Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion

The bells of Seraphim's Hold tolled once every hundred heartbeats.

A slow, deliberate clang of silver and soulsteel that echoed through the temple city's hollow corridors.

The Great Church rose like a mountain in the heart of the city, layered in obsidian and pearl, veins of golden sigils pulsing faintly beneath its skin. Light did not merely shine here—it was forced. Bent through stained panes and mirrored halls until every shadow was branded.

No birds circled the spires. No wind touched its heights. The air was too still. Too watched.

And below the main altar, in a room deeper than the sanctified tombs, three voices spoke behind a door that did not exist.

The chamber had no windows. No visible entrance. Its walls were lined with inscriptions of the Old Light—runic tongues too old to name.

The only furniture was a black glass table shaped like a sundial, though no light touched it.

Cardinal Varlen sat hunched forward, his robes hanging loose on a frame once battle-thick. His hands were stained with ink, scarred from divine branding. He looked tired, and worse—uncertain.

Across from him, Cardinal Mavrek stood with arms folded. He was younger by decades, but fire curled in his eyes like a man born during the burning of a city.

His robes were tighter, ceremonial armor beneath them, sunburst chain gleaming at his throat. Every word he spoke came with venom, but measured venom.

He'd practiced this hatred.

At the apex of the triangle stood the third.

The Hierophant's projection.

A figure of pure, unmoving light, head crowned by a halo of nine concentric rings. Its form did not flicker, and it cast no shadow. The glass beneath its feet blackened slightly.

It did not speak yet.

It simply listened.

"So," Mavrek began, voice a growl under breath, "we agree on one thing. The wall is a problem."

Varlen tapped his fingers along the table, muttering. "The scouts say construction moves fast. Reinforced with eldritch wards. Military camps running rotations. Some claim—" he hesitated. "—some claim the dead are training beside the living."

Mavrek sneered. "His Necromancy. Heresy in its truest form."

"And effective," Varlen snapped. "They hold still. They do not need to eat. They do not desert."

"Their souls rot in chains!" Mavrek barked.

"Their bodies, meanwhile, hold the line."

A silence stretched between them.

The Hierophant still said nothing.

Mavrek turned his gaze upward. "We summoned what should not walk. Oathbreakers were not meant to be guided—they were meant to destroy."

"And they are destroying," Varlen answered. "Just not the right target. The beasts they chase are unpredictable. Feral. They've torn into coastal enclaves and ravaged entire border shrines. Dozens dead. Even pilgrims flayed in the old canyons of Rephra. Do you think the Hollow Sovereign doesn't know we sent them?"

Mavrek bared his teeth. "He'll know worse if they breach the wall."

"If," Varlen echoed. His voice fell flat. "And that's the problem."

Another pause. The kind that turns skin cold.

Finally, the Hierophant spoke.

A voice like bells behind waterfalls. Neither male nor female. Not loud. But final.

"If the wall holds, the gods will not answer for our failure. We will."

Both Cardinals bowed their heads immediately. Not in reverence—though it appeared so—but in terror.

The Hierophant continued.

"As we know, Velrosa is not dead."

A fact. Not a question. Not a debate.

"Her name returns in the echoes of the Hellscape. The Prophetess has heard it etched in fire upon ash. 'The demon has opened her second eye.'"

"She has already begun to awaken," Mavrek said darkly. "We knew this."

"Then act like it." The voice turned sharper.

Mavrek flinched, barely.

Varlen cleared his throat, folding his hands. "The real question is… what remains if we are wrong?"

He glanced at the silent, mirrored wall behind them. "If the wall holds. If Esgard becomes a fortress-city. If the Oathbreakers pass it by or are repelled outright…"

He didn't finish.

But the room seemed to understand anyway.

Mavrek nodded stiffly. "Then we will have birthed a Sovereign state ruled by heresy. By a demon bloodline. With undead ranks. Foreign mercenaries. Broken wards, rewritten rites. A city immune to our rites of cleansing."

