Unholy Player

Dawn Raven in one hand, broken spear in the other, Adyr finally reached the skeleton chamber. He hadn't seen a single one on the way; it seemed they had all gathered here. With no master left to serve, they stood in eerie stillness, waiting without purpose.

But the moment they saw Adyr and the master they once served held in his hands, they stirred. Their jaws snapped in uneven rhythm, bone clacking against bone with sharp, erratic clicks.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

The silence broke, replaced by the unsettling chorus of chattering skulls. But they didn't advance. They just stood there. And that was exactly how Adyr preferred it.

He stepped toward the nearest skeleton and, without hesitation, drove the rusted tip of his spear straight through its skull. The bone cracked with a dry snap, and the skeleton collapsed without resistance.

None of the others reacted. They simply kept clattering their jaws, empty and mechanical, completely mindless.

But unlike them, something did react. The Dawn Raven suddenly began to stir, restless and twitching in his hand.

"Oh... they're your friends?" Adyr asked, genuinely curious. "Sorry," he added, driving the spear through another skull, "but they're far too vulnerable to be friends."

He wasn't in the mood to empathize with the raven. It was, after all, the one responsible for turning them into mindless skeletons in the first place.

Tuning out its protests, he focused on the task at hand. One precise strike after another, he crushed each skull with minimal effort, conserving both time and stamina.

After an hour and a half of relentless grinding, he finally stopped and looked around. The chamber was a bone-littered graveyard, filled with collapsed skeletons and shattered skulls. The energy crystals were already harvested.