Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion

(A/N: Last chapter fixed)

The first roar shattered the sky.

It came not from a throat, but from the land itself—deep and ancient, like mountains weeping blood. The Oathbreakers had arrived, and they brought with them a hunger so vast it bent the horizon.

From the watchtower spires, the scouts shouted.

"Contact! Range three hundred!"

The beasts thundered out of Blackblood's edge—mana-twisted monstrosities with antlers like blackened spears and skin slick with rot. But they weren't leading the charge.

They were fleeing.

Behind them came the Oathbreakers.

Ten feet tall, long-limbed and wrong-boned, they did not run. They stalked, their pace deliberate, unhurried, as if the war was already won.

Skin pale as the moon, bodies inked in spirals of oaths they had once sworn and broken. Their eyes glowed faintly in their skulls, watching, reading, measuring.

Behind the wall, Ian raised a single hand. His blades were still sheathed.

"Not yet," he murmured.

The mages beside him tensed, fingers twitching over the soul-runes carved into their arms.

Soldiers braced with shaking spears. Lyra's scouts crouched along the walltop, bows notched. From the western ridges, Caelen's Iron Ranks slammed their shields together, forging rhythm from terror.

And then it began.

The beasts reached the outer fields—hundreds of them, trampling over the old farms and decaying roads. Direhounds, fanghorn boars, a lumbering scourgelimb dragging a dozen corpses tangled in its claws.

The catapults sang.

Rocks the size of carriages crashed into the tide. Runes flared. Purple flame devoured flesh. Screams echoed across the plain—but still, the tide came.

The beasts slammed into the trenches first. Pitfalls opened, swallowing dozens whole. Spear-rigs snapped upward from false ground. Bone javelins and enchanted netting slowed the largest monsters, but it wasn't enough.

Within minutes, the first line of defense fell.

Ian didn't move.

Not yet.

Not until they came.

And then—

He saw them.

The Oathbreakers stepped through the smoke.

Five of them. Pale. Silent.

Each bore weapons twisted from old steel—swords shaped like cleavers, spears carved from wyrmspine, a warhammer still singing with trapped mana.

One of them lifted its head. Met Ian's gaze from across the field.

A slow, unnatural smile stretched across its face.

Ian's hand dropped.

"Fang, go."

Graves erupted. And from beneath Esgard's foundations, the army of the Hollow Flame rose.

One thousand dead.

Bound. Armored. Silent.

They surged forward like a second tide—through fire and gore, their blades catching the first rays of dawn.

Behind them, the living followed.

Caelen led the charge from the western flank, his ironblade cleaving through bone and sinew. Lyra moved with shadow and poison, her daggers flashing between gaps in monster flesh. Mercenaries from Varran's Teeth followed with grim shouts, forming kill-boxes around the slower undead units.

Ian walked into the fray like a storm with form.

He didn't run.

He didn't need to.

The beasts found him.

The first—a direwolf, twice his size, all muscle and blood—leapt.

Ian caught it midair. Snapped its neck with one twist. His blade, Vowbreaker, whispered free from its sheath and sliced the next creature from jaw to gut.

And then the Oathbreakers reached the line.

The first met Caelen.

The clash was thunderous. Sword to cleaver. Steel to bone. The air around them warped as their strikes collided, both enhanced beyond mortal means. The Oathbreaker didn't grunt. Didn't breathe.

Caelen did.

With every swing.

With every curse spat through gritted teeth.

Lyra found another. She danced between its legs, slicing tendons, leaping over its hammer swings. But this one adapted. It watched. Learned. Within seconds it anticipated her rhythm—and only a blast of cover fire from a Crucible mage saved her from being crushed.

Three Oathbreakers broke through the center line. One fell upon the undead—its twisted sword cleaving through five soldiers in a single sweep. But they kept coming. Silent. Relentless.

And then Ian was there.

His presence stopped it cold.

The Oathbreaker paused.

It cocked its head, as if recognizing something in him. It stepped back—not in fear, but in reverence.

And Ian moved.

He blinked.

Shadow behind shadow.

Vowbreaker surged with bloodflame, biting through the Oathbreaker's chest. Its bones screamed. Its soul resisted. But Ian whispered in its ear.

"You'll all die."

And then he took it.

The Oathbreaker's body folded like paper. Its soul was dragged into Ian's hand—absorbed, where his dominion ruled absolute.

The others felt it.

Two more Oathbreakers turned from the fight. Looked toward Ian.

