I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Not a trembling in my hands or legs.

  A quaking in the hollow spaces where nerves and even the slightest shred of courage should have been. It was the fear of a fundamental wrongness. Like I’d stepped somewhere I didn’t belong and the world itself had noticed.

  My thoughts weren’t cooperating. They crashed into each other, tumbling like waves in a storm, rising with purpose only to break apart into useless foam. My mind kept circling the same unhelpful realization, over and over.

  I am not ready for this.

  Big Chief wasn’t just powerful—he was power. His presence didn’t fill the chamber; it defined it.

  He sat motionless on his jagged throne, watching. His single working eye locked onto me with an intensity that sent something instinctive, something old, crawling down my spine. His ruined eye, stared past me, blind but no less menacing.

  Blood from the mangled arm in his grip splattered onto the stone floor, slow and rhythmic, the only sound in the sudden, suffocating quiet.

  Drip.

  The chamber pressed in, thick with the weight of old death. Crimson pooled across the floor, dark and undisturbed, a canvas of violence left to set and dry.

  And now, standing in the middle of it, I was just another thing waiting to be smeared across the stone.

  Drip.

  Behind him, beside him, all around him, dozens of kobolds waited in the shadows, yellow eyes gleaming in the dark. Silent. Watching. Waiting.

  Drip.

  “Speak, skeleton.” His voice rumbled like stones falling.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

  I was supposed to have a plan. An argument. A strategy. But under the weight of his gaze, every thought crumbled into dust. The silence stretched, the blood kept dripping, and I felt myself shrinking beneath it.

  Say something.

  “I…” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard—not that it did anything. “I came to… propose an alliance.”

  Big Chief didn’t move, but something in the air shifted.

  “Alliance?” he repeated, the word curling with disdain. He leaned forward slightly, claws curling against the throne’s arms. “Skeleton thinks Big Chief needs help?”

  “No,” I said quickly, rushing to get ahead of the hole I’d just dug myself. “Not help. Just… cooperation. The adventurers—”

  “Humans,” Big Chief interrupted, his lip curling into a snarl. “Weak. Fragile. Not threat.”

  I almost laughed. The sheer, casual arrogance of it.

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  “They’re not weak,” I said before I could stop myself. “They’ll come back. Stronger. Smarter. And they won’t stop until they’ve taken everything—”

  “Big Chief does not lose to humans,” he growled. The finality in his voice was a blade cutting through my words. “Big Chief crushes.”

  I was losing him.

  I tightened my grip on my staff, desperation bubbling under my ribs. “I’m not saying you’ll lose,” I pressed on, trying to salvage what little ground I had left. “I’m saying we can hold them back together. You control the second floor. I hold the first. We—”

  Big Chief moved.

  The shift was so sudden, so fluid, that my mind struggled to catch up. One moment, he was seated. The next, he was standing, his massive frame unfolding like a thunderhead rising on the horizon.

  Then he reached down, grabbed a nearby kobold by the head, and threw it at me.

  The kobold screamed—sharp, startled, a high-pitched wail that cut through the air like a knife.

  Its body was small, wiry, but fast. I barely had time to react before it slammed into me, a flurry of claws, limbs, and wild panic. My bones rattled with the impact, a sharp crack ringing through the chamber as we both crashed to the ground.

  My staff slipped from my grasp, clattering uselessly across the stone floor.

  “What the hell—” I started, but movement cut me off.

  I managed to stand up, but Big Chief was already coming.

  His iron mace gleamed in the dim light—old, worn, but heavy with the weight of something that had broken many things before me. He swung in a wide, brutal arc, the air itself shuddering with the force of it.

  I braced myself for the impact. For the familiar message:

  Notice: You are immune to non-magical weapons.

  It didn’t come. The mace hit.

  The impact tore through my ribs like dry branches snapping underfoot. The pain was sharp, immediate, and real. Not the phantom discomfort of imagined injury. Real.

  I hit the ground hard, bone fragments skidding across the floor as I reeled, mind screaming to catch up.

  He can hurt me. His weapon—it’s magic.

  I scrambled back, clutching my fractured arm. I needed my staff. I needed to think.

  Big Chief stood over me, the mace resting casually on his shoulder, his lips curling into a grin. Not cruel. Not angry. Just… pleased.

  “Skeleton breaks,” he rumbled, his voice thick with satisfaction. “Skeleton weak.”

  I forced myself upright, my staff finally back in my grip, but my hands shook. The pain still echoed through my frame, dull but insistent.

  This wasn’t the adventurers. They had been dangerous, yes, but they were human. Predictable. They fought by rules. Strength. Numbers. Equipment.

  Big Chief was different.

  He didn’t play by rules. He was the rule.

  He was the power here.

  His eye gleamed as he raised the mace again, the weight of it bending the very air around him.

  The kobolds in the shadows shifted, their yellow eyes gleaming brighter, waiting for the kill.

  I realized—too late—that this wasn’t a negotiation.

  It was an execution.

  Big Chief bared his teeth, the grin widening.

  “Skeleton dies now.”

  And the mace came down.