Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 124: An Order

The air was still heavy with the scent of blood, iron, and ash.

Silence blanketed the ruined path like snowfall.

Dozens of bodies lay broken across the torn stones, twisted in the last moments of agony.

Here and there, limbs jutted from ruined armor, eyes frozen wide in death. What had once been a proud detachment of the Sanctum’s elite now looked like nothing more than meat for the crows.

And Ian stood among them, unmoved. ƒrēenovelkiss.com

His daggers were clean.

Somehow,as of recent they always were.

Like the blades drank the blood and it was never enough.

Caelen knelt beside a half-shattered corpse, peeling back scorched robes to reveal a steel-threaded pouch sewn beneath the cleric’s chestplate.

Inside was what they seeked.

"Another relic," he murmured, holding it up. "That’s five so far."

Lyra was already pulling one from a shredded belt off to the side, frowning.

"Six," she corrected.

Their voices barely carried, muffled by the oppressive quiet.

Ian wandered through the battlefield with no destination in mind.

His movements were slow, idle—like a shadow stretching with the falling sun. He paused near a cluster of corpses, those who had died together in a last stand, then stepped forward—

And exhaled.

They didn’t notice.

There was no flare of light. No arcane ripple. No sound. But something moved—a ripple in the stillness, as if the air itself sighed.

One by one, the corpses began to dim.

Not their bodies. Their souls.

Each one, once bound by divine chains and zealous oaths, now unwound like frayed threads, drawn gently from their husks toward the figure that stalked among them.

Ian’s shadow dimmed. Barely.

And as he walked, it grew darker.

More whole.

One soul almost seemed to resist—a Subjugator, his essence laced with radiant fire. He screamed in silence as Ian’s gaze passed over him.

But it changed nothing.

He was consumed, like the rest.

Ian didn’t even look back.

To Caelen and Lyra, it looked like Ian was simply pacing.

Thinking, perhaps. Brooding.

They had no idea that dozens of holy spirits were being devoured one by one. That every breath Ian took was heavier than the last—not with burden, but with slight increase in power.

He hadn’t spoken a word since the fight ended.

"Found another," Lyra said again, lifting a gauntlet with golden inlays.

The jewel on the back flickered weakly—lightbound steel, infused with a sanctified relic. "This one’s partially drained, but still worth something."

Caelen’s brows furrowed. "That’s the sixth Subjugator we’ve looted. And each one had just two relics on them. If this was a trail dedicated squad..."

"It wasn’t," Lyra replied, glancing toward the far wall, where Ian’s silhouette stood against the last rays of dusk. "They weren’t here for the trial. They came for him."

Caelen nodded grimly.

"Fourteen total," he said.

Lyra opened a pouch she’d slung over her shoulder. "I’ve got ten more."

"Twenty-four," Caelen muttered. "That’s great. Should put us in atleast top five."

They both looked toward Ian.

He hadn’t moved in minutes.

His eyes were closed now.

His shadow—long, deep, and unnatural—stretched behind him like a clawed stain. Neither of them dared comment on it.

Lyra zipped the pouch shut and slung it over her back. "We ready?"

Caelen gave one last glance to the corpses. Most had already begun to bloat in the fading light. None had a soul left to ascend.

"Yeah," he said. "Let’s move."

As they turned and began their slow ascent up the winding slope, Ian followed without a word.

His footsteps made no sound.

Perhaps, they never did since be left the vault.

They passed beneath broken arches and through winding paths that slithered between cliffs. The land grew colder with every step, the stone beneath their boots shifting from gray to an unhealthy pallor of white.

Strange trees, twisted and skeletal, clung to the cliffsides, their roots drinking from something wrong in the soil.

Lyra glanced up. "It’s getting darker."

Caelen adjusted his coat. "This far down, the reach darkness doesn’t matter. The Maw has its own laws."

The wind howled low across the path, carrying whispers.