And for the first time, the army heard it:

A scream.

From the monsters.

Not pain.

Recognition.

Atop the wall, the commanders regrouped. General Aenys Drael barked orders into the comm-runes, her face splattered with gore.

"They're probing for weaknesses!"

Thalia Virex, the spymaster, narrowed her eyes.

"No. They're studying. Every kill teaches them. Every spell we cast, every tactic—we're giving them data."

Drael cursed.

"Then what the hell are we supposed to do?"

Thalia didn't answer.

Because just then—

The wall shook.

From the far eastern end.

One of the gate towers crumbled, buried in green flame.

A larger Oathbreaker had arrived.

Twice the size of the others. Horns like burning stone. It carried no weapon—its body was one. And it didn't fight like the others.

It walked through spells.

Ignored pain.

And when it reached the wall, it placed one hand on the stone—

—and spoke.

The wall cracked.

Stone screamed.

The very glyphs meant to repel magic recoiled like wounded animals.

Ian turned.

He felt it.

"Eli," he said, voice low. "Take the center. Hold it."

Eli appeared like smoke. Nodded.

Ian vanished.

The eastern wall was in chaos.

Soldiers screamed. Archers fled. The dead scattered—something was disrupting their tether.

And in the center of it all, the horned Oathbreaker stood—fingers still pressed to the wall, whispering oaths in a tongue that hadn't been spoken since the dawn.

Ian appeared behind it.

It didn't turn.

He stepped forward, slow.

"Say," Ian said, "what do you remember of your vow?"

The Oathbreaker's head tilted.

Its voice was like rust peeling off a god.

"I remember the First Light."

Ian's eyes narrowed.

"And now?"

"I remember you."

Ian drew both daggers.

"Then you know what comes next."

And the wall exploded into battle once more.

What followed was not a fight.

It was a reckoning.

Ian met the beast head-on, his blades tracing paths through space and soul. The Oathbreaker struck with spells that shattered the air—a wave of silence that undid sound, a blow that froze time for a heartbeat.

But Ian endured.

Because he was no longer just a man.

He was the Sovereign.

He commanded death.

Every blow they exchanged twisted the sky. Runes shattered. Air cracked. Soldiers were flung aside by the pressure of their clash.

Ian's coat burned away. His skin split from sheer force.

But he grinned.

Because behind every scream, every inch lost, every soul burned, he could feel it—

The wall still stood.

Esgard still stood.

And then—

He stabbed.

Both daggers.

Right into the beast's throat.

And whispered:

"You'll all die, i swear it." He said again.

The Oathbreaker screamed.

It wasn't just pain. It was undoing. Its body convulsed. Its mind resisted. But the Sovereign's will was law.

And so it died.

After the battle, silence returned.

The beasts had fled.

The field was ash.

The dead littered the ground—beast and man, monster and memory. The wall had held, but barely. A section of the east gate was gone. Three hundred soldiers dead. Another two hundred wounded. Ten mages bled dry, their minds shattered from the strain.

But they had won.

For now.

Ian stood atop the broken gate.

Armor cracked. Blood dripping from his fingers. Below, the army waited.

And when he raised his blade—

They roared. Not in joy. But in defiance.

In promise.

Because they all knew—

This was not the end. This was the beginning.

The First Breach had come.

The next would be worse.

And still, they would stand.

Together.

Under the Hollow Flame.

The wind rolled across the battlefield, carrying the scent of blood, ash, and broken oaths. Somewhere in the rubble, a soldier knelt beside the body of her brother, weeping silently, his blood soaking into the dry soil.

A boy too young to hold a spear limped past her, dragging a wounded mercenary to the triage tents.

Above them, the torn banners of Esgard snapped in the wind—less fabric now, more symbol than flag.

Caelen stood amid the wounded, sword still in hand. His armor was cracked at the shoulder, his face smeared with dust and blood.

Beside him, Lyra leaned against a shattered cart, binding her ribs with a length of scavenged cloth. She didn't look at her brother. Just stared toward the forest's edge, where the beasts had vanished.

"They'll be back," she muttered.

Caelen said nothing. He just nodded once.

From the highest wall, Ian turned his gaze toward the Blackblood horizon.

Even in retreat, the forest pulsed.

Like a heartbeat. Like breathing.

Evil still stirred behind those trees.

Something that hadn't yet shown its face.

And Ian knew—

Today was not their true test.

That was still to come.