A grave should hold remains. A tomb should contain the past. But this one… this one held neither.

There were no bones. No body. No ashes of the long dead.

Only a prison.

A prison so ancient that even time itself had forgotten who was buried inside.

But the seals were still intact.

The warnings still carved into stone.

And the air… the air still whispered with the weight of something waiting.

I have seen many things, but never before have I found a grave so determined to stay closed.

Until the day someone tried to open it.

The Map That Shouldn’t Exist

I found the first clue in a place where it never should have been.

A map, hidden inside a dead man’s journal, buried beneath the floorboards of a ruined monastery.

The monks had vanished centuries ago, leaving nothing behind but stone and silence.

Yet this one book remained, untouched by decay.

And within its pages, drawn with ink that had not faded, was a grave that did not belong to any king, any hero, any saint.

No records spoke of it.

No legends whispered its name.

And yet, someone had taken great care to mark it on this map.

A single word, written beside the tomb’s location.

“Sealed.”

Not buried.

Not resting.

Sealed.

It was not a grave.

It was a prison.

The Journey to the Forgotten Crypt

It took months to find it.

The path led me through forgotten roads, across lands where even the trees seemed uneasy, their branches bending away as if whispering among themselves.

And finally, at the heart of a land where no kingdom dared to claim, I found it.

Not a cemetery.
Not a burial ground.
Just one massive stone structure, half-buried in the earth, untouched by time.

The land around it was wrong.

No birds.
No wind.
No signs that anything had lived here for a long, long time.

And there, carved deep into the stone, was the same word I had seen before.

“Sealed.”

The Tomb That Refused to Decay

Most ancient ruins crumble.

Time wears them down, ivy and moss claim their walls, the ground swallows their foundations.

But this tomb?

It did not age.

The carvings were as sharp as the day they were etched, the runes pulsing with something beneath the stone, something waiting to be heard.

I reached out, running my fingers over the script.

The words were written in no language I had ever seen.

And yet, as soon as I touched them…

I understood.

It was not a story of the dead.

It was a warning for the living.

And as the wind picked up, howling across the empty field, I whispered the words aloud.

“This is not a grave. It is a door.”

And doors can be opened.

The First Mistake

I did not come here alone.

Others had followed me—explorers, treasure hunters, men who did not believe in warnings.

One of them, a man named Dain, stepped forward, his eyes locked on the tomb’s entrance.

“If it’s sealed, that means there’s something worth sealing inside.”

I sighed.

“That also means there’s a reason it was never meant to be opened.”

But greed is louder than caution.

Dain and his men had already brought tools, already set their minds on breaking the seal.

And as the first hammer struck the stone, I felt it.

A shift in the air.

Like something deep beneath us had stirred.

And for the first time in centuries…

The grave breathed.

The Sound That Was Not Wind

The moment the stone cracked, a sound echoed from within.

Not air escaping.
Not the shifting of ancient rubble.

A breath.

Something deep and slow, the sound of lungs that had not tasted air in a thousand years.

The men froze, their tools clattering to the ground.

Dain’s face paled, his bravado faltering for the first time.

“What was that?” one of them whispered.

I already knew.

“It was waiting.”

And now…

It knew we were here.

The Tomb That Answered Back

The runes along the stone began to glow, flickering like embers, as if waking from a deep, suffocating slumber.

The seals that had held the tomb shuddered, resisting the damage, but the first crack had already been made.

Something inside was listening now.

Dain hesitated, glancing between his men and the now-breathing tomb.

“We keep going,” he said, forcing confidence into his voice.

“It’s just old air, trapped inside. That’s all.”

But I was watching the ground.

And the ground was moving.

Something below us, something ancient and buried, was shifting.

And then…

A voice rose from within the tomb.

Low.
Ragged.
Barely a whisper.

But impossibly alive.

“Who… calls my name?”

Dain turned to me, his face pale.

“What… what did it say?”

I did not answer.

Because I was too busy looking at the entrance.

At the way the stone was beginning to pull apart from the inside.

Not broken.

Not shattered.

But opening.

Because whatever had been sealed inside…

Was waking up.

And we were standing right in front of it.

The Moment the Tomb Opened

Stone should not move on its own.

Not like this.

The entrance to the tomb did not crumble or collapse.

It peeled apart, piece by piece, like a mouth that had long forgotten how to speak.

Dust filled the air, thick with the scent of something ancient and wrong.

Dain stumbled back, gripping his sword.

“What is this?” he muttered.

I didn’t answer.

Because I could feel it now.

The presence behind that door.

