CHAPTER 196: GHOSTS

Leaving the Black Altar behind, Sylas flew low along the ancient path, his cloak streaming in the cold mountain air. The trail wound through the shadowed Dimholt Forest, where twisted trees loomed like silent sentinels, their branches clawing at the sky. Soon, he entered a deep canyon, narrow and suffocating, its walls lined with jagged stone and half-buried ruins, remnants of the long-vanished Mountain-men.

At last, the canyon opened, and before him loomed the entrance to the Paths of the Dead, the Dark Door.

Carved into the sheer face of the mountain, the portal seemed less like a doorway and more like a wound in the world itself. The stone path leading to it crumbled at the edges, and one misplaced step would mean a plunge into the abyss below. The chill that leaked from the doorway was no ordinary draft; it was the breath of death.

Sylas guided his broom to the ground and dismissed it, planting his boots on the stone. His staff glowed faintly in his left hand, his sword gripped firmly in his right. He narrowed his eyes, lips tightening as the Dark Door loomed higher above him.

Ancient runes, half-eroded yet still menacing, were etched into the black stone. They pulsed faintly with a dread aura, as if warning, or daring, any mortal who approached.

It was like standing before the gates of the underworld itself. Beyond lay only shadow, silence, and the promise of terror.

Sylas did not falter. Drawing a steadying breath, he stepped into the Dark Door.

Inside was a cavernous void. The light of the Crown of Wisdom flared upon his brow, its gem casting a silver brilliance that pierced the oppressive dark. The glow revealed what lay within, and Sylas froze.

The ground was carpeted with bones. Skeletons sprawled in heaps, skulls piled high like mountains. Every step he took cracked ribcages and shattered skulls beneath his boots. At first he tried to tread carefully, but soon he realized it was futile. There was no path free of the dead.

’One bone or a thousand, it makes no difference,’ he thought grimly, and pressed on.

The air was heavy with death. A chill deeper than winter gnawed at his flesh, cold enough to freeze blood and squeeze his heart with icy fingers. The silence pressed in on him, broken only by the crunch of bones underfoot.

And yet, something was wrong.

The Paths of the Dead were said to swarm with spirits, yet he had seen none. Only bones. Endless bones. That silence, that absence, was more unnerving than any ghostly wail.

At length he came to another barrier, a massive stone door. Pushing it open with a groan, he entered a vast chamber.

And here the bones had gathered into mountains. Skulls upon skulls, piled higher than a man, their hollow sockets staring at him in mute accusation.

But it was not the skulls that drew his gaze first, it was the armored skeleton slumped by the doorway.

The corpse still wore rusted but once-magnificent armor, a golden helm resting crooked upon its ruined brow. One skeletal hand clutched desperately at the crack of the stone door, as if he had clawed for freedom until his last breath. Beside him lay a blunted sword, its edge battered from striking uselessly against stone.

Sylas recognized him immediately.

Baldor, eldest son of King Brego of Rohan. The prince who, in drunken pride, swore to walk the Paths of the Dead, and paid for it with his life.

He had defied warning, defied fate, and here his remains testified to folly.

Aragorn himself would one day find these bones when he braved this path with the Grey Company. Baldor had been the first to court death here, and he had not returned.

Sylas glanced at the remains briefly, but wasted no pity. His focus sharpened. For now, he felt it, the gaze.

Countless unseen eyes, ancient and full of malice, fixed upon him. The air grew heavier, oppressive. His muscles tensed as he edged further inside.

Then the silence broke.

The mountains of skulls shuddered, and collapsed.

With a deafening sound, the piles of bone surged forward like a living avalanche, a tidal wave of death crashing down upon him, eager to bury him beneath its weight.

A heartbeat before the avalanche of skulls struck, Sylas vanished with a sharp crack, Apparating to a high platform of stone. His cloak whipped in the foul wind that stirred through the cavern.

"Come out," he called coldly, his voice ringing against the walls, echoing like thunder through the chamber. "Stop hiding. I know you’re here."

For a moment, silence. Only the distant drip of water and the grinding creak of shifting bones. Then, at last, movement.

From beneath the heaps of skulls, translucent shapes began to rise. Wisps of pale light took form, coalescing into figures of men long dead. Their outlines wavered like smoke, faces blurred, yet their hollow eyes glowed faintly with an unnatural, sickly light. The air grew icy, and the smell of rot and earth filled the cave.

One ghost became ten. Ten became hundreds. Soon the cavern swam with them, countless spirits, pressing close until the air itself seemed made of shadow and despair. There were thousands... tens of thousands... perhaps hundreds of thousands. The entire host of the Mountain-men cursed by Isildur, whose oath-breaking bound them to these halls until the end of days.

