Caldreth passed through the threshold of the crypt. The stagnant silence of the underground vanished as the Underworld revealed itself.

  A scouring gale whipped sharp grit across Caldreth's face. Rust-colored flats sprawled toward the horizon, broken apart by fractured ridges and gouged ravines. Above, the sky hung orange with a haze, its clouds stretched thin as flayed skin.

  "It burned before," Caldreth said, his voice carried by the wind.

  "It always burns," Krim replied, stepping up next to Caldreth. "Phylin never stopped his whimpering. Too cold in the Necropolis, too hot in the Wastes. He spent half our journey picking grit from his eyes and the other half bleeding from his lungs." Krim cast a sideways glance at Caldreth's steady, unbothered posture. "You, at least, have the decency to be still."

  "I remember it tearing at my lungs." Caldreth held up a hand against the violent, orange light that seemed absent of its usual glare. His skin didn't flush or sweat; the sun sat against his palm like a harmless weight. "It doesn't burn my eyes anymore, or sting when I breathe."

  He lowered his hand and filed the feeling away with everything else he couldn't explain about himself.

  The tome drifted upward from the stairs toward Caldreth's side. It floated between the duo, gently pulsing with a rhythmic, crimson light. With a slow, deliberate movement, the book nudged against Krim's shoulder, firmly pushing the necromancer a few inches to the side so it could occupy the space between them.

  Krim scoffed, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height as he adjusted his tattered cloak. "Clearly, manners aren't present within sentient grimoires."

  Caldreth found himself tilting his head back further than he expected. In the stifling dark of the crypt, the height had been an abstraction, but here, under the flat orange sun, Krim was a gaunt, pale pillar that seemed to rake the sky. The necromancer stood nearly a foot and a half taller, a vertical fracture of white hair and indigo cloth against the shifting ash.

  His skin was deathly translucent, the thin blue veins at his temples appearing like fissures in parched earth, topped by a shock of white hair that whipped in the hot wind like shredded grave-silk.

  Heavy black boots climbed to his knees, and as he adjusted the layers of his indigo cloak, the sunlight caught the glint of enchanted jewelry, a multitude of heavy, colored rings weighing down spindly fingers. Through the open collar of his tunic, the jagged, hand-carved pentagram sat thick with scar tissue, a map of past agonies. With no staff or sword at his side, only a small ritual dagger at his hip, he possessed the quiet, terrifying stillness of a creature who had no need for steel to exert his will.

  Caldreth offered a short laugh, the first sound of amusement since his return. "I thought you said manners were a luxury out here, Netherbane. Besides, how do you know it's sentient? It hasn't said a word."

  Krim stared at the book, his eyes narrowing as the leather binding shivered in the wind. "I have a strong hunch."

  "Is this your doing, my lack of sensations?" Caldreth asked.

  The tome responded with a single, heavy pulse of red light that made the air hum.

  "Do you know of other books like this?" Caldreth asked, turning back to the necromancer.

  "I've seen grimoires before," Krim grunted, trying to regain his professional poise.

  "Grimoire?" Caldreth cut him off, the word unfamiliar on his tongue.

  "Yes, a grimoire," Krim answered, leaning slightly away from the floating artifact. "A book of power, handcrafted by individuals with enough will to bend reality to the page. They are rarely this... assertive."

  "Do you know who created it?"

  Krim shrugged his shoulders, a gesture of dismissive uncertainty. "I've never heard of it, nor seen its likeness in the Ossuary Archives. Which means it must be very old."

  "Old indeed," Caldreth muttered, taking in the finer details of the leather book. "Come, necromancer, Shatterdeep awaits."

  "You said east before, right?"

  "That is correct." Caldreth scanned the horizon with a searching, intense focus, but the Wastes offered no landmarks, only a repetitive geometry of fractured ridges and gouged ravines. He turned, then turned again, finding that the orange haze and rust-colored flats looked identical in every direction. The world was a cage of perfect, featureless symmetry.

  Krim studied him for a beat, his head tilting like a confused bird. "What exactly are you looking for, boy?"

  "East," Caldreth said flatly, though he didn't move a muscle.

  Krim exhaled a sharp, rattling breath and plopped his forehead into his palm. "You... you don't actually know which way east is, do you?"

  Caldreth let out a dry chuckle, the sound raspy from disuse. "You were correct earlier, Netherbane. I spent the vast majority of my time within the walls of Nethervale. Directions elude me in this wasteland. If you'd be so kind as to point toward the east, I will lead the way."

