Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion

The dawn broke over Esgard in rust-colored streaks, the sky painted the bloodied hue of war not yet fought.

The streets near the southern trench stank of smoke, mule sweat, and the iron tang of churned soil. The wall had begun to rise, stone by stone, and the city moved with a thousand hands toward its uncertain salvation.

Nellan of South rose before first bell, as he always did. His hands were already caked with grime before the sky fully lit, shoulders aching from days of lifting and hauling.

He was not a soldier, not in any noble sense. Just a wall-hauler. A digger. One of many.

"Up, up, up, you gods-forsaken moss-pissers," barked Foreman Darrek, a voice like gravel in a barrel. He limped between sleeping pallets, swinging a rusted iron rod to prod the sluggish.

"Work won't wait for the likes of you. The Sovereign's orders were clear!"

Nellan didn't need the prodding. He was already dressed, already strapping the worn leather belt that kept his pickaxe at his back. He didn't pray before labor. The gods hated Esgardians, everyone knew that much.

He trudged into line beside the others—boys from Eastern Verge, old tradesmen from River Quay, a few scarred prisoners promised their freedom in exchange for labor. They all stank. They all limped. They all coughed. But none of them complained. Not today.

Because to complain would mean looking up.

And if you looked up, you saw the wall.

And if you saw the wall, you remembered what it was for.

The carts began rolling before the first bell. Stones from the mountain quarries, steel runes from the artificers, alchemical flamecaps packed in straw—everything needed for the wall's belly.

It was said each stone bore a mark, a sigil of binding to keep the beasts from clawing through. Nellan didn't know much about magic, but he knew a wall had to be more than stone. It had to mean something. Otherwise, it was just a grave waiting for its bones.

"Hoy, South digger," called a voice beside him. Nellan glanced to see Kessa—a wiry woman with crow-black hair tied back in a frayed knot. Her left hand was a prosthetic of bone and bronze, crudely forged but deadly fast with a shovel.

"What?"

She jerked her chin toward the midline where they'd be hauling stones today. "You heard what they're saying about the north trench?"

"No."

"They found another one. Spiral in blood, carved into a goat's skull. Three eyes drawn in the mud beside it."

"Could be kids."

"Kids don't flay livestock and hang it like a warding charm."

He sighed and adjusted the leather grip on his gloves. "Well, let the Sovereign deal with that."

Kessa raised an eyebrow. "And if he doesn't?"

"Then it doesn't matter anyway."

They fell into a rhythm—lift, haul, stack, breathe, repeat. The heat rose quickly, made worse by the everburn lanterns placed along the scaffold. Steam hissed from the nearby runesmith forges. Somewhere, a soldier barked curses as a crate of iron plates slipped and cracked open.

It wasn't glamorous work. But it was life.

And for Nellan, that was enough.

At midday, they rested in a trench under the half-formed archways. Bread was passed around, stale but warm, and someone poured boiled rootwater spiced with berry rind. It tasted like dirt and ash. Still, no one spat it out.

Beside Nellan, a half-dozen soldiers practiced drills with long spears—part of the provisional units, not yet assigned. One of them, a youth with freckles and a dented helm, kept glancing at the workers like they were something foreign.

"You ever seen a man die?" Nellan asked the boy.

The youth blinked. "No, sir."

"I'm not a 'sir.' I just stack stone."

The boy fidgeted. "Sorry. I just… I didn't think the wall builders would look so…"

"Ugly?"

"No! I mean—tired."

Nellan smiled. "Wait till we get you a shovel. Then we'll see who tires first."

Across the trench, someone coughed hard enough to bleed.

No one looked.

---

Farther north, in the eastbound siege quarters, a pair of old gamblers debated the odds of the wall holding.

As though one of those outcome wouldn't mean their death.

"It's not the height," muttered Grem, a toothless man with red eyes. "It's the length. You ever tried building a wall across a city with six foundations already rotted through? Can't be done."

