It started with a rock. A big, flat, ancient thing, heavy with self-importance, squatting atop the overgrown mound like a stone pancake laid by the gods and never cleaned up.
The Dragon stared at it, unimpressed. "You want me to move it?"
I didn't even look up. "Yes."
"I am not a beast of burden."
"Of course not," I said sweetly. "You're a majestic, ancient creature of fire and wisdom. Now shove your claws under it and move the damn thing."
He huffed. The kind of exhale that would've singed eyebrows if I were standing closer. "This is undignified."
"So is watching our pretend hero clank around in curtain rods and soup pot helmets. Get moving."
Muttering something about divine punishment and the fall of dragonkind, he reared up, dug his claws under the slab, and heaved. The stone groaned, the ground shivered, and with a mighty crack-thump, the tomb's cover flipped off and slammed into the grass nearby, leaving a dark, gaping hole in the mound.
Dust billowed. The smell hit us next—dry earth, mold, and something metallic underneath. Faint, but wrong. Not blood. Older.
I handed Mibbs a shovel.
He held it like I'd given him a loaded crossbow. "Are you sure this is okay?"
I tied my hair into a ponytail. "Perfectly fine."
He stared at me.
I stopped mid-tie. "What?"
His ears turned red. "Nothing."
I rolled my eyes. "Mibbs. I'm not about to go down on my knees. Start digging."
He squeaked and jabbed the spade into the dirt. Poorly. Like a man trying to swat flies with a limp fish.
Dragon made a noise halfway between a sigh and a snort. "We're robbing a barrow now?"
"Not robbing," I said, crouching beside the opening. "Requisitioning. For a noble cause."
He tilted his head. "You're going to dress him in corpse-armor and parade him through a village."
"Exactly."
Mibbs stopped digging. "This feels... wrong."
I leaned on my shovel. "Lad, everything I do feels wrong. You get used to it."
He swallowed hard. "But it's cursed."
"Old wives' tale," I said. "They always say that. 'Don't enter the tomb, don't take the armor, don't disturb the brave knight's eternal rest or he'll rise again and smite the living.' It's tradition."
Behind me, the Dragon shifted uneasily. "Some traditions exist for a reason."
I ignored both of them. The wind shifted, brushing up my arms and crawling down my back like icy fingers. I shivered, but pretended I didn't. Dirt clung to my skin. My palms felt tight. Tingling. Probably the cold.
Probably.
"This is a brilliant plan," I said to no one in particular. "What could possibly go wrong?"
And I jammed the shovel in with a little too much force, trying to silence the voice in my head that whispered: everything.
The hole was about waist-deep now, and I was sweaty, itchy, and getting dirt between my toes. I'd kicked off my sandals ten minutes ago because they kept slipping, and now every clump of cold earth squelched up between my toes like the grave itself wanted to grope me.
I hated it.
I shoveled harder.
Dragon loomed above the dig site, tail twitching like a bored cat, his golden eyes narrowed to cynical slits.
"This is creepy," he muttered.
"You're a demonic apex predator with a body count longer than a plague year."
"Yes," he said, curling his lip. "And even I think this is creepy."
I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm. "We need proper heroic armor, remember?"
"I'd prefer it without the corpse still attached."
I grunted and slammed the spade into the dirt again. The sound echoed strangely—dull, then sharp, like we were getting close to something buried under loose stone.
Mibbs was working across from me, doing more whimpering than digging. Dirt clung to his cheeks. His spade was mostly scooping air.
"This is bad," he said softly. "Really bad."
I didn't answer.
He kept going. "They say the knight buried here was betrayed by his brothers. That his bones still burn with wrath. That if anyone touches his helm, their eyes go blind, their hair turns white, and their liver falls out."
I stopped. Looked at him. "That's not even biologically possible."
"I'm just telling you what the old shepherds say," he said, pale as goat's milk. "There's more, too. One guy said if you so much as glance at the armor, your tongue swells up and you can only speak in demon verse."
Dragon actually snorted. "That might improve your sermons."
