Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 93: An Old Friend

Ian stood alone.

The shard pulsed in his hand. Waiting. Offering.

He stared at it for a long moment.

Then let it fall.

"I didn’t come here to make allies," he whispered.

And he walked forward.

Step by step, toward the Gate.

The ground fractured beneath him. Reality rippled. Heat and cold surged through him, then nothing.

Then everything.

And the Gate of hell opened to meet him.

———

It began with silence.

No fanfare. No thunder.

No divine light to part the clouds.

Only the cold absence of being — a hollow, perfect stillness that wrapped around Ian Night the moment he stepped through the obsidian line of the Blackfall Gate.

There was no ground beneath his feet. No air to breathe.

No sky above or earth below. Even the beat of his heart felt stolen.

Time seemed to pause, not in dramatic flourish, but in utter disinterest. He drifted in that void — not falling, not flying — just suspended in a place that existed between realities.

Then came sensation.

A brush of something slick and cold against his arms.

A pressure, thick and cloying, folding over his senses like a wet shroud.

The dark here was not just the absence of light.

It was a presence — sentient and watching.

It coiled around him with curiosity, with hunger, like oil that could slither and seep into the soul.

It did not burn. It weighed.

This was no part of the surface world. Here, physics bowed to older truths. Time bent like broken glass. Flesh rippled at the command of will.

And souls... souls were currency.

A trade Ian was well versed in.

He exhaled slowly as his boots finally met solid ground. The breath came shaky, but not from fear — from the sheer wrongness of the plane around him.

The world began to return.

Shapes emerged. Blurred at first, like ink in water.

Then sharper.

Shadows stretched from the edges of nothing.

Crumbling stone, broken archways, shattered iconography.

He stood in the ruins of what had once been a temple — grand in its design, divine in its construction, now defiled and abandoned to time and silence.

Tall pillars jutted into a red-tinged sky, cracked and bent like broken fingers reaching for a dying sun.

Only... there was no sun.

Just a jagged crack high above — a rip in the sky, pulsing faintly, as if bleeding light too ancient to name.

The air stank of rust and fire, thick with the iron tang of old blood and the bitter sting of ozone.

Each breath scraped his throat like ash.

Ian’s eyes swept across the ruins.

Cold. Focused.

There was no fear in them — only the calculation of an old animal surveying foreign ground.

Whispers trickled into his ears from nowhere and everywhere — too many voices, all layered, each one murmuring in a tongue that felt familiar but remained just out of reach.

He is here... the marked one... Death’s vessel...

He ignored them. Priests had called him worse.

With a practiced motion, Ian reached behind him and drew his daggers — Vowbreaker, twin blades still carved from the marrow of the Hazard Beast he’d slaughtered in the forest beyond Esgard.

The bone hummed faintly in his grip. Not a song — a warning.

"Rats," Ian said, voice low but firm.

The air behind him wavered.

Two figures slithered into being from the dark — humanoid silhouettes formed from smoke and Soulflame.

Their eyes glowed like coals in a dying hearth.

They knelt in silence.

Once, they had been holy men.

Paladins of the Light.

Now, they were Soulbounds — reanimated shadows of the past, repurposed for his service. Their names had died with their faith.

Ian had called them "Rats," and the name had stuck.

"My liege," they murmured, voices rustling like dry leaves in a crypt.

"Scout the ruins. Mark paths. Report what moves."

They bowed and vanished, dissipating into tendrils of purple smoke, ghosting through crumbled stone and dead halls.

Ian was alone again.

The crunch of his boots over bone and shattered tile echoed through the temple. There had been a battle here.

Long ago.

He saw it in the claw marks etched into stone, in the dried bloodstains smeared like murals, in the broken weapons rusting beneath overgrown moss.

And yet, something lingered.

As he moved deeper into the structure, the whispers grew louder.

They weren’t thoughts — they were impressions.

Voices bound to stone.

Echoes of agony and worship twisted into one.

He stepped through a warped archway into a chamber half-collapsed. Here, altars stood in ruins, incense bowls long cold, ash like snow across the floor.

In the center lay a massive sigil — faded, scarred, etched with seven concentric rings surrounding a pillar of flame.

Its design was familiar... but off?

The Church’s runes had been carved into it once.

Now, they were scratched out, rewritten with jagged symbols that pulsed beneath the dust.

Ian knelt and traced the edges with a gloved hand.

This place, devils had once prayed to the gods above.

Now, it belonged to something else.

Then — a sound.

Not a whisper. Not a spirit.

Footsteps.

Measured. Real.

Ian stood instantly, blades drawn. His body tensed. Every instinct roared.

Across the ruined corridor, at the edge of a fractured doorway, a figure stood. Cloaked. Hooded. Still.

Facing a wall.

Ian narrowed his eyes.

"Who’s there?" he called out, voice echoing into silence.

No reply.

He stepped forward cautiously. The light overhead flickered as if breathing. Vowbreaker whispered in his mind.

Then the figure turned.

And Ian froze.

His grip tightened.

The man’s face was pale, scarred in familiar patterns — lines that should’ve faded, but hadn’t. Hair, shorter now.

Eyes dimmer. But unmistakable.

Mark.

A flash of memory struck like lightning: shared laughter in the office, dreams shared over dinner, promises exchanged beneath falling snow.

A friend...who turned betrayer, who became the worst of enemies to the worst of men.

"It’s been a long time... hasn’t it?" the man said.

Ian didn’t speak.

His dagger returned to his back, as if uncertain.