Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 128: Crimson Judgement

The battle was nearly done.

What was left of it now was no more than pointless struggles.

Across the broken stone and blood-slicked soil of Hollow Spine, the last cries of resistance faded into choking silence.

Those who had once screamed war cries and held weapons with trembling resolve now lay scattered—torn, crushed, or drained of life entirely.

The stronger ones had fought hard, as hard as they could, desperately unleashing everything they had. Blades whirled, spells lit the air, and cries of defiance echoed into the dark sky.

But it hadn’t mattered.

Not when the full weight of Ian’s Crown of Forgotten legacy bore down upon them. Not when the soulbounds—his personal army of death—concentrated all their force on them like wolves upon cornered prey.

They were dying. All of them.

And yet...

Ian’s fingers twitched slightly, and a faint tremor passed through his stance. His breathing came slower, heavier.

His eyes—still glowing with that unnatural gray—were beginning to blur at the edges. The ache in his skull throbbed with the tempo of a war drum, and the world flickered like candlelight around him.

Maintaining the domain—along with the countless soulbounds—was carving into him like glass beneath skin.

It demanded more for too much NE and SE.

Still, he endured.

Still, he watched.

And at last, as the dust and blood settled, the battlefield thinned.

There was only one left.

One man still standing amid the sea of death and ruin.

Ian narrowed his eyes, blinking past the haze. Then his chest rose slowly, awareness clicking into place like a blade locking into its sheath.

He knew that man.

The way those long, crimson rods sang through the air like bladed serpents. How they tore through not just flesh, but essence, annihilating soulbound warriors entirely.

Not reanimating. Not wounding.

Erasing.

Their souls weren’t returning. They were being consumed. Burned into non-existence.

Ian’s soulbound count—his internal tally—was diminishing.

And not regenerating.

The crimson figure moved with sharp elegance, robes fluttering like flayed banners, his weapons dancing in long arcs of destruction.

His face, half-shadowed by his high collar, was calm.

Detached.

The stranger in red robes.

The man who had caused Ian to come to this tournament.

Who had orchestrated the entire tournaments grounds as a stage.

The Cardinal Fang.

Ian raised a single finger.

The command was silent, absolute.

Every soulbound halted mid-movement—some mid-killing blow, others mid-leap—as if frozen in time.

Their eyes burned violet, but none advanced.

They waited.

The air grew heavier between them.

Ian took a step forward to the cliffs edge, his boots clicking against rock.

"Hmmm..." he murmured, voice carrying despite the silence. "I wondered if you’d die unnoticed with the rest."

He tilted his head, appraising the crimson-clad man.

"That would’ve been disappointing."

The Cardinal Fang stopped, twirling one of the blood-colored rods with casual mastery.

"Demonblade." His voice was smooth, almost bored. "When I called you to this tournament, it was in the hopes of seeing a spectacle."

He gestured to the battlefield, the corpses, the desecrated relics.

"But this... this quite surpasses my expectations."

Ian offered a faint smirk.

"Well," he said, "I am known to do that."

The wind began to shift.

The flickering veil of the Crown of the Forgotten began to ripple, as if reality itself were fighting it.

The sigils twisted, faltered—dissolving into drifting motes of gray. The world lost its warped hue as the domain slowly began to collapse.

One by one, the soulbounds began to turn to mist.

Their bodies turned to a haze of darkness and purple, dissipating like breath on glass. They returned to the void from which they’d been summoned.

All was dead except Ian.

The Cardinal Fang.

And the siblings who could do nothing but observe.

The red-robed man watched the domain fade, eyes thoughtful, unreadable.

"I was sent with orders to evaluate you," he said. "And truthfully, I believe I have more than enough data to return with a satisfactory report."

Ian chuckled.

Then the chuckle grew.

And grew.

Until it became a deep, cruel laughter that rang across the dead field, rebounding off the ruined walls and silent relics.

"Return?" Ian said between bursts of mirth. "Report?" ƒгeewёbnovel.com

His laughter turned sharp, cruel.

"If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were under the impression you’d leave here alive."

The face of Cardinal Fang changed—subtly. His eyes narrowed just enough to show something like disappointment.

"I was under the impression," he said slowly, "that you knew better than to stop me."

The temperature dropped.

The mockery of clouds churned above.

Ian’s eyes lost their glint of humor.

His voice dropped to a whisper. A statement carved in finality.

"You took my strongest soulbound."

His grip on Judgement tightened.

"You’ll be his replacement."

The Cardinal tilted his head slightly, as if weighing options. Then he spoke with deliberate calm:

"Let me give you a word of advice, Demonblade. Ancient bloodline to another—walk away."

Silence stretched between them.

Ian didn’t respond immediately.

His breath slowed.

The wind curled around him.

He stared at the Cardinal as if peering through time itself, through all the blood that had led him to this moment.

Then he whispered the words:

"Walk away?"

He raised Judgement.

The blade glinted with fresh intent.

"I can’t."

He said it simply, like it was truth burned into the marrow of his bones.

"I can’t walk away from any of this. Not anymore. Whatever I don’t handle now..."

He stepped forward.

"...will come back to me later."

His voice grew darker. Sharper.

"With me, there are only two paths—kill or be killed."

He leveled Judgement at Fang’s heart.

"And I will not be killed."

The two figures stood amid the wreckage, crimson and black, the last pieces on a battlefield no longer filled with noise but with the heavy quiet that comes after and before death.

The sky shifted.

The wind seeemd to almost whisper the names of the fallen.

And beneath that gray horizon, the Prophet of death would face the Cardinal.