I pushed a sweaty strand of hair out of my face. "It's not a curse," I said. "It's… destiny. Fate. A divine calling. You know, like a sacred blade jammed in a rock, or passed down by some watery sult."
Mibbs blinked. "A what?"
I sighed. "Never mind. Keep digging, boy."
He resumed digging with all the enthusiasm of a man gutting his childhood pet.
"And stop staring down my cleavage."
He jerked back like I'd slapped him. "I wasn't!"
"Then angle your eyes, Mibbs. I'm trying to unearth a holy relic, not give you a free education."
He blushed hard enough to light a lantern. Dragon chuckled darkly.
The next shovel hit something solid. Hard. It rang like metal on bone.
We all stopped.
The air changed again—thicker, stiller. Like even the wind was holding its breath.
I glanced at the Dragon.
He wasn't smirking anymore.
I looked back at Mibbs.
He looked like he was about to throw up.
I swallowed hard and said the only thing I could think of.
"Well," I muttered. "That's probably fine."
The moment we brushed away the last layer of earth, I knew we'd made a mistake.
The armor wasn't just pristine. It was glowing.
Not moonlight, not metal shine—real glow. Sickly green-blue, like swamp gas and corpse rot and all the bad omens rolled into one.
And the bones.
Perfect, ivory white. Crossed like they'd been arranged yesterday. The helm sat atop the skull like it still belonged to a living man. No dust. No decay.
Just… wrong.
The air got thick. My teeth buzzed. My stomach turned over like I'd swallowed gravel and regret.
Mibbs made a whimpering noise beside me. "Oh gods. Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh fuck."
I opened my mouth to say something clever—something reassuring—but my brain pulled a full blank.
Because the runes etched across the chestplate started to pulse.
Slow. Steady. Alive.
Mibbs squealed and fell backward, arms flailing. Then—thump. He went limp in the dirt.
"Oh fuck."
Behind me, the Dragon took two steps back. His nostrils flared. His wings flexed. "I warned you," he muttered.
"Don't you fucking dare—"
He launched skyward like a startled bat out of every hell. Wind blasted across the grave. Leaves ripped from the trees. The pressure dropped like the world was holding its breath.
"COWARD!" I screamed up at him, even as I scrambled away from the grave like it might reach up and grab my ankle.
The tomb hummed. The armor gleamed brighter. A sound like a whisper echoed from somewhere inside the bones.
Or maybe it was in my head.
Or maybe it was below my head.
I didn't wait to check.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!"
I grabbed the nearest spade—Mibbs's, of course—and started shoveling dirt back into the hole. Clumps, handfuls, whatever I could grab.
"COVER IT UP. COVER IT UP. QUICK. QUICK. FUCK—"
I looked down. One skeletal finger had curled upward like it was reaching.
I screamed.
And ran.
No clever exit. No dignified retreat. Just pure, bootless, hair-wild, curse-drenched flight.
Down the hill. Past the trees. Through a thorn bush that absolutely clawed my thigh open. Didn't matter.
Branches cracked. Rocks slipped. My lungs burned. The image burned harder.
That glow.
That finger.
That stupid, cursed, arrogant ancient armor.
And now Mibbs was probably cursed.
And the Dragon had abandoned me.
And I was probably cursed too, and this whole fucking valley probably needed a cleansing fire and a priest with more backbone than me.
I didn't stop running until I hit the stream, fell face-first into the mud, and lay there wheezing like a drunk widow on her third heartbreak.
It was quiet again.
Too quiet.
Which only made it worse.
The stream was cold. Bone-deep cold. Runoff from some mountain spring probably, blessed by frost spirits and cursed by my life choices.
I was up to my elbows in it, scrubbing like I'd just murdered a pope.
"Stupid fucking glowing armor," I muttered. "Stupid cursed tomb. Stupid ancient ghost bones. Who glows after death? That's just theatrical. That's needy."
My fingers were raw. I switched hands and started again. Still wasn't clean. Still felt like my skin was humming. Or maybe it was my guilt vibrating out of my pores.
Behind me, the Dragon landed with a rustle of wings and a faint hiss of steam.
He looked rattled.
Good.
"You left us," I snapped without turning around. "You fucking left us."
