Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 101: A Mutter of Red

The rods faded into blood-mist.

Ashvaleth was gone.

The trees leaned closer now, as though the forest had grown intent on hearing what came next.

Even the wind had stilled, held in suspense.

Ian’s eyes narrowed on the red-cloaked stranger.

"You’ve made a mistake...and pissed me off," he said, voice low.

The man tilted his head. That same calm. That maddening, measured calm.

"No," the stranger replied, voice like silk drawn over razors. "I’ve been... summoned."

His boots crunched over the grass as he walked slowly around the corpses of his former companions—unbothered, almost reverent.

"You’ve drawn attention. From eyes that do not blink. From those who watch beneath the world."

He stopped, fingers brushing against a blood-slicked tree trunk. "We wondered... what sort of creature takes root in rot? What kind of man dances with death and teaches it new steps?"

His gaze flicked to Ian.

"You’ve made ripples in the still water, Prophet of Death. And some waters should never stir."

Ian’s hand twitched around his dagger, but the man raised a single finger.

"Not yet," he said gently. "Let us speak, as men of power. Before we become beasts again."

Ian said nothing.

The man continued, voice deepening. "They sent me to... satisfy their curiosity. You should feel honored. Most men die unexamined."

He turned his back, as if Ian weren’t a threat at all. "You fear yourself. That much is clear. You clutch your power like a child hiding a flame. You think if you unleash it, the world will burn."

He looked over his shoulder, eyes glowing dimly red.

"But I wonder, Ian... would that be such a bad thing?"

Ian took one step back.

And then he whispered the name.

"Torkas."

A wind blew through the trees.

Then came the echo of chains.

A shadow peeled itself from reality—not like a summoned beast, but like a door being opened to somewhere much deeper.

Out stepped a man.

No, not a man. Not anymore.

Torkas the Splitter. Once a champion of the Grand Arena, breaker of spines, slayer of men. Now death-bound.

Reforged.

He stood over seven feet tall, skin like carved basalt, covered in scars that pulsed with soullight. His armor was dark, runed, plated with fractured bone. And on his back, the great axe—a slab of jagged iron laced with glowing sigils.

He dropped to one knee before Ian.

"What’s your command?" His voice rumbled like distant thunder.

Ian’s eyes didn’t leave the red-cloaked stranger.

His voice came cold, flat.

"His head," Ian said. "Bring it."

Torkas rose, unhurried.

The red-cloaked man sighed. "A soulbound champion. How quaint. I was hoping you’d call upon him. The brute. The Splitter."

He turned to face Torkas fully, adjusting his collar.

"This should be... instructive."

Torkas did not speak again.

He moved.

Fast.

A blur of black armor and muscle. The axe came down with the weight of a falling cathedral—meant to cleave the stranger in two.

But the man raised a single arm.

And caught it.

The impact cracked the ground beneath his feet, sent a gust howling through the trees—but he held it, palm against iron, unmoved.

Then he spoke.

"Do you know what blood remembers?"

He pushed the axe aside and stepped in. Torkas responded instantly, shoulder-checking the man with a blow that sent trees snapping in the distance.

The stranger rolled with the impact, landing silently.

Torkas followed—swings wide, brutal, each strike a force of obliteration. Axes weren’t made for grace. Torkas didn’t need grace.

He needed endings.

Steel screamed. Trees fell. Earth ripped beneath their feet.

The red-cloaked man moved like silk. He never blocked—he redirected, shifted, bent, used every inch of his robe like it had a will of its own. His hands painted glowing red sigils in the air—floating, unstable, like liquid fire shaped by thought.

One flared.

It caught Torkas in the chest and exploded—runes carved from raw blood-essence erupting.

Torkas staggered—but did not fall.

The arena champion surged forward, ignoring smoke and flame, slamming the axe into the man’s shoulder.

Blood sprayed.

But the man didn’t scream. freeweɓnovel.cøm

He smiled.

"I see it now," the stranger murmured as they clashed again. "You’ve refined him well. Old soul, new bindings. His will is strong. Still remembers pain. Still resents death."

He parried another swing with a hand of runed light.

"But not strong enough."

Their battle lit the forest in pulses of red and violet.

Torkas was relentless. His strikes became faster, tighter, more refined.

This was no longer a test of brute force. It was a dance of fury. Every time the stranger cast a blood sigil, Torkas shattered it mid-formation.

Every evasive flick of the cloak was answered by a feint, a pivot, a crushing follow-through.

Ian watched from the edge of the clearing.

For a moment, hope. Pride.

Torkas is matching him.

The stranger flipped backward, cloak billowing. He landed, calm again, wiping blood from his lip.

He laughed once.

Low. Hollow.

"Impressive," he said. "You’ve trained your dog well, Prophet."

Then his eyes narrowed.

"But I’ve seen enough."

The air shifted.

Ian felt it before it happened.

A hum beneath the skin.

The stranger raised both arms, and a circle of blood began to form at his feet—not drawn by hand, but conjured directly from the ground, from the roots, from the very blood of the dead around them.

Their corpses twitched. Not rising. Not reanimated.

But drained.

The sigils pulsed. Red lightning coiled between them.

Torkas charged.

The stranger moved once.

Just once.

A flick of the wrist.

A whisper of his will.

And Torkas froze.

Then—

Crack.

A dozen red spears shot from the ritual circle, impaling Torkas through his legs, his torso, his arms. Not through flesh—but through the soulbound bindings themselves.

The chains binding Torkas’s existence glowed—and fractured.

Ian’s eyes widened.

"No—"

The stranger walked forward, hand still raised, as if conducting a slow symphony.

"You thought you understood soul magic. But what is a soul, Ian? What is memory? What is binding?"

Torkas screamed. Not with pain. With defiance.

He lifted the axe again—but it slipped.

His hands began to evaporate.

"You built him on power," the stranger said. "But I was born in blood."

Torkas fell to one knee. Red light carved through his body.

"I do not destroy souls, Ian."

He looked up at Ian now.

His eyes were glowing. Not just red—but pulsing like hearts.

"I unmake them."

And with that—

Torkas shattered.

Not in smoke, not in death.

But into nothing.

A burst of red mist and silence.

Gone.

Ian stood frozen, lips parted, eyes wide.

The red-cloaked stranger wiped a hand clean on the hem of his robe.

He looked at Ian with a smile that was almost kind.

"Now then," he said softly.

"Shall we truly begin?"