Not just waking up.

Listening.

The Shadow Behind the Seal

Inside, there was no coffin.

No remains.

No bones.

Just a void, a space that did not belong to the world we stood in.

The air inside was too still, the darkness too deep.

Like a place that had never known light, or breath, or time itself.

And in that emptiness…

Something moved.

Not a body.
Not a creature.

A shape without form.

And then—

It spoke again.

“I have waited long enough.”

The voice was dry, like wind moving through hollow rock.

Like something that had forgotten what it meant to speak, but not to hunger.

The ground trembled beneath our feet.

Dain’s men dropped their tools.

And before any of them could react, the darkness inside the tomb rushed out.

The Escape That Wasn’t Fast Enough

“Run!” I shouted.

Too late.

The first man to move wasn’t fast enough.

The shadows reached him before his foot hit the ground.

And in the space of a single heartbeat—

He was gone.

Not pulled inside.
Not devoured.

Simply erased, as if he had never existed.

The air howled, twisting around us in tendrils of moving black, shifting like a living wind, reaching for more.

And that was when I understood.

This wasn’t a person.

This wasn’t a prisoner waiting to be freed.

This was something that had been removed from existence itself.

Something that had no name anymore.

Something that had no right to return.

And now, we had given it the chance.

The Thing That Should Not Have Been

I grabbed Dain by the arm, pulling him back as the others fled in all directions.

The tomb groaned, the runes on its walls flickering, trying to hold the thing back.

But the seal had been broken.

It wasn’t enough anymore.

The shadows rose from the ground, curling like smoke in reverse, trying to shape something that was never meant to be given shape again.

And through the shifting darkness, I saw it.

Not a face.
Not a form.

But a pair of eyes, hollow and infinite, staring at me from beyond the veil of the world.

And I knew—

It remembered me.

The Name That Should Never Be Spoken

“You.”

It wasn’t a question.

It wasn’t a greeting.

It was recognition.

A voice from a time before history had names.

A voice that knew me, even when I did not know it.

The others could not hear what I heard.

But I knew what it meant.

This thing had been buried for a reason.

And now it was looking at me like I was part of the reason it had been locked away in the first place.

I took a step back, my mind racing.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

For a moment, the shadows hesitated.

As if they had to remember.

And then—

The runes along the tomb flared, sending a shockwave of ancient magic through the ground.

The darkness reeled back, its tendrils snapping apart like broken thread.

And in that instant, I saw it.

The thing’s true form.

A shape that was not meant for mortal eyes.

A shape that had no place in this world.

A shape that had been sealed away before time itself had a name.

And for the first time in a thousand years, it spoke its own name aloud.

A name that had never been written down, never whispered in the ears of mortals.

A name that should have been lost forever.

A name I should not have heard.

“I am Nythral.”

The moment the name left its lips, the sky cracked.

The Curse of the Forgotten One

The world shuddered as if it had just remembered something it was never meant to recall.

Dain stumbled backward, gripping his head, his eyes filled with a fear that had no explanation.

I could feel it too.

Something inside me twisting, trying to pull away.

Trying to forget.

Because that was what the seal had done.

It had not just imprisoned Nythral.

It had removed its name from the fabric of reality.

And now that the name had been spoken…

The prison was breaking.

“It is not enough to trap me, wizard.”

“You must erase me again.”

“Or I will take this world apart thread by thread, until there is nothing left to remember.”

And that was when I realized something even worse.

Nythral was not just a prisoner.

It was a mistake.

A thing that should never have been created.

A force that was never meant to exist.

And now, it was trying to return.

The air around us tore apart, reality splitting open in thin, shimmering lines, like a wound that refused to close.

And I had only one chance to stop it.

Before the world remembered too much.

Before the past forced its way back into existence.

Before Nythral was whole again.

I gritted my teeth, raising my staff.

“Then I will erase you again.”

But this time…

It was going to fight back.

The World That Remembered Too Much

The moment Nythral spoke its name, the world reacted.

The sky above splintered, not with lightning, but with fractures in reality itself.

The land beneath us groaned, as if something ancient and buried was stirring, something that had forgotten it was never meant to wake.

Dain stumbled backward, his sword trembling in his grip.

“What is happening?” he gasped.

I tightened my hold on my staff.

“The world is remembering.”

The cracks in the sky pulsed.

And from within them…

Something was looking back.

The Prison That Could No Longer Hold

The tomb had been more than a grave.

It had been a boundary.

A wall between what was meant to exist… and what never should have been.

But the seal had been broken.

The first crack had let Nythral’s voice leak into the world.