"I performed a tactical retreat."
"You flew off!"
He shifted uncomfortably. "There were… emanations."
I turned, dripping and furious. "You're a demonic creature of primordial chaos!"
He pointed a claw at me. "And you ran first!"
"I am a temple dancer!" I shouted. "We are trained in the art of tactical sensuality, not fighting haunted armor!"
"You screamed 'fuck' five times and threw dirt!"
"I was covering our tracks!"
He huffed. "Mibbs is still up there, by the way."
That stopped me.
I stared at him. "Shit."
He nodded slowly. "Yes. Shit."
I wiped my face with wet hands. "We have to go back for him."
"Oh, now you want to go back?"
"You think I want to leave the boy to get ghost-fucked by a glowing skeleton?"
He recoiled. "That's not a thing!"
"It could be! It feels like a thing!"
He muttered under his breath, tail flicking nervously.
I stared at my hands. Still tingling. Still wrong.
"He's probably still unconscious," I said, quieter. "Unless the curse made him into a glowing goat or something."
Dragon's shoulders slumped. "He'd still be an improvement."
I looked up at him. He looked back, eyes tired.
"Truce?"
He sighed. "Until we're not cursed anymore."
"Fair."
I stood up, legs trembling slightly, and shook the water off.
"Let's go dig up our idiot."
We started up the hill, slow and quiet. No dramatic speeches. No torches. Just two twitchy cowards creeping back toward a cursed hole in the earth like it owed us money.
The moon was higher now, casting long silver shadows across the trees. Every branch looked like a claw. Every root tried to trip me.
Dragon walked beside me, tail low, eyes darting.
"Just so we're clear," he muttered, "if something jumps out of that grave and starts chanting in tongues, I'm immolating the entire hillside."
I rolled my eyes. "You already abandoned us once."
"I did not abandon you. I withdrew."
"You yeeted yourself into the sky like a cowardly seagull!"
He hissed. "What if the ghost possessed him?"
"What?"
"Mibbs," he said, eyes wide now. "What if it got inside his mind? What if we're not going back to rescue the boy, but to fight the cursed vessel of an undead warlord?"
I stared at him.
"I am not fighting cursed Mibbs." His voice rose an octave. "He'll glow. He'll chant. He'll make us relive our worst memories."
I stopped walking. "You're deranged."
He kept going. "What if he grows long fingers and floats?"
"Then we slap him with a fish and call a priest."
He whipped around. "I am not mentally prepared for spectral warfare, Saya!"
A sound crackled in the darkness ahead—twigs snapping, rustling brush, something breathing.
We both froze.
Another rustle. Closer.
I reached for the only weapon I had: a rock the size of an egg.
The Dragon crouched low. "It's him. The boy. But not the boy. It's what's inside him now."
A shape stumbled out from the undergrowth.
We both screamed.
The Dragon shrieked something in Draconic and launched straight up, branches snapping as he bolted.
I reeled back, nearly fell—then stopped.
It was Mibbs.
Barefoot, pants soaked, one eye twitching. Mud-streaked, pale, and trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm.
"Hi," he squeaked.
I stared at him.
He stared at me.
He looked exactly like Mibbs.
Which is to say: pathetic.
"Why are your pants wet?" I finally asked.
"I think I peed," he whispered.
I dropped the rock.
I stared at him for one heartbeat. Two.
Then I lunged forward and threw my arms around him.
"You stupid, stupid boy!" I gasped, half-laughing, half-sobbing into his neck. "You're not cursed. You're not floating. You're not glowing. Oh gods, I thought we broke you—"
He staggered, stiff as a plank, arms flailing at his sides.
"I—I think I peed again," he mumbled.
I didn't let go. I just held him tighter and laughed harder, snotty and breathless. "You're fine. You're just Mibbs. Thank the fucking stars."
He whimpered. "M'lady, did I… did I do good?"
I pulled back just enough to see his face.
"You didn't die, Mibbs," I said. "Which, given the day we've had, is basically a miracle."
Then he fainted again.
I caught him with a grunt. "Oh for fuck's sake."