Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion

The beasts weren't moving out of hunger or chaos.

They were being summoned. A migration twisted into war.

And the ones who should have never touched the old language — the Sanctum — had woke something that should've stayed forgotten.

But now? Now it was his problem. He vanished into the trees. And behind him, the Last teeth watched, unmoving.

Not dead.Not forgotten.

Not forgiven.

———

There was no warning.

Or scent.

No shift in wind or rustle of leaves.

One step Ian took into the deeper heart of Blackblood, and the silence cracked.

Without sound.

But whispers.

Soft, wet things. Like breath against bone. A language he didn't know and still understood.

> "Sovereign of Hollow Flame..."

> "Kin of death..."

> "Will you break… or burn?"

Ian paused beneath a black-rooted tree. The moss at his feet was withered, crusted with a frost that hadn't come from winter. Above him, the branches were wrong — not only twisted, but wounded.

Bled dry of life.

His eyes, cold and pale, scanned the treeline. Something moved.

But it wasn't a beast.

No fur.

No claws.

Not even the stink of animal.

It was the absence of life that chilled his blood.

Then they stepped into view.

Three at first. Then five. Then more, each half-glimpsed between gnarled trunks.

Humanoid — vaguely.

Elongated limbs, like flesh had been stretched over bone not meant for walking. Their faces were masks — smooth, eyeless things. Slender holes in the center that pulsed like open mouths. Some still wore scraps of armor, etched with broken glyphs. Others had rings piercing their spines or necks, like trophies.

They didn't move like living things.

They floated, staggered, clicked and shifted like thoughts unformed.

> "Oath... breaker…"

The word came again. Not from one of them. From all of them.

From within him.

Ian clenched his jaw. The pressure in his skull tightened like a vice. His boots dragged slightly as he stepped back into the earth's firmness, breath fogging despite the heat.

He called.

Black flame rippled across his shoulders, his coat fluttering as if wind passed through a storm of embers.

And into his hand, he pulled it from nothing.

Judgment.

The blade was absolute.

Not forged. Not wrought. Born.

Sword of pure shadow, its edge thin as a whisper, hungering for guilt, for sin, for oaths unkept.

The Oathbreakers stopped.

As if the sword had stung memory.

As if they knew.

And then they attacked.

It wasn't a charge.

They glitched.

One moment distant. The next—a breath from him.

Ian stepped left. Slashed.

The first one bisected from shoulder to hip. It didn't bleed — it cracked like glass.

The second lunged. He spun beneath it, thrust upward, Judgment sliding through its stomach like it parted fog.

But the others were already around him.

Claws raked his back — not tearing skin but sapping. His aura flickered. He felt it — something in them feeding on truth, unraveling it.

> "You carry vows… We smell betrayal..."

He turned, his eyes flaring gray fire.

"You don't get to talk about betrayal."

He cut one in half.

Then another.

A third latched onto his shoulder — its hand pierced into his flesh, not with talon, but with remembrance. He saw a boy in chains. The pit. The day Elise pulled him out. The weight of a promise he hadn't spoken, but had lived.

He screamed — more in fury than pain — and drove Judgment backward into the creature's chest.

It didn't die right away.

It shuddered.

Then cracked, fissures spreading across its face like a porcelain mask dropped from heaven.

The ground split beneath him.

More shadows moved.

Eight now.

Twelve.

He stepped backward, blood running down his side.

But he grinned.

"Come then."

They did.

---

The fight turned desperate.

These weren't beasts. They were designed to kill.

Every blow from them disrupted magic. Every whisper tugged at memory. Ian had been many things — pit slave, killer, Sovereign — but never had he felt his soul tested with every movement.

Judgment hummed.

It wanted this.

It fed on this.

Each time he struck, the blade sang, slicing not just through bodies but the unnatural tether these things shared.

The 9th came at him from the side — no sound, no air moved.

But he caught it. Drove his boot into its midsection, then buried Judgment into its throat. The creature twitched, hands clawing into the dirt.

He twisted the blade.

Black flame flared.

The thing disintegrated.

Six more came.

He ducked one. Leapt over another. A third caught him in the ribs. He gasped — something cracked.

He cut three down in a single arc.

But they didn't stop.

He was panting now. Each movement slower than the last.

One of them — tall, crowned in bone — pointed at him.

> "Your fire is not eternal…"

> "You are not the first to wear the Void…"

Ian spit blood into the dirt.

"No. But I'll be the last one you see."

He called on the Void.

Not just Judgment.

But the whole of it.

His aura flared — deep, soul-deep. Not fire. Not shadow.

A flame that remembered.

The flame that came after death.

Black and violet light erupted from his chest, coiling around his arms, burning his coat to ribbons. The ground scorched beneath his feet.

He spun, dragging the blade in a wide arc.

It didn't cut the Oathbreakers.

It erased them.

Three fell without sound, turned to cinders.

The last one lunged. Desperate. Starving.

Ian caught it midair, drove Judgment through its heart, and said nothing.

Only watched as it cracked apart.

Ash.

Stillness.

Breath.

And then—

Movement.

He looked up.

And his breath caught.

They stepped from the trees.

Not three.

Not five.

Dozens.

More than fifty.

Maybe more still hidden behind trunks and mists and the folds of cursed space.

Their masks all turned toward him.

No mouths.

But the whispers came anyway.

> "You carry the flame…"

> "You carry the burden…"

> "Let us show you how it ends."

Ian raised Judgment.

Blood dripping from his side. Fire still coiling around him.

He grinned, breathless.

"Come, then."