And now, the world was answering.

The air grew heavy, thick with the weight of something pressing against the veil of reality.

Nythral laughed, a sound that did not belong in the realm of the living.

“You were right to fear me, wizard.”

“But you are too late.”

“The seal is undone. The world will remember. And when it does—”

“I will be whole again.”

And then, before I could react—

The shadows lunged.

The Fight Against the Unmade One

I barely had time to raise my staff before the darkness crashed into me.

It was not just a shadow.

Not just a shape moving through the void.

It was the absence of everything.

I felt my body falter, my vision blur.

For a moment, I was nowhere.

Not standing. Not falling.

Just gone.

But I am not so easily undone.

I forced my will against it, grounding myself in the only thing that mattered—

I was still here.

The world had not yet forgotten me.

And as I focused, I felt the magic surge within me, clawing its way back to the surface.

The void recoiled, its tendrils snapping like burned parchment.

I gasped, staggering back into reality, my staff burning with energy.

Nythral tilted its hollow head, watching me with eyes that had never belonged to a living thing.

“Ah.”

“You refuse to be unmade.”

“Good.”

“That will make breaking you so much sweeter.”

The Truth of Nythral

The cracks in the sky widened, spilling light that was not light at all, revealing a place that should not exist.

A realm of endless silence, where nothing had ever been born, where nothing had ever died.

A place outside of time, outside of creation.

And I knew, in that moment, what Nythral truly was.

It was not a god.

Not a demon.

Not even a being.

It was an error.

Something that had come into existence by mistake, something that had never belonged in the first place.

And when the world had realized its error—

It had erased it.

Buried it.

Locked it away in a place where even memory could not reach.

But now, because of us—

The world was trying to fix its mistake.

By erasing everything connected to Nythral.

And that included me.

The Magic of Erasure

I had only one chance.

I could not kill Nythral.

Something that was never meant to exist could not die.

But I could do what had been done before.

I could seal it away.

Bury it so deep in the fabric of time that the world forgot it again.

But I had to act before the cracks widened too far.

Before Nythral pulled itself fully into this world.

Before it was too strong to banish.

I raised my staff, feeling the ancient energy respond.

“Dain! Keep it occupied!”

Dain did not ask questions.

Perhaps because his mind was too fractured with terror to think.

Or perhaps because he saw in my eyes that if I failed—

There would be nothing left to save.

He charged forward, swinging his blade at the shadows that twisted around Nythral’s form.

It was not enough to harm it.

But it was enough to distract it.

And in that moment, I began the spell.

The Rewriting of Reality

I have rewritten stories before.

I have unraveled curses, broken time itself, stepped into forgotten places and returned.

But this?

This was something far more dangerous.

Because I was not just sealing Nythral away.

I was convincing the world that it had never existed.

I spoke the words of unmaking, magic unraveling from my fingertips, weaving a net of light around the encroaching void.

The world fought back.

It wanted to forget.

But Nythral fought harder.

“You cannot erase me again.”

“I have been remembered. And that means I will always return.”

The magic pulsed, wrapping around the cracks in the sky, pulling them shut.

The tomb beneath us shook, its runes flickering as the ancient seals tried to close again.

And then—

Nythral screamed.

A soundless, endless wail that pressed against my mind, clawing at my very existence.

“You are making a mistake, wizard.”

“You do not know what I am.”

“You do not know what you are throwing away.”

I gritted my teeth, forcing the spell forward.

“And I don’t care.”

The final seal snapped into place.

The sky shattered back into itself, the cracks sealing as if they had never been.

The tomb slammed shut, the runes along its surface burning white-hot before fading into nothing.

And Nythral’s voice—

Vanished.

Gone.

Erased.

The Silence After the Storm

The ruins were still again.

The air was clear.

Dain collapsed beside me, gasping for breath, his sword slick with shadows that no longer lived.

I turned to the tomb.

The seals were back.

But they were different now.

Not just sealing something away.

Hiding it.

Burying the memory so deep that the world would never stumble upon it again.

Dain let out a shaking breath.

“Is it over?”

I hesitated.

Because as I stared at the sealed grave, I felt something stir.

Not inside the tomb.

Not in the air.

But in my mind.

The spell had worked.

The world had forgotten.

But I had not.

And that meant, someday…

Someone else would find this place again.

And when they did—

Nythral would remember itself once more.

So I turned away from the tomb, gripping my staff tightly.

“For now.”

But in the back of my mind, the shadows whispered.

And I knew this was not the last time I would hear that name.

Not the last time the world would make the same mistake.