Echoes of the Dead

Keiji wouldn’t stop staring at me.

Not at the spinehound’s twisted, steaming corpse—at me.

Like I’d grown horns. Or sprouted a glowing hero crest across my chest.

“You killed it in one blow,” he said again, quieter this time.

“Technically, I killed it in two,” I muttered, wiping black ichor from the blade and shoving it back in my pack.

His eyes didn’t leave me.

Thomlin had finally woken up. And instantly started wailing, rocking back and forth, staring at the stumps where his hands used to be. I wrapped his tumps with the last of my bandages. Too bad I didn’t have enough for his mouth.

His constant crying wasn’t helping morale.

Grinn vomited behind a pillar. Again.

This was going great. Just fantastic.

We didn’t speak as we left the dungeon.

Not at first.

Though Keiji had passed is first assignment, the mission wasn’t what you would call successful.

Sera was dead.

Thomlin wasn’t—though he’d probably wish otherwise by morning.

The healer’s staff was snapped in half, along with her midsection turned inside out by the hound’s spine. I grabbed the staff. The law was for her staff to be taken to her guild but since she didn’t belong to any, I could keep it without much fuss.

Grinn, the only one untouched, carried what was left of Thomlin, shaking like a leaf. The farm boy’s optimism was gone, replaced by a hollow stare.

I held Keiji back as we exited, made him help wrap Sera’s body. It was tradition, at least to me—a rite of passage. If you walk into the dark and walk out alive, you earn the burden of remembering the ones who didn’t.

I also wanted to see how the kid was handled this situation.

Since his outburst, he hadn’t said a word.

“Don’t read too much into what you saw,” I said, low and flat. “I just knew where to hit. That’s all.”

He didn’t answer but hopefully that was enough for him to keep his thoughts to himself.

Outside, the sun had already climbed to its zenith, bearing down with relentless heat.

The old tarp bundle I’d left at the dungeon mouth—the first corpse, half-charred—was still there. I picked it up and led the others up the hill to the graveyard.

They weren’t heroes or nobles so I couldn’t carve headstones for them. No names either, just dirt and a deep pit.

They didn’t even get individual graves. One pit two bodies.

We opened the tarp, added Sera’s remains to the bundle and sealed it up with twine.
Then I started digging.

Trchhk. Trchhk.

Each shovelful of dirt felt heavier than the last. Not because of the weight, but from what I had done.

That glaive blade’s power still echoed in my bones. My resonance ability gave me access to the weapon’s previous users skills.

The more I used their weapons, the more their skills became part of me.

Even after years of utilizing this ability, I still didn’t know much about it. Where it came from? Which weapons could I use? So far I had only used heroes’ weapons but who knows maybe Sera’s staff could work for me.

‘You should’ve turned left. You always turned left in that stance. That’s why you died.’

I almost forgot. One drawback of using this ability was the weapon's users' nagging voices in my head.

Keiji stood nearby, hugging his arms, watching with wide, silent eyes.

I kept digging. My hands shook more now.

‘You should’ve turned left.’

I tried to shake it off, but the voice was familiar, quite recent in fact.

The first time Affinity Resonance kicked in fully was over a year ago.

It was when Callen died.

Funny enough, it was his behemoth sword that started it all.

He’d disappeared in a High-Tier dungeon for a week. The Church was worried and typical Lucien, he sent me to check it out. Back then, I still had my friends as backup Remnant Collectors, so it wouldn’t have been a huge loss if I had taken the plunge.

High-Tier dungeons were one of those Tower-Crawl types —long, vertical, layered hellscapes. Each floor with its own biome. One might be a flooded ruin, the next a frozen cathedral of mirrors. No two runs were ever the same. Unlike Mid-Tier dungeons that reset when you enter, these evolved.

I wasn’t stupid. I could have just buried a skeleton and pretended it was the real deal, but Callen had saved my life. I owed him.

I got to the third floor out of sheer luck. Corpses littered the path —goblins, mutated bats, and other things I couldn’t name. I searched but there was no sign of him. But near the balcony’s edge, his sword was there—nailed into stone like a grave marker.