They walked for hours. Through ruins that predated whatever they knew. Past shattered statues of things long unspoken.

Over cracked bridges that spanned canyons of nothingness, where light refused to fall.

They saw no other travelers.

Only signs of them.

Broken torches.

Blood trails. Discarded armor.

The further down they went, the clearer it became that many had come before them—and most had not returned.

But then, as the path widened, they heard something new.

Voices.

A dull roar. Not of beasts or battle—but people.

Talking. Arguing. Selling. Bargaining.

Caelen froze and narrowed his eyes. "That’s..."

Lyra stepped forward.

And then the tunnel ended.

And Hollow Spine revealed itself.

It was... massive.

A chasm carved into the bones of the mountain, aglow with torchlight, firebraziers, and thousands of makeshift lamps.

And the people.

So many people.

Dirty. Haggard. Bloodied. Armed.

Dozens of guild banners fluttered among the chaos—it seemed as though all left alive from the trial had gathered here.

Mercenaries. Relic hunters. Madmen.

All of them drawn here by the same thing.

The multiple relics at hollow spine.

It was the one location that most scrolls shared, perhaps it contained multiple relics.

"Gods," Caelen muttered.

"I thought they’d be lots but not this lots," Lyra whispered.

Ian stared down at the swarming chaos.

"I wonder," Ian said, voice low and thoughtful as his eyes swept the shantytown below, "why they haven’t begun killing themselves for relics."

Lyra blinked. "Caution."

Caelen’s head tilted slightly.

His eyes narrowed as he studied the chaos below—not the movement, but the stillness beneath it.

The restraint. The hundreds of quiet stares, the hushed exchanges, the hands gripping weapons but never drawing them.

"Pick a wrong fight and you die," Caelen said. "It’s simple. So for now, everyone’s focused on not showing weakness."

"Oh," Ian grinned. His gaze brightened, ever so slightly. "So what you’re saying," he began, taking a step forward, "is that the best move... is to not draw attention to ourselves?"

"Precisely," Caelen said. "Blend in. Observe. Wait for—"

Chink.

The sound was faint at first. Barely audible over the murmuring crowd.

Ian had reached over his shoulder, slow and almost casual, and drawn the sword named Judgement.

Its edge was not metal. Not stone. Not light.

It was void—a blade that drank the color from the world around it, devouring even the light of the braziers below.

As it slid from its sheath, the torchlight nearby dimmed as if afraid.

Ian tilted it downward.

Then tapped the tip of the sword against the ground.

Tap.

The world cracked.

A shockwave erupted from the point of contact, screaming down the spiral path like a thunderclap through bone. The stone beneath his feet fractured outward in spiderwebs of shattering ruin.

Crates burst apart. Lanterns shattered.

Far below, dozens stumbled and fell as the very ground buckled beneath them.

The sound echoed off the cliffs like the roar of a dying god.

And then—

Silence.

Hundreds of eyes turned upward.

Every conversation died mid-sentence. Every plan of secrecy, every hushed negotiation, every unspoken threat—all silenced in a single instant.

At the top of the ridge, silhouetted against the faint crimson glow of the Hollows’s upper ring, Ian stood with one blade in hand.

Not his daggers.

Judgement.

His cloak billowed faintly in the updraft. His hair hung like shadows drawn in charcoal. And when he spoke, his voice rolled over the cliffs like a divine verdict.

"Attention," Ian called, "all members of the First Descent tournament."

The words echoed across stone and ruin, bouncing between towers and shattered temples.

"I come," he said, pausing as if to consider his phrasing, "with a simple instruction."

He took a step forward, the black blade humming faintly at his side.

"An order, even."

Below, no one moved.

He pointed the sword outward.

"Bring out all relics in your possession."

His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.

"Place them on the ground."

A heartbeat passed.

Ian’s eyes narrowed.

"Then kill yourselves."

The words landed with the heaviness a burial bell.