  Krim's head drifted upward, his gaunt features sagging under the weight of a heavy exhale. He extended a spindly, ring-adorned finger toward a distant range of jagged peaks. "That way. And that," he added, gesturing toward the desolate land to the left of them, "is north. Where I came from."

  Caldreth gave a single, sharp nod, his eyes tracking the line of Krim's arm. "North. Noted."

  He turned and stepped off toward the peaks with a newfound purpose.

  "Phylin and I traveled through the Bleached Expanse," Krim grunted, falling into step behind him. "That land is truly empty. Flat, white fields of ash for weeks until you reach the Underworld proper."

  They moved in silence, their boots carving shallow rifts into the rust-colored flats. Krim labored against the shifting grit; Caldreth didn't. As they crested a sand-swept rise, the terrain dipped into a shallow ravine. A hundred feet out, a demon corpse sprawled in the dust, buried as though the Wastes had tried to swallow it whole. Its torso lay exposed to the violent sun, its flesh mottled and torn.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Caldreth slowed as he reached the carcass. To his eyes, the dark liquid pooling in the ribcage wasn't just rot; it was a resource. A strange, primal instinct, cold and sharp, tugged at the back of his mind.

  "More blood for the book," Caldreth muttered, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears.

  Krim, trailing a few paces behind, squinted at Caldreth's back. "What? What are you doing?"

  Before the necromancer could get a clear view, Caldreth knelt in the sand. He reached out, his fingers hovering inches away from a tear in the demon's flank where a thick, black ichor had gathered. He moved with a mindless sort of focus, as if he were performing a necessary chore.

  Just as Caldreth's fingertips were about to break the surface of the pool, the tome flared. The light within its leather binding turned a violent red, pulsing with a sudden, localized heat. Caldreth froze mid-motion, his muscles locking as if a current of electricity had seized his nerves. He couldn't move his hand forward; it was as if the air around the corpse had turned to solid glass.

  NO.

  The voice was a frozen shard in his mind, sharp enough to make his vision blur. The tome drifted upward, positioning itself directly in front of Caldreth's face, its leather cover shivering as if it were snarling. An invisible pressure washed over him, a crushing weight that forced the air from his lungs.

  Rotten blood.

  The words were cold and hollow, echoing in the center of his skull. The moment the thought passed, the pressure vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Caldreth's muscles went slack, the sudden release sending him stumbling backward until he landed hard on his butt in the hot, rust-colored sand.

  He sat there for a moment, chest heaving, staring up at the book as it returned to its steady, predatory hum at his side.

  "Rotten, you say," Caldreth muttered.

  "A grimoire with refined tastes," Krim rasped, walking up next to Caldreth. His eyes remained alert to their surroundings.

  A glass-tearing screech ripped through the fields. The sound was high-pitched and hungry, echoing off the ridges. Caldreth's hand was on the hilt of his short sword before the echo died. The tome flared with eagerness, its vibration shifting from a hum to a low growl.

  "What's the matter, loud noises spook you?"

  "There," Caldreth said, his eyes tracking the sound to a narrow fissure, a vertical cut in the flat face of a mountain only a few hundred yards away.

  "Whatever made that noise is likely tearing into something fresh. We should head the other-"

  "No." Caldreth was already up and moving, his stride long and purposeful. The hunger in the tome was now a cold pull in his chest, dragging him toward the sound. "The book wants fresh blood, Netherbane. And I want to see if this steel can actually cut."

  They reached the cut in the mountain minutes later. The opening was a maw that led into a cool, shadowed tunnel. The smell of copper and bile was overwhelming, and from deep within the stone, the sound of wet tearing began to thud against the walls.

  Caldreth stepped into the tunnel, the tome of Sanguination leading the way like a lantern of blood.

  A winding tunnel greeted them first. It turned hard to the right, then sloped down, revealing a passage lined with broken stone and deep claw marks. Ahead, the shrieks grew thicker. Wet, guttural, and frantic. They rounded a final bend and entered a large, uneven chamber, halting at the threshold.

  A pack of infected demons writhed and snapped in the cavern's center, driving a smaller group backward with a manic, suicidal energy. They were twisted reflections of the grunts that had run Caldreth down in the Cinder Fields, stunted, ape-like things, barely four feet tall but broad-shouldered and dense with corded muscle.