"Not immune," Varlen whispered. "Beyond reach."

The Hierophant spoke again.

"What is the last fate of a godless city?"

No one answered.

They didn't have to.

In the Sanctum, there were only ever three fates: Redemption. Cleansing. Or silence.

By prophecy what was Ian to bring?

A moment passed in stillness. Then:

Mavrek stepped forward, laying three parchment sigils across the table. They burst briefly with cold blue fire.

"New reports. From our embedded agents. The girl Elise—still active. She liaises with nobility. Perhaps recruitable."

Varlen shook his head. "Unlikely. She saved the boy from the pits and have been with the girl since childhood. Her loyalties are personal."

"She has no family. Her faith is muddied."

"She would sooner burn than bend," said Varlen.

A flicker of motion ran across the Hierophant's halo.

"We have tried to break them. The Demon Blade. The Lady of Corpses. The Rat. The traitor Eli. None bend. Even the girl with silver hair moves like something cursed."

It wasn't a compliment. Just a diagnosis.

Varlen licked his lips. "Then let us plan before we're forced to react. If the wall holds… we must act preemptively."

Mavrek arched a brow. "You mean a second wave?"

"No," Varlen said slowly. "I mean infiltration. If we cannot kill them outright, then rot them from within. Create division. Weaken the command chain. Assassinate lieutenants. Poison the well."

"Beneath the nose of the Whisperer of Death?" Mavrek laughed coldly. "You've read the reports. He walks with ghosts. His shadow is watched."

"We still have tools. Not everything we created has been seen yet."

Mavrek's sneer faded. "You're speaking of that?"

"Yes."

A longer silence followed. Even the air in the chamber seemed to tighten, like lungs waiting to exhale.

The Hierophant did not interrupt.

Eventually, Varlen spoke again.

"We must also face truth."

"And what truth is that?" Mavrek snapped.

"That Ian is not the only threat."

The name struck like a crack of flint.

Velrosa.

They didn't say it.

They didn't need to.

"She walks without gods. Bleeds no mana, but still calls power," Varlen murmured. "She speaks with flame and dust and the silence of a tomb. What she is… it's old as even the Sovereign."

Mavrek looked troubled for the first time.

"She is like the last Sovereign," he whispered.

"No," Varlen corrected. "She is what they made to kill the last Sovereign."

Another beat. And the Hierophant, finally, gave the final word.

"If the wall holds, we seal the Hold."

"What?" both Cardinals breathed.

"If they win, the world will fracture. The demons will return through more than the Hellscape. The chains we set will break. Velrosa will rise in truth. The Whisperer will shape armies in ash. And the faith will fall."

The voice softened.

"So we prepare to make the Hold into a tomb."

Mavrek stepped back as if struck.

Varlen closed his eyes.

"To burn Seraphim's Hold…" he whispered. "The leyline. The archives. The holy reliquaries. The armor of Saint Rhadiel. The light of the High Sun…?"

"All will burn if she steps foot here."

Time lost meaning in that moment.

No more debates.

No more motions.

The Sanctum of Light had made its judgment.

They would offer no more mercy. No more trials. No more spies sent to nudge or delay.

If Esgard's wall held—if the city rose to become more than defiance—then the Sanctum would act not as judges, but as executioners of themselves.

The world had not seen a High Sun Cleansing in five hundred years.

But it would again.

One of the great bells rang above them.

Seven tolls.

Mavrek's voice was hoarse. "Then let the sigils be drawn. We prepare the circle."

Varlen stood slowly. "We ready the Watch."

"And we pray," the Hierophant said, "to our Gods who may not listen, not on this matter."

With that, the light flickered.

The figure vanished.

And the chamber fell silent.

Outside, in the vast obsidian towers of Seraphim's Hold, choirs continued their hymns. The Light Crusaders knelt before statues of angels. Inquisitors lit incense to the memory of saints. Children learned to draw sunbursts in chalk on their knees.

None of them knew they stood on a holy pyre.

Not yet.

But soon.

Very soon.

They would.