It was right then that a Spinehound attacked me. I immediately went for the sword. I struggled to yank it free at first, then it came loose with a shriek. It was so heavy and I couldn’t lift it. As the hound came at me, I felt a tingle in my hand and was flooded with memories of Callen.

Some from his childhood. Faces I’d never seen, places I'd never heard of.

But most importantly, a memory of him fighting a spinehound. I immediately shifted my feet and slashed the hound in two. A move made possible due to Callen’s extraordinary strength.

I didn’t think much of it back then.

I was facing certain death, so I thought it was instinct. My body reacted by itself. I chalked it up to grief. Anything I could do to make sense of it.

I didn’t continue past the third floor. I returned with the sword and dug Callen’s grave. To this day, no one knows this, but his grave was empty.

Without fail, the Church summoned another hero the next day.

A few days later, I escorted Hero#34 to a Mid-Tier dungeon after his first assignment. The kind with looping caverns, rotating walls, and bloodthirsty flora.

That’s when it happened again.

The hero fell to a venom sting from a Stingback —a grotesque hybrid of a spider and a scorpion, its back layered like black glass and a segmented tail ending in a needle the length of a short sword.

I recognized the movement. Callen had fought one of those once.

When I drew his sword, my body reacted again. It wasn’t just instinct. It was muscle memory—passed into mine through the serrated steel. Like Callen was teaching me how to fight. How to swing a sword.

I killed it.

And just like that, Ash Rook, the Remnant Collector was born.

Keiji sat on a rock nearby, blood seeping through the bandage at his side. He hadn’t noticed yet or maybe he didn’t care.

“…How did you do that?” he asked finally.

I didn’t answer right away. I looked at Thomlin—still conscious, still alive. Barely. I had to get him to a proper healer. More reason to finish faster.

“Are you going to sit there or help me?”

Keiji frowned. “With what? You’ve got the only shovel.”

“You still have hands, don’t you?”

With Keiji’s and surprisingly, Grinn’s help we finished covering the grave in no time.

I hoisted Thomlin over my shoulder. He was heavier than he looked. Keiji carried my pack and shovel, his knuckles white on the handle.

He had tried to take Thomlin once, but failed. He still has some training to do.

The Kingdom of Halvas was divided into concentric rings, each more polished and pretentious the closer you got to the Palace.

We were still in the Copper Ring. 

The Healers' Guildhall stood at the end of a narrow side street, just past the alchemists and herbal stalls. Hawkers were busy selling incense that probably didn’t work. You knew it by the twin marble statues out front: two faceless robed figures, one holding a flame, the other water.

They called them “Mercy” and “Clarity,” though they looked more like undertakers to me.

I hadn't noticed that Grinn was no longer with us. I assumed he went back home, to rethink his life.

The guildhall had the best healers from every ring, even Gold and Silver. Unlike our barracks medics—mostly apprentices who’d panic casting a minor bones repair spell—these were pros.

Inside, it reeked of sage and blood.

Wooden benches were packed with groaning adventurers, feverish children and one guy with a crossbow stuck in his thigh, casually chatting like it was normal.

A healer in red robes approached. Her sash bore the sigil of her order: a white feather threaded with gold.

She glanced at Keiji and frowned.

I noticed but didn't say anything.

“This one’s barely holding on,” she said, her face showing clear empathy. “What was he doing in a dungeon like that?”

“First assignment,” I replied.

That was usually explanation enough.

She nodded and called over two acolytes. They rushed Thomlin down a long hall, robes whispering like ghosts.

Keiji and I made our way back through the Copper Ring and crossed into the Bronze Ring, where the streets were rougher, and the banners traded silk for soot-stained iron.

This was the Barracks District. It wasn’t just soldiers. Here we had misfits: fighters, mercs, exiles, battlemages and the kind of people who used “stabbed” as a past-tense for negotiations.. Rows of squat buildings surrounded muddy training fields and weapon racks. The clang of steel and barked commands echoed through the air.

Home Sweet Home

Here, we had less silk robes and more chainmail and sweat. Some had titles like “Guard Captain” or “Tactician” but most were just meat with weapons. Not good enough to be remembered when they bled out.

Every grunt here dreamed of making it into the Palace Guard.
Few ever did.