  Their heads were flat, dominated by short, upturned snouts and rows of needle-like fangs that jutted over their lower lips. Instead of hands, their long, multi-jointed arms ended in three obsidian-black talons.

  Purple hides were stretched thin, black veins pulsing beneath the surface. Luminous pustules swelled along their joints, leaking a faint green bile. They moved like puppets, limbs jerking with unnatural speed. Their eyes were gone, replaced by a pale fungal growth.

  In the center of the trapped group, a lanky demon warrior held the crumbling line. He stood a head taller than Caldreth, his elongated limbs corded with whip-like muscle. A pair of thick, black horns swept back from his brow, one snapped off halfway to a blunt point, the other scarred from tip to base.

  His mouth was a cavernous, horizontal slit that stretched nearly from ear to ear, revealing rows of serrated, yellowed teeth as he let out a deep, vibrating roar. He wielded twin, rust-pitted cleavers with the desperation of a creature who knew his time was running out. Flanking him were a pair of purple-skinned lesser grunts, their panic making them sloppy.

  A storm of teeth and claws had already dragged one of the flanking grunts away; the small creature was dead before its head hit the stone, torn apart by the twitching, infected pack.

  The tome lurched at Caldreth's side, its leather shivering against his ribs. A voice, cold and dry as parchment, hissed into the center of his skull.

  The warrior first. Then the rest.

  A cold hatred flared in Caldreth's chest the moment he saw the demons below. He ripped the scabbard free and tossed it aside, the dull steel of the Grave Watch sword catching the sickly orange light. Two of the infected fiends snapped their heads toward the slope, their short snouts twitching as a fresh scent hit them.

  "The attackers..." Krim murmured, leaning forward as he tracked the frenzied movements. "Weeping sores, green bile, they match the corpses that Phylin and I found earlier. Something is twisting their physiology, Caldreth. It's a blight."

  Caldreth was already mid-stride, his boots crushing grit as he descended the slope. He barely heard the necromancer's analysis; his focus was locked on the black, pulsing veins of the nearest lunging monster.

  "The bile!" Krim shouted after him. "Don't let it touch you, the rot moves fast." I'll be damned if my prize is corrupted.

  The first infected grunt lunged up the incline, its arms reaching out with sharp talons. It shrieked, a gurgling, wet sound that sprayed neon-tinted saliva into the air.

  Caldreth stepped directly into the creature's reach, a move that would have been suicide for a lesser man. He maintained a suffocating pressure, staying so close the monster couldn't swing its talons, forcing the fiend backward with the sheer momentum of his advance. The doctrine was older than his name, etched into his marrow: never give them room to breathe.

  The infected grunt was erratic, exhibiting only mindless movements. Caldreth used that manic energy against it, a simple feint of his shoulder tricking the creature into a wide, desperate overreach.

  He lunged to finish it, but his arm trailed a fraction of a second behind his intent. His muscles, though restored, protested the violent demand for speed. Still, he gritted his teeth and forced the strike home. The dull steel hammered through the creature's jaw, ending the shriek with a sickening crunch. The grunt's body went limp, its weight dragging the blade down as it slumped into the red sand.

  Krim followed close behind, meeting the second fiend mid-air with a brutal efficiency that spoke of rigorous training. He caught the creature with a kick that snapped its jaw sideways, then seized its skull with his ring-adorned fingers, wrenching until the neck bone cracked like wet timber.

  Caldreth kicked the dead weight off his sword, his eyes taking in the chaos below. The infected blood on his blade was dark and sluggish, smelling of sulfur and rot.

  The tome pulsed a sharp, dissatisfied garnet. It wanted something better.

  Another rabid wretch burst from the brawl below, climbing the slope with disturbing speed. Caldreth caught the beast across its broad, purple chest, the blade tearing through leathery hide and black veins in a spray of dark, sluggish ichor.

  "Vile thing," he muttered. "Know your place."

  The Tome of Sanguination drifted at his shoulder, its garnet light pulsing in a frantic, hungry rhythm. It ignored the infected blood hitting the sand, its glow fixed entirely on the scarred, lanky warrior with the broken horns who was still fighting for his life in the center of the cavern.

  Below, the warrior felled the last infected with a downward chop. But as the creature split open, a jet of black-green sludge sprayed from the wound, splashing directly into an open gash on the warrior's forearm. It staggered, dropping one of the cleavers to clutch the splashed arm.