Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 150: To Be Remembered

"I’m DONE playing!" Veyne screamed, magic blazing like a bonfire around him. "You want fear? I’ll show you what a real monster looks like!"

The spell began to form—one he had sworn never to cast again.

The one that had once scorched an entire dueling square in the pits.

The one that took three healers to stabilize afterward.

The sand began to swirl.

The heat warped the air.

And Ian...

Ian smiled.

========

Once—before the arenas and the nobility, before the heat of cheers and the silence of shame—there was only the pit.

Dark.

Choking.

The stench of blood and oil and unwashed men pressed against iron walls. Veyne had been sixteen when they threw him into the Maw.

A name that wasn’t a name.

Just a hole.

No audience.

No honor.

Only teeth, and fists, and knives made from rusted scraps.

He remembered the first night.

The way they laughed when he cried.

How the older pit-borns circled him like hounds, tapping their blades together like a slow drumbeat of inevitability.

He’d screamed. Clawed. Bitten.

Survived.

Barely.

He’d woken up with three broken ribs, two missing teeth, and a deep gouge in his shoulder—but the others were dead.

That’s what the pit asked.

Not strength.

Not courage.

Just survival.

And in that moment, covered in blood that wasn’t his, breath wheezing, ribs grinding—Veyne had made a promise to the corpse beside him.

"I will not die nameless."

From then on, he trained.

He mimicked every movement he saw—every stance, every feint.

Watched men die in dozens of ways and made sure he learned something from each.

He taught himself to wield not just blades, but rhythm.

He learned when to draw pain. When to pull back. When to kill, and when to humiliate.

By twenty, the nobles had noticed him.

By twenty-one, he was undefeated cladiator in the Eastern wastes.

They began to chant his name—Veyne the pits Butcher.

The nobles watched. Bet on him. Desired him.

He was summoned to minor courts. Paraded like a lion.

And he told himself, with every gold cup of praise, that he deserved it.

He wasn’t just a survivor anymore.

He was becoming a legend.

But something gnawed at him.

Something he couldn’t kill with sword or flame.

They still looked at him with that same expectation.

The way pit fighters always looked at meat.

A thing to be consumed.

So, he sought Esgard.

The Crucible.

The League of Champions.

This was where legends were forged.

Where fighters became immortal.

He remembered riding through the city gates. The towers looming. The crowds. The banners fluttering in the wind.

And the moment he stood in the coliseum for the first time, he had whispered under his breath, Let them remember me here.

Let them remember Veyne.

---

Now, he stood trembling beneath the weight of his own magic.

His body, burning from the inside out.

His hands—scorched and trembling—begged him to stop.

But he would not.

Could not.

"I AM NOT FORGOTTEN!" he screamed, his voice cracking with magic and madness.

And he loosed it.

The spell erupted like a tidal wave of fire and blood. A wall of conjured death. Spear after spear of conjured bone and molten energy tore through the sand, arcing, splitting into shards, streaking toward Ian with the force of a dozen warlocks.

Each strike had been shaped by agony.

Perfected in the pits.

This was his life’s work.

His legend.

The magic howled.

The arena floor exploded with fire and dust.

The crowd gasped.

And then—

Silence.

As the storm cleared...

Ian stood.

Unmoved.

Smoke curled around him like fingers.

The front of his dark coat fluttered in the breeze.

The sand where he stood hadn’t even scorched.

Veyne’s mouth opened.

Closed.

No.

No—no it hit—it should have done something—

Ian raised a single hand.

Not to attack.

Just to beckon.

A gesture as casual as brushing aside a fly.

Veyne staggered back.

He was shaking.

His body refused to obey. His legs no longer his own.

He watched in growing horror as Ian—slowly—stepped forward.

One step.

Another.

Gray eyes fixed on him like the gaze of something ancient and patient.

Something that waited not to fight, but to claim.

"N-no—" Veyne rasped. He stumbled, lifted his blade—

CRACK!

A blur.

Ian moved.

No—he arrived.

Veyne’s sword shattered beneath a single blow from Ian’s knee. Bone and steel splintered in unison. Veyne screamed as the force shattered the tendons in his wrist.

Before he could fall, Ian seized him by the throat.

Lifted him.

Veyne kicked. Choked. Clawed at the hand.

But Ian’s grip was iron.

His eyes—still cold.

"Do you know," Ian whispered, voice like ash, "what the pit taught you...taught us?"

Veyne coughed. Blood filled his mouth. "T-to live..."

"No." Ian’s fingers tightened. "How to die."

Then—

CRACK!

Ian twisted.

"Living is for those strong or coward enough to survive...you came here for glory? Honor? What is that worth in the grave?"

Veyne’s arm snapped backwards. A sickening pop.

Then the other.

"Answer me? What is glory worth to a corpse?"

Then his legs.

Ian dropped him.

Veyne collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. He couldn’t scream anymore. His mouth moved, but no sound came.

He tried to look at the sky.

Tried to remember that first night in the pit. That first promise.

But all he saw was Ian’s shadow blotting out the sun.

The necromancer crouched.

Placed one hand on Veyne’s chest.

"You wanted to be remembered."

The words were soft. Almost kind.

Ian’s fingers plunged into his ribcage.

Bone split.

A wet, sick sound followed—a crunch, a squelch—

Ian’s hand withdrew, dragging Veyne’s still-beating heart into the open air.

"But no one remembers the dead."

Silence.

Then, the screams began.

The crowd’s roar turned to horror.

Gasps.

Shrieks.

But Ian stood motionless.

Blood dripping from his hand.

Veyne’s body lay crumpled at his feet. Empty. Crushed.

Forgotten.

Ian looked up.

Met the eyes of the nobles.

The other champions.

The priests.

And he said nothing.

He didn’t need to.

Veyne’s death had spoken enough.