The Bonebound

The priestesses warned me of "The Drowned Choir" and "The Moss Man," their voices trembling as they begged me not to venture into the swamps alone. “And if you see a lantern,” one said, gripping my arm, “don’t follow it.” I smirked, scanning their faces as I stood to leave. “Anything else?” I asked.
The room fell silent as they exchanged uneasy glances before one whispered, “The Bonebound,” she said, and the others shivered at the name as they hushed her. They told me this king was no myth, but a creature whispered about by the swamp elders, a being that stitched its servants from the dead. Even the Rougarou, they said, avoided its hovel.
But I didn’t turn back. I followed the whispers of the swamp until the air turned bitterly cold, and the water stilled to a mirror-like silence. That’s when it emerged. From the mist, it rose, impossibly tall, its hunched frame a twisting nightmare of gnarled, root-like limbs and pale, translucent skin stretched taut over a tangle of shifting, clicking bones. Its face—or what remained of it—was a ruin of cracked skulls and leeches, their jaws moving in unison, whispering my name as if they’d known it all along.
In its hand, it carried a staff made of human spines, its tip glowing with a sickly green light that made the water beneath it bubble and hiss. The swamp seemed to bow to its presence, the muck rising in decayed hands that clawed at my legs, dragging me closer. The Bonebound reached out for me with his other hand, a patchwork of spoiled moist flesh, and its voice, a guttural rasp that froze me in place. But it wasn’t the rasp that broke me—it was the chorus of voices echoing from the skulls on its chest that spoke as one: “Welcome home.”