"You're forgetting the flame binding," said Berto, tapping a knucklebone on the table. "That Elarin sorcery, they're fusing the bricks from the inside out."

"And who says flame keeps out beasts?"

"Who says anything does?"

The two stared at each other. No one laughed.

That night, as the stars blinked into being, a girl named Meyra swept the upper watchtower with a handmade broom.

She was twelve. Small for her age. Half-starved, like most of the children in the gutter districts. But she had a sharp eye, and more importantly, she didn't talk much.

That was why the firewatch let her stay.

They didn't know she had once seen her mother eaten by a shadow with teeth that spoke in Latin. They didn't ask.

Meyra liked the height. The wind smelled better up here. Cleaner. Even when it carried the scent of blood and burnt bone.

She swept the dust and listened to the distant hammers. The wall was growing.

They said it would save the city.

But even now, she wondered—

Who would save the wall?

In the southern quarter, beyond the workers' dorms and the storage yards, a man named Farric knelt in an alley, weeping.

His hands trembled as he clutched the smooth edge of a bloodied coin. An offering. His last.

He whispered to the gods that no longer answered.

"Let my wife return. Let her name remain. Let the beasts pass by my door."

He'd once been a priest. Before the Sanctum fell. Before the temples burned and the dead rose to serve.

Now, he prayed to anything that would listen. Even if it meant whispering to the spiral. Even if it meant his soul.

He pressed the coin into the gutter grate.

A moment later, the wind shifted.

He smiled.

And did not rise again.

Back near the trench lines, Nellan watched the sunset from atop a pile of stone blocks. His hands ached. His spine felt like rusted iron. But the wall had grown by six paces today. The glyphs along the base flickered to life as the sun vanished—a sign the arcane channels were stabilizing.

"They said it couldn't be done," Kessa muttered, settling beside him. She offered a strip of salted jerky. "Yet here we are."

"It's still not finished."

"No. But it's rising."

They watched in silence for a while, until the flame runes cast the whole horizon in soft violet.

Below them, the wall breathed.

Not literally. Not yet. But soon.

When the last gate closed and the runes were sealed—when the dead lined the trench and the beasts came screaming from the trees—then the wall would truly live.

Then it would either hold.

Or it would break.

---

Later that night, in a dorm carved from a half-ruined bathhouse, someone began humming an old war song.

Low. Faint. Broken.

No one knew the words anymore. But the rhythm—everyone recognized that. It was the rhythm of picks in the stone. Of hammers on steel. Of boots in mud and teeth in bone.

Nellan lay in his bunk and closed his eyes.

He dreamed not of glory.

Not of survival.

But of standing on the wall, just once, and watching the beasts fall beneath it.

And elsewhere, in a corner of the old arena where the stone still bore the scars of Ian's rise, an old man sat carving tiny figurines from leftover bone.

He didn't speak.

Didn't move much.

He just carved.

One figure was a woman with silver hair.

Another—a man cloaked in shadows and fire.

Another—a wall, cracked down the middle.

He smiled, toothless.

And set them in a row.

Waiting.

Because the wall would rise.

And then it would fall.

And then… something else would come.

A storm rolled far beyond the forest that night—lightless and slow, pressing clouds like bruises across the sky. No rain fell, only pressure. A weight in the bones. The kind of silence that even dogs wouldn't bark at.

In the west quarter, where the wall was lowest and the ground uneven, a pair of mercenaries from Varran's Teeth stood on the scaffold, passing a flask between them.

"You feel it?" one muttered.

"The air?"

"No. The waiting."

The other drank and said nothing.

Below them, a flicker of movement in the brush. Just for a breath. Then gone.

The guard didn't raise the alarm. Not yet. Too many ghosts in this city already.

Near the forges, a dead man stood for just a moment longer than the magic should've allowed. His jaw creaked. His eyes, empty sockets, tilted upward as if scenting something on the wind.

Then, without a sound, he resumed stacking bricks.

And miles away, in the dark between the trees, something vast turned its head toward the city of flame and whispers.

The wall was rising.

And the forest had taken notice.