Chapter Fifteen: Housing Plans

The Undead town looked nothing like any house the Little White Dragon had seen, like a graveyard dream laid into streets.

To be exact, they had no buildings you’d call houses. Roofless walls stood like ribs, and stone coffins stitched together into a false roof against the sky.

No need to keep out wind and rain, so no roof? Curiosity pricked. Lilith stepped into the first small house, whispering to herself.

She didn’t know what the Undead used as building material. By touch, it was a rare stone, smooth as river pebbles and silk-slick under her palm.

Since the Moonswallow Mist had raged for decades, the town should’ve gone unrepaired, like a lantern left in storms. Yet she saw no wear on the house.

The material endured like moon-glazed jade, and the Undead craft felt precise, like needles threading bone.

From outside, the place was a tattered ruin, a torn shroud draped over frames. She couldn’t fathom their fierce taste in aesthetics.

Inside, the reason settled like dust. Their houses had no roof, and no floor.

Where boards should lie, soft earth spread. Soil crumbled, exposing hollow beneath.

Panic bit. “Why are there holes inside the room?” She’d been studying the layout when her foot slid on weak soil; she dropped into a pit like a pebble into a well.

Quick reflexes flared. She braced her light body with her tentacles and tail, clinging like a lizard to a cliff, and saved herself from the fall.

“If I’m not wrong, these holes are the zombies’ and skeletons’… beds.” Nidhogg, the Black Dragon, ducked in behind her and hauled her out like lifting a kite out of weeds.

She dusted Lilith off, speaking as she worked. “Skeletons and zombies live in coffins; maybe they’re used to resting buried in earth.”

“Then those stone coffins above are—” Lilith patted dust from her backside, an idea sparking like flint. “The ghosts’ coffins?”

“I’d wager so.” Nidhogg nodded, her voice steady as iron. “The lower ranks of the Undead prefer living together; to use space to the hilt, their houses take this form.”

“That’s clever.” Respect warmed Lilith’s gaze like sunlight on old wood. She stepped out with a little ceremony and quietly closed the ragged wooden door.

Leaving the first house, she found others of different types, like shells left by tides. Some were four walls with the sky for a roof, true ruins open to sun and ash.

Inside, the Little White Dragon found heaps of black logs, like stacked coffin timbers. By the Monster Codex, she guessed these were zombies’ homes.

She also saw cramped houses with dwarf-high doors. Even Lilith had to stoop like a willow in wind to slip inside.

The small rooms held one or two coffin boards. The rest was piled with research parchment and tools, a scholar’s nest feathered in vellum.

“No skeleton-only houses, though.” Mild disappointment fluttered. They walked the town awhile, and the Little White Dragon poked into nearly every house along one street.

She didn’t spot a place built just for skeletons, but she gained a baseline feel for the town, like mapping a shoreline by hand.

Most residents here were ghosts, pale as mist. The edges mixed in some skeletons and zombies, a fringe stitched in bone and clay.

It matched the Monster Codex: ghosts doing crafts and research formed the core, the heart beating behind thin walls.

Closer to the edge, mixed households grew common, and their homes more shabby, the town’s hem fraying like worn robes.

Too bad. To Lilith’s eyes, ghosts were just pale sheets drifting overhead. Otherwise she’d read their status by clothes, like ranks sewn into sleeves.

“Speaking of,” she said. Excitement cooled into focus, like tea settling. “The Monster Codex says the Grand Mausoleum has four levels.”

“We’re on the first. How do we reach the lower ones?”

“Search this town,” Nidhogg said, her tone a calm bell. “The path deeper is likely hidden here, probably near the center.”

“Or wherever guard forces gather—where spears cluster, a stair may drop, a throat into the depths.”

“Guard forces?” A small frown pinched her voice like frost on glass. “That’s not easy to find.”

“Many adventurers came before us,” Nidhogg added, her words steady as stone. “Most guards were handled already. For now, luck’s our lantern.”

“Good thing my luck’s been outrageously bright lately.” Confidence sparkled like scales in sun. Her knack for finding things had been scary good.

Maybe she’d been too ‘maybe’ day to day, and all her luck flowed into searching, like water choosing one channel.

Her musing snapped like a twig. A huge crash bellowed from their left, a drumbeat slamming through dust and bone.

She tried to warn the others, breath quick as sparrows. Before she spoke, the house to their left burst open under brute force, bricks flying like startled birds.

“Awooo—” A massive figure, over three meters tall, stepped out of the collapsing house, a mountain wreathed in ash.

Powder veiled its features, and Lilith couldn’t tell what it was. The unknown wrapped her nerves like cold silk.

She swallowed, a pebble dropping in her throat. Should she check her lifespan balance right now?