Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 127: Quiet Beneath a Domain

The first to die never even screamed.

A bone spike tore clean through his chest, splitting ribs and armor alike, lifting him into the air like a macabre banner before the limb retracted and flung the corpse into the mud.

Blood rained. Metal clattered. Then the real battle began.

Havoc moved first.

The ground shattered beneath his weight as he lunged, talons cleaving through the first line like parchment.

One man—wrapped in aethersteel, bearing the crest of the Crimson Shroud—raised a halberd crackling with lightning.

A precise strike. A warrior’s form.

Havoc ducked beneath it.

Then he ripped upward.

The halberd fell harmlessly to the ground, its wielder gone—vanished into a spray of red mist and tattered limbs.

A spine dangled from Havoc’s mouth, wet and glistening, before it was spat out like gristle.

And then all hell followed.

The soulbound came with relentless precision, each a nightmare now flesh. One leapt—gaunt, multi-jointed, armed with serrated blades grafted to bone.

It slammed into a shield wall, its impact cratering stone and scattering bodies like toys. A mage screamed, igniting a pillar of flame in defense.

The fire caught—but the soulbound didn’t burn.

It absorbed.

Flesh cracked. Bone darkened.

The heat didn’t stop it—it fed it. And when it opened its mouth, it vomited molten flame back at the mage, melting her mid-scream.

Her skeleton slumped forward, still aflame, then was kicked aside as the creature moved on.

From above, wings thundered.

Three soulbound with abyssal pinions dove in from the veil’s high dome, blades dragging through the air behind them like ink strokes.

Below, a team of twin-axe mercenaries, famous across the Rime Wastes, stood ready. Their leader—Bragg Hollowmaw—was said to have slain an elder basilisk beast (Hazard Rank) with nothing but a rope and grit.

He fought well.

His axes sang as they struck, cleaving one of the soulbound out of the air with brutal precision.

A second fell to the ground and was hacked apart by his men in a blur of steel and blood.

But the third...

The third landed behind them, silently, spine-tendril unfurling like a sea creature sensing prey.

Three axes buried into its hide.

It didn’t flinch.

Instead, it bloomed.

The creature erupted—spines jabbing in every direction, splitting five men open in less than a heartbeat. Bragg turned just in time to watch his brother’s face flay open from chin to crown.

He lunged, eyes red with rage—

—but a black tail snapped across his chest, lifted him skyward, and hurled him into the veil-wall.

He slid down slowly.

Alive. Barely.

Until Havoc’s paw crushed him into the stone like a forgotten fruit.

And all the while, Ian stood still.

At the edge of the valley, boots planted, arms crossed.

Not commanding. Not celebrating.

Just watching.

The living were many, but the soulbound were hunger incarnate—reforged in Ian’s domain, bound not by runes, but will.

One bore the face of a child, but a body like a marionette of fused arms and broken swords. It scuttled across a wall before leaping, landing atop a sorcerer mid-chant.

Her wards flared—

Then failed.

The soulbound pushed its fingers—far too many—into her eyes, dragging her skull into its chest. When it withdrew, it took her brain with it, chewing lazily as she slumped twitching.

A hulking brute in dragonbone mail bellowed a war cry and charged through two soulbound, his hammer glowing bright red, inscribed with runes of the Giant-Father.

He smashed one undead into pulp, then turned to the next, catching it in the shoulder.

For a moment, it seemed he might hold the line.

Then Havoc arrived.

The brute turned, raising the hammer with both arms.

Havoc lunged—not to strike, but to grab.

Claws curled around the hammer’s haft—and ripped it from the brute’s hands. The hammer crumbled in Havoc’s grip like wet paper.

The brute roared, fists flying—

And Havoc bit his head in half.

A crunch.

Then a gurgle.

And the warrior’s body fell, convulsing.

Not a single soulbound stopped.

A sanctum woman raised a holy sigil, screaming ancient words in the High Tongue, light searing from her hands.

A dome of gold burst outward, halting three charging soulbound.

She smiled—until one of them walked through the light.

Smoke hissed off its skin. It hissed in agony.

But it kept coming.

The priestess fell to her knees, praying louder.

It grabbed her by the jaw and pulled until her spine came free.

The dome flickered.

Then died.

More came—some from imperial noble houses, bearing blades passed down generations. A woman in silver robes called thunder from the clouds, incinerating four undead in one strike.

She began a second spell.

She didn’t finish it.

A soulbound with no face, only teeth, dragged her screaming into the fog.

Another man—bald, tatted with runes of protection, his body surrounded by rotating glyphs—held his ground against five. He chanted with bleeding lips, his skin burning with spell backlash, but he stood.

He killed two.

The third took his legs.

The fourth took his arms.

The fifth stared into his eyes as it reached into his chest and tore out his heart, still beating.

Ian’s gaze followed none of it.

His eyes watched the whole, not the parts.

The death.

The unraveling.

The truth of strength.

And how futile it was against legacy.

The battle raged for what felt like hours.

In truth, it had only been seventeen minutes.

That was all it took.

Seventeen minutes to butcher hundreds.

To reduce them to screams, then silence, then pieces.

Blood soaked the valley, turning the stone black.

A knee-deep sludge of bone, flesh, and armor pooled at the base of the spiral crack where Ian had first stood. The torches that once lined the path flickered and died, choked by the stench and smoke of ruin.

Now, only forty remained.

Forty broken, panting, soaked in sweat and blood.

Many knelt, too numb to run. Others wept.

A few still held blades—but their hands shook.

Some had fought well.

One had even nearly escaped the domain, leaping toward the veil’s edge, casting a teleport rune—

Only for a spear of black bone to impale him mid-cast.

Now he lay twitching in the blood, whispering the name of a god who hadn’t answered.

Havoc returned to Ian’s side.

The beast’s frame was drenched in viscera, jaw slick with gore, tendrils twitching as if still hungry.

Ian finally moved.

One slow step forward.

The valley groaned beneath his presence.

He didn’t speak yet.

The survivors watched him—some in defiance, some in terror.

All knew the truth now.

They had never stood a chance.