Denied the Halls of Mandos, they lingered, a nation of restless dead. Their hatred for the living had steeped for centuries, so that every soul who dared the Paths of the Dead was swallowed by their malice.

And now, Sylas stood before them.

From their ranks drifted a single figure, larger, more solid, crowned with a broken circlet of tarnished gold. His face was half-rotten, green-blue with death, his eyes empty caverns of malevolence. In his hand burned a blade of mist and shadow.

"This is the realm of the dead," he hissed, his voice like a grave yawning open. "The living are forbidden here. Since you dare intrude, then you will remain with us forever."

With a shriek, he lunged, spectral sword raised high.

Sylas lifted the sword, its fire roaring to life as steel and spirit met.

Clang!

The clash rang like iron against iron. Sparks of light flared where flame met shadow.

The King of the Dead reeled back, astonishment flickering across his ruined face. "The weapons of the living cannot touch us. What blade is this, Wizard? How does it strike me?"

Sylas gave no answer. With a swift turn of his wrist, he slashed, the fire trailing like a comet. The King’s form split in two, head and torso drifting apart in shreds of mist.

But a mocking laugh echoed. The sundered spirit knit together again, whole once more. "Fool. I am already dead. Can one who is dead die again?"

He lunged once more, and the cavern roared with the whispers of the unquiet.

Blow after blow Sylas struck, fire meeting frost, but every wound only dissolved and reformed. This was no wraith of shadow, no common phantom that could be banished with light. These were oath-bound dead, cursed beyond the reach of ordinary spells.

Snarling, Sylas raised his wand. "Expecto Patronum!"

Blinding radiance burst forth. From the tip soared an owl, wings luminous as starlight. It struck the King of the Dead with the force of a gale, hurling him back. Then it spread its wings wide, reshaping into a sphere of white fire, a shield of light that enclosed the spectral king.

The ghost howled and hammered his sword against the barrier, but the Patronus held firm, unyielding.

"King of the Dead," Sylas called, his voice echoing through the chamber, "I do not come to wage war against you or your people. I seek only a single relic, a soul-stone. Once I find it, I will depart, and I give my word that I will not disturb you again."

The King’s twisted face contorted into a cruel smile.

"Wizard, we have known no rest since the day Isildur cursed us. You wonder why we linger here? We broke our oath, and the Valar themselves turned their faces from us.

"But, " his hollow eyes gleamed, fixed upon Sylas. "If you can break our chains, if you can end the curse, then not only will we give you what you seek... we will place before you the treasure of the mountains themselves."

Sylas knew well the curse that bound these spirits.

When the Kingdom of Gondor was first established, Isildur had stood with the King of the Mountain-men at Erech. There, upon a vast black stone brought from Númenor itself before its downfall, the Mountain-king swore an oath of allegiance, to serve Gondor in its hour of need, to rise against the Shadow should it return.

But when Sauron rose once more, the Mountain-men faltered. They broke their word, refusing to march to war.

Isildur’s wrath was swift and terrible. By the Black Stone of Erech, he laid a curse upon the king and all his folk, binding them and their descendants to wander as shades until their oath was fulfilled. That stone, heirloom of Númenor, held magic as binding as the Palantíri themselves, an oath upon it could not be unmade.

Elrond had once spoken of the Stone with solemnity, warning that its power was no less final than the wizard’s own Unbreakable Vows.

So Sylas shook his head and met the hollow gaze of the spectral king. "The oath sworn upon the Black Stone of Erech is unshakable. Unless you fulfill the promise made to Gondor, no wizard, no spell, not even a Valar’s pity can unbind you. Only through keeping that vow can you find rest."

The King of the Dead shrieked, his decayed visage twisting into something more hideous still. The air grew colder, frost biting at the edges of Sylas’s cloak, and a palpable weight of despair pressed upon the chamber.

"Oath... oath!" the king thundered. His voice echoed like a thousand coffins slamming shut. "For uncounted years we have been shackled by that cursed word! I have watched my flesh rot and fall to dust, my people wither into pale husks, my descendants drift into this prison of stone. We endure endless emptiness, our souls fraying into madness, yet still no rest!"

His mouth curled into a ghastly smile, and he raised his spectral blade.

"Wizard, if you cannot release us, then you shall not walk free either. Isildur’s curse bound us here, but it also drew every soul of my people, and every heir of their blood, into this place. Their numbers swell with every generation, and their power grows.

"You may cage me with your light, but can you withstand the wrath of an army that death itself could not end?"

At his command, the cavern erupted.

Ghosts upon ghosts surged from the walls and floor, clad in rusted mail, bearing the broken shapes of spears, axes, and swords. Their hollow eyes fixed on Sylas.