged in moss and phosphorescent roots, stretched out before them, remnants of a once-proud civilisation long since buried and broken. Stone spires leaned like drunkards, barely holding together. Bridges dangled by threads of rope or root. Lichen clung to walls like cancerous growths. Pools of shimmering green light collected in the low places, fed by some unknown, glowing runoff.

And then they saw them.

Hundreds upon hundreds of the pale-skinned beings began to emerge. They crawled out of windows, dropped from rafters, slithered from crevices between stones. Some climbed the buildings like insects, their fingers clicking against stone. Others stalked low to the ground, all bone and tendon. They were hairless, mostly naked save for scraps of dark leather or stitched hides, their eyes wide and almost luminous in the dimness.

Seyren inhaled sharply. Vepice reached instinctively for Kai's sleeve. Orlin narrowed his eyes, as if trying to read the creatures' posture like ancient runes.

The growing crowd did not advance. They only watched. Unblinking.

Then, the guards began to move again, this time prodding their captives toward a massive structure near the heart of the ruins. Unlike the rest of the city, it still stood, but barely.

Its walls were cracked and moss-eaten, its domed ceiling partially collapsed. The entrance had once been a grand arch, but now hung crooked, filled with debris and creeping vines.

They were herded through the darkened threshold.

Inside, the air grew heavier, fouler. The scent of mildew and decay mingled with the iron tang of blood. Their footsteps echoed across broken tiles and shattered columns. Rubble was strewn everywhere, twisted metal and cracked stone. Vines as thick as a man's arm slithered along the walls, pulsing faintly with bioluminescence. The structure groaned under its own weight.

The guards led them into a grand hall at the center.

A series of thrones once sat there, now reduced to nothing but cracked slabs surrounded by fallen braziers and dark stains on the floor.

From the shadows, three figures emerged.

They were smaller than the others. Older, somehow. Their skin was no less pale, but marked by hundreds of tiny, raised scars that formed intricate swirling patterns. Each had black eyes like wells, and their bones jutted out under their skin like armor.

One of them stepped forward, speaking in a voice that rasped like wind across dry leaves.

"Izgerd, salirn. Ternacilan harnapacun."

[Forebearer's Language: 74%]

Kai's brow furrowed. 'They're speaking the Forebearer's language?'

Orlin whispered, his voice hushed with fascination. "It has been a long time since I've heard those words… They're butchered, mixing the old tongue and something else entirely…"

[Darkwalker's Language Translated: 100%]

Kai blinked as the system bridged the gap.

"I bring outsiders here. They were outside. Looking at city."

A second speaker, shriveled and leaning heavily on a gnarled staff made from a sturdy bioluminescent root covered in insect chitin, gave a slow, cracked nod.

"Good. Bring outsiders to tunnel. Sacrifice."

'Sacrifice?' Kai stiffened. 'Just how backwards are these creatures?'

He stepped forward, ignoring the way the guards raised jagged blades. "What sacrifice? Why are we being offered?"

The three pale ones flinched at the sound of his voice.

A long silence followed. Then the staff-bearing one leaned forward, hissing with strange reverence.

"You… speak? You… know the words?"

Kai gave a slow nod, wary. "I understand enough. What do you mean by sacrifice?"

The third of the elders, younger than the others but with hollowed cheeks and scorched burn-scars across his collarbone, answered.

"God sleeps. We feed it. We give it life. Fresh. Always fresh. Not old. Not grey. Must be red. Must be warm."

Kai looked at Orlin, who said nothing, but his expression had gone flat.

"And… it isn't working?" Kai pressed.

"Not accepted," the first one muttered. "We give. Still hungry. Still no stir. Still no roar. We do it wrong?"

Kai's mind spun. The creature, this 'god', wasn't responding to their offerings anymore. Which meant something had changed. Or something worse waited below.

Still… they had to know what they were dealing with.

"Take us to this… tunnel."

The elders exchanged glances. Then nodded.

"But only two," one said. "Others stay. Not needed for feeding."

They made no room for negotiation.

Kai looked to Vepice. Her brows knit in worry, but she nodded once, tightly. Seyren said nothing, only crossed his arms.

"It'll be fine," Kai muttered. "We'll be back."

They were led away through another corridor, this one winding down a long, crumbling staircase. The guards said nothing. Their pale feet whispered over the stone. Kai counted their breaths. Orlin muttered something under his breath that Kai didn't quite catch.

The tunnel, if it could even be called that, was not what Kai expected.

It was a chasm.

'If I have to bring out my undead and commit genocide, so be it. But maybe I can deal with their problem. They could probably provide us with relics of the Forebearers if I do.'

The rock broke away in a jagged spiral, revealing a massive hole that plunged into darkness. The walls were rough and clawed, like something had bored through the stone by force, not erosion. There were no stairs. No ramps. Just a vertical descent into a void that felt impossibly ancient.

The air that came up from the pit was thick with moisture, metallic tang, and something else. It stirred the fine hairs on Kai's neck.

He took one step closer, and felt the ground vibrate beneath his boot.

Orlin stared down with a frown. "This wasn't dug by tools. This is a burrow. Something carved its way up from the deeper dark. Something alive."

Kai swallowed hard.

"I figured. I'm starting to think the sacrifices weren't being ignored…"

They were being stored. Or eaten.

Or something was waiting for the right one.

And it had just found him.

Kai presumed that his strength and life essence would rouse the Darkwalker's god from its burrow.