Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion

The Hellscape is older than the archons, deeper than despair. From its blood-forged dawn during the Sundering Epoch, it has rippled outward, an expanding wound in reality.

Those who call it a realm of nightmare or poison gain only half the truth: it is a living grave of sin, a playground for beings whose principles predate mortal gods.

Within its shifting scarred plains and razor-silence chasms, the air itself is lethal—and death is neither hope nor fear, but inevitability.

Below a sky the color of bruised wounds, the Hellscape's map dissolves under the weight of its own horror.

There is no compass, no river you can name. Only Reaches, indicted in steel and blood: nine brutal gradations of torment, each a mirror of human sin.

The first—the land of Silence—bleeds under ash-rain and mad fauna. The second—the Ashspire—is forested with flesh-twisted trunks that choke themselves.

Deeper still are the Citadel of Bone, the rivers of ash in the fourth, and beyond, hell-notes grow more savage. The seventh whispers the name of a Demon Queen—perhaps Velrosa—and even the immortal cannot forget.

Rising through each Reach are the Archdemons—colossi of void and sin, each bound to their Reaches as sovereigns of suffering. They stand scheming behind the broken faith of armies, bartering with nightmares, weaving the wicked truth that tests the soul of every mortal foolish enough to step through a Gate.

At the mouth of the Black Fall, the most notorious of the eleven Gates, the monstrous pillar of shadow drops from endless skies.

It holds no wind, no light, only breathless promise—withdrawal is forbidden once foot crosses the threshold.

The Hellscape contracts, connecting walls of despair across the Reaches: silent fields where beasts maraud, through citadels of bone, and beyond sleeping gods devoured by time.

In the gloom of the Third Reach, a vast cavern of broken domes and shattered veins still pulsed under a bone-white moon. Here, beneath broken arches, Azraval, Archdemon of the Third, convened with his brethren.

He sat on a throne carved from shattered skulls, bone-white fangs jutting upward, arranged in cyclical pattern. Around him hovered creatures of every twitching nightmare: sinew-twisted imps, wretches half-flesh half-rune, and spectral hellspawn painted with voidflame.

Another Archdemon, Threxos of the Fourth—eyes glowing with ash-void—hovered on the edge of flame-wreathed basalt. He exhaled a plume of glowing dust that coalesced into coarse words spoken by half-formed tongues.

"Azraval, how fares our prey?" he asked. The words rattled like caged birds.

Azraval chuckled—or whatever approximated laughter in a throat that housed spider-leg bones.

"He builds a wall," it said. The voice tore through skulls like rusted iron. "In Esgard. He defends mortal sanctuaries with dead flesh." The imps chattered among themselves, hissing that flesh weakens flesh, that the survivors will feed.

Threxos hissed. "A wall. In a world made of blood. No armor can keep divine wrath—or mortal defiance—from chipping away. We guard our Reaches, but the mortal world stirs." He let him lean forward. "And there is a Princess. Her name echoes through the Seventh, but we do not yet claim a territory for her."

Azraval inclined its head. "The Queen will ascend. But we wait. Much is in motion. The mortal sawdust trembles under their feet."

Silence. Then a third presence. Half-fused with shadow, the Archdemon Velyth—a creature rumored to be the seventh Reach's lieutenant—coalesced into shape, creaking like a dying tree.

"They send prayer. They build dais. They offer false certainties. But the storm resides in fear," Velyth rasped. "They fear Ian Night. They whisper the Demonblade. Their priests tremble."

Threxos hissed again. "Let them. Fear is a weapon twice as sharp as steel. They place their faith in walls and vampiric bulwarks. But walls bleed… and something more than a tide is coming."

Azraval frowned—though it looked more like bone scraped across stone. "Their blood oath is incomplete. They band armies of necrotic puppets. This is defiance… and it reeks. Mortal arrogance garners attention."

"And the Queen's name," Velyth added, "spreads like wildfire in the Seventh. She draws from the abyss. This mortal flesh—mettle-bound—shapes itself as wrath. He sees the Queen, but he doesn't know it yet. He follows what they call a void crown."

Threxos grunted. "A Crown born of oblivion. My Reach trembles when the Crown appears. Its seal shows. It slashes open the world like a knife that bleeds soul. We must act—balance the scales."

