Eventually there are so many of the dead that Karaaz has to start animating some corpses to bury the others. They aren’t good at it. They dig with determination but little forethought, and once they hit six feet they just amble back and forth between the walls.

Karaaz surveys them with a parent’s weary resignation. The wards of her purgatorium need checking and she hasn’t seen a carrier crow in months. Is this how unlife works, an endless accretion of concerns until one day your phylactery falls off a shelf?

Bump, go the dead in their self-made prisons. Bump bump.