Deep in the sea of Skeletons, one figure sits so far back that from Alicia’s side it’s only a black pinprick on old parchment.

It suddenly lifts its skull, sockets like two dry wells swinging toward Alicia, and it tightens the bone flute in its palm like a hidden dagger.

“Who… are they?”

The Skeleton parts its jaw with a gravelly creak, voice like wind through a reed bed.

It isn’t talking to itself. It addresses a hooded Skeleton at its side, a body swallowed whole by a robe like nightfall.

“Report, master. They came down from above…”

For the Undead who dwell under the earth, “above” can only mean the surface, the world of sun and soil.

“Do you know what they’re here to do?”

“Sorry, I don’t… but odds are they came to wipe us out, like a storm scouring a beach.”

“...Eh. Again, huh? Then do it like before. In a bit, go with ‘me’ and take care of them. Don’t let them find me.”

The words tangle like fishing line, easy to snag the mind.

Yet the black‑robed Skeleton nods as if the meaning rings clear.

The seated Skeleton suddenly sags as if its strings were cut, head drooping like a wilted reed.

A heartbeat later it lifts its skull again, and it feels like a new pilot slid behind the bones.

The black‑robed one notices the shift.

His empty sockets stare at the other’s cranium like two cold lanterns, and he goes still, lost in a thought fog.

“Eh… forget it. Not thinking about that.”

He shakes his head; bones clack‑clack under the robe like a wind chime of teeth.

“All right. Go take care of those people. I’m not in the mood to play with them.”

The awe in his tone evaporates like mist at noon.

A gray‑white bone hand slides from the robe’s slit, snatches the seated frame, and tosses it aside like a bundle of sticks.

The thrown Skeleton shows no spark of anger.

He trembles, turns back, and watches the black‑robed one sit where he sat, casual as a cat in a warm spot.

He says nothing.

The black‑robed Skeleton frowns without brows, irritation like a ripple in still oil.

“Why aren’t you moving? Your bones got stiff, huh? Think you’re tough now? Think you can rebel? Trash that can’t even talk—scram!”

A throat with no cords roars like a cracked drum.

The Skeleton shakes so hard at the shout he topples, a leaf in a gust.

He still doesn’t drop the bone flute.

His grip tightens, knuckles like chalk under moonlight.

The black‑robed one decides this mute frame means to revolt.

He rises with a huff, hops once like a grasshopper, and lands eye‑to‑eye.

He lifts the Skeleton by the skull with one hand.

The head doesn’t pop free; the whole body hangs firm, as if welded by winter ice.

“I’m warning you… you’re trash. Trash should know its place. That idiot Skeleton King isn’t here. So every word I, Longtao, say—you obey. Got it?”

The dangling Skeleton can’t answer.

No nod, no sound, only the hush of a crypt.

So he decides to speak with the only voice he owns.

He raises the flute to his teeth with a tremor, biting it to anchor where lips should be.

There are no lungs beneath the empty ribs, no bellows to drive air.

Yet, like a spring welling up in a dry riverbed, breath finds the flute.

Fwee—fwee—fwee—

He plays one‑handed, a thin river of notes winding through stone.

The black‑robed Skeleton freezes, as if the song pours straight into his skull like cold rain.

“Wh… why?! Why is the sound going into my head?”

He reaches with his free hand to snatch the flute.

His fingers stop short, held by an unseen thread.

The last smear of feeling washes from his sockets, leaving a true void, a night with no stars.

His other hand still clamps the player’s skull, iron on bone.

But the music stops, and the hush blooms like frost.

Sightless sockets still somehow look up at the black‑robed one, gaze brimming with a strange hunger.

He lets his head be held. He opens his arms and pulls the robed Skeleton into a hard, desperate embrace.

—Merge with me…

The command rises first as a craving, then as law.

The black‑robed Skeleton answers it.

His bones loosen like sand, crumble to powder, and whirl into a bone‑white cyclone around them.

Moments later, the bone storm falls like ash.

From its eye steps a Skeleton three times the size, a mountain built from moonlight and gravesoil.

A small white spark glows in his sockets—emotion, like a lamp lit in a cave.

“I… my name… is Ban!”

Elsewhere, in a place without map or sun, the Skeleton King—called an idiot by the robed one—adjusts his helmet with a slow, steady hand.

Under the metal, his eyes burn with ghost‑lantern blue.

“Nice flute. You can even control that old geezer. Don’t let me down.”