Azraval leaned forward, the skull-throne creaking. "Prepare. Send your beasts forward. Let the mana beasts funnel into that wall while ours Demon puppets eat from within. Let them taste dread. And I… I will hatch dreams of hearing crying in empty halls—especially in the Citadel of Bone."

The other Archdemons hummed assent.

Though every horror was different, every sin twisted like a rope cupping the same void. They began naming Reaches and realities—Breeding loathing, thirsting for blood, waiting until Esgard cracked.

But the mortal world didn't wait. They would push back. That, Archdemon Bluff could sense—he felt mortal nails marking the world.

"In three demon moon cycles, we strike," he said. "We break the surface. Then we claim their flames and fear." The Archdemons fell silent, feeding on shadow's weight at the canyon edges.

As dream-winds carried bone echoes across the Second Reach, beasts of ash shrieked journeys into nightmares. Gnarled roots wept black ichor.

Even up high—beyond mortal sight—Salthane, Archdemon of the Second, wove dream-propaganda in trees that whispered madness, preparing the tide of manaborn horrors.

The Reaches twisted, catering to sin.

"We are blood's mirror," Salthane whispered, voice like tremor. "They build walls. They hope. But we are the echo of despair."

Around him, womb-torsos and impish shapes convulsed. The trees shook like broken spines. In the ashwood, the doomed beasts—mana-corrupted—howled to the emptiness. They were affronted, drawn onward by demonic architecture.

In the Seventh Reach, near the rotting embers of the Demon Queen's tomb, a conclave gathered.

Here Velrosa's name was carved in ash and bone-flowers. Imp ambassadors writhed in pools of acid. Their voices boiled promises of allegiance.

"There is a Princess unborn," they chittered. "She who wears a crown of shadow and flame. She arrives. Let blood sing her name." Whispers floated until the dead groaned.

They called her the Queen of the Seventh. A monarch with no throne. Yet demons whispered her coming, a signal of convulsions beyond recall.

Each Reach began expansion. Plans unfolded. Beasts were organized. Oath of the Crown had to be answered.

The Hellscape thrummed with blood logic: you kill, you obey. And in the expanse of mountains and sandstorms and bone cathedrals, the Archdemons conspired.

Their words shaped a storm: the mortal wall, the Demonblade, the Crown-wearer, the Queen's return.

Soon, the beasts of hell would be unleashed, the Reaches would leak through cracks in reality, and whispers in mortal courts would shudder in fear.

Then the war would begin.

At the Black Fall's mouth, the pillar swallowed shadow. In the echoing silence, thrumming voices gazed outward, hearing: Ian Night stands again. The Black Fall considered.

The Archdemons breathed slow. The hour approached.

...Each whisper trembled into bone.

And behind the flicker of runes, a world braced.

But the Hellscape did not only breathe destruction—it remembered. The Reaches, with all their writhing nightmares and sacrificial thrones, had long memories.

Memory was pain.

Pain was power.

The names of the gods who turned their faces during the Sundering were still etched into the bones of the Citadel walls. Their likenesses, now defiled effigies, were paraded in mockery by demonspawn, robed in stolen vestments, lit with heretic flame.

In the Ninth Reach, beneath a sky of bleeding stars, the Demon Kings gathered in a silence that made the stone scream.

Their forms were indistinct, older than form itself, each one a warcrime given permanence. They did not speak—there were no words among them, only impulses: hunger, wrath, inevitability.

And still, even they hesitated at the mention of Him. The one they called Prophet of Death. A mortal who bore the unmarked fire. Who passed the trial of the Maw and did not bow.

"Let the lower Reaches play," thought one ancient thing, coiled in void-light. "If the wall breaks, we drink. If it holds… we wake."

It was not a threat. It was a promise carved into the bones of a future that had already bled itself dry.

In the stillness beneath the flame-rooted citadels, the world waited.

The archdemons, twisted kings of sin and silence, turned their gazes upward—not in reverence, but anticipation.

Toward the wall.

Toward the storm.

Toward the end of fire.

And as the echoes of Ian Night's name circled even the lowest pit of the Tenth Reach, a single whisper bloomed like a rose of ash:

"The Time is near."

And they would be ready.