I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

The spatial tear sealed shut with the dull, concussive thud of an iron hatch closing against a pressurized hull.

Prince Rhys sank three inches into the spongy, black-brown peat of Floor Twenty before his footing found solid ground.

The atmospheric transition between the Spire’s upper plateau and this lower depth was jarring.

The air was a thick, stagnant suspension of fine volcanic soot and sweet, sickening rot, hot enough to dry the moisture from his throat within seconds.

The swamp carried a thickness that made breathing feel like inhaling something semi-solid, each breath coating his lungs with moisture that tasted like mold and death.

To the west and north, the horizon was broken by the serrated silhouettes of the Obsidian Ridge, where active calderas vented steady plumes of black ash into a perpetual twilight sky.

Below those ridges, the terrain dropped into the Great Blight Swamp.

An endless, necrotic wetland where stagnant pools of murky, fetid water bubbled between dead trees whose skeletal branches clawed toward the gloomy heavens.

Their bark wept the same dark fluid that leaked from the Blight Clan members’ corrupted skin, creating black streams that ran down twisted trunks to mix with the foul water below.

Fungi bloomed across the rotting wood in vibrant, pulsing bioluminescent hues that were deceptively beautiful, but intensely toxic.

Rhys adjusted his stance, both daggers held loosely in a reverse grip as his boots settled against the sodden earth.

Beside him, Mira stepped down onto a flat slab of pale gray stone.

The red-haired woman was a specter of silent, unblinking lethality.

She wore a fitted suit of dark shadow-cloth reinforced with boiled drake leather, leaving her arms exposed from the elbow down.

Thick, runic-stitched suppression gloves of black hide encased both of her hands, running all the way up to her forearms.

She had to wear them since the last incident. She accidentally touched some buildings and drained their water content.

It seems harmless when said, but in reality, it is a frightening concept. Because of this, the structure cracked and splintered and then, moments later, collapsed.

So the gloves have become an integral part of her outfit.

Her red wavy hair caught what little light bled through Floor Twenty’s perpetual gloom, framing a pale, porcelain face with sharp cheekbones.

Her amber eyes were vacant pools.

Wide, glassy, and completely stripped of memory and ego.

She was Jack Kaiser’s dog. A reanimated, soul-bound asset with no past and no identity beyond the execution of her master’s directives.

"Scan the perimeter," Rhys commanded softly.

Mira turned her head, tracking the murky treeline.

Ahead lay the Ashen Clearing, a circular expanse of pale gray stone surrounded by the rotting marsh. It had been the Blight Clan’s primary settlement, a communal space where they once traded, trained their young to control their corrupted touch, and held territorial assemblies.

Now, the surviving Blight demons had moved their core settlement inside the hollowed, calcified trunk of an ancient elder-tree at the clearing’s edge.

As Rhys and Mira crossed the pale stone, movement stirred from the base of the colossal tree.

Three Blight demons emerged from the hollow entrance. Their bodies were covered in thick, bark-like hide cracked with fissures that constantly wept dark, viscous fluid.

They possessed no horns like most demons; instead, their corrupted flesh was rough and split like dried timber, their wide, unblinking eyes burning with an instinctual, territorial wariness.

They did not register the elven prince, nor did they look at his daggers.

Their unblinking eyes locked entirely onto the red-haired woman walking at his flank.

The moment they recognized Mira’s face, dread washed over them.

The very woman who had slaughtered one thousand of their kin in seventeen minutes without breaking a sweat.

A primal, catatonic terror seized the three demons. Dark fluid leaked from cracks in their bodies in violent, heavy streams, pooling rapidly at their feet.

Their corrupted physiology screamed in panic.

Without a single word or defensive motion, all three demons dropped to the pale stone, pressing their bodies low, raising their hands in desperate gestures of absolute submission.

Palms forward, fingers spread, bodies trembling so violently that their cracked hide rattled against the rock.

"Take us to the Clan Leader of the Blight Demons," Rhys ordered.

The three demons scrambled backward on their hands and knees, turning to usher the pair into the cavernous interior of the hollowed elder-tree.

Inside, the light was dim, illuminated by clusters of glowing fungal growths clinging to the internal bark walls.

Hundreds of Blight Clan members were pressed against the curved wooden perimeter, their bodies rigid, unmoving, and paralyzed with fear as they watched Mira glide past them.

At the center of the hollow chamber stood the Clan Leader of the Blight Demons.

She was a tall, imposing figure whose bark-like skin bore extensive, deep fissures that wept continuous streams of dark fluid.

Her hands were clad in heavy suppression gloves identical to Mira’s, necessary to prevent her corrupted touch from involuntarily decaying the wood and stone around her.

When she saw Mira enter, the Clan Leader’s breath seized in her chest.

Her lips moved in silent, terrified tremors before she forced her trembling body down onto one knee, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the roots at Rhys and Mira’s feet.

"You have returned..." the Clan Leader rasped, her deep voice cracking with desperate reverence. "The Clan of the Blight remains in absolute submission to the Soul Warden. What is your will?"

"I require two things," Rhys said, stepping forward. "First: the location of a God’s Blood Tree on this floor. Second: the location of the strongest non-clan entity within this realm."

The Clan Leader kept her head bowed low, her eyes fixed upon the floorboards as she answered in a strained, careful cadence:

"There is no God’s Blood Tree rooted within the Blight Swamps, Prince. The soil here drinks from veins of acid and necrotic rot; any sacred tree that attempts to take root within this floor withers before its first bloom. If you seek a pure, unblemished God’s Blood Tree, you must look to Floor Twenty-Two. It rests within the central glacial sanctuary, guarded by the Frost Demons."

Rhys committed the coordinates to memory. "And the beast?"

The Clan Leader raised a single, gloved hand, pointing toward the northern opening of the hollow tree that framed the distant volcanic peaks.

"The Black Caldera," she said, her voice shaking as she stole a frantic glance at Mira.

"At the very apex of the highest crater, resting within the primordial molten pool, sleeps the Obsidian Colossus. It is a Disaster-class lava beast born of the floor’s volcanic core, unbound by the Soul Warden’s contracts and hostile to all living flesh. Slay it, and you will hold the strongest core of Floor Twenty."

"Understood," Rhys said, turning on his heel. "Stay within your tree."

"We obey," the Clan Leader whispered, remaining pressed against the floor alongside her clan as Rhys and Mira exited back into the gloom.

"Mira, what did you do to those people?" Rhys asked curiously.

"I only did what Master asked of me. To slaughter 1000 of their strongest for disrespecting Master. Nothing more." She said Matter-of-factly.

Her lack of emotion and casual demeanor in her answer frightened normal people. Her absolute confidence that what she did was the right thing would bother most people.

This was just a reminder that Jack always returned courtesy 10-fold.

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