Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 144: Murmurs of Return

Ian had been back in Esgard for weeks now. Hidden. Watching.

But the city didn’t know it yet.

Not truly.

Not with certainty, and not with the fire such a revelation would ignite.

He moved through alleys like shadow between breaths, covered beneath a cloak of dusk and silence.

In the slums, where soot clung to skin and children ran barefoot through puddles of blood and piss, his name was still spoken in whispers.

A curse, a prayer, a promise.

They said the Whisperer of Death had fallen. They said he’d returned. They said he was watching the Arena from behind the walls.

All of it was true.

And none of it was.

He waited.

Watched them wonder.

Let the silence stretch and the fear ferment.

But the city was waking. And Blackrat’s men were already moving.

The whisper network of guttersnipes, broken gamblers, and undercity mages began spreading the word—quiet at first, like the rumble before a quake.

"Ian returns," they muttered in brothels and smoke dens. "He’s back."

"He’s watching."

"He’s choosing."

The slums lit with tension like old timber ready to catch. Every tavern brawl paused just long enough to ask the question—did you hear?

And by the time word reached the inner rings, near the stone mansions of lesser nobles and merchant princes, it had already grown fangs.

He returns.

The posters hadn’t changed yet.

The grand banners of the Arena still bore the smug faces of newer contenders—gladiators who had never shared blood with demons, who thought a flashy cloak and noble patronage made them dangerous.

But the crowd remembered.

The Arena remembered.

Even the sand remembered the shape of Ian’s footsteps.

And when Blackrat’s boys finally slipped the message to the criers, it wasn’t even a scream.

It was a promise:

"The Demon has not fallen. He lives. The next Blood League match will tell the truth. If you wish to know fear again—come watch."

---

The effect was immediate.

Esgard, bloated and hungry, rolled over in its sleep—and began to wake.

In the fighter districts, where hundreds of contenders from every cursed corner of the realm had gathered for a taste of blood and glory, chaos stirred.

The name of Ian was spoken with the tone of myth and madness.

For some, he was a goal.

For others, a ghost.

But for one—he was a target.

And the bastard made sure the whole city knew it.

His name was Veyne Trask, a bronze-skinned, broad-chested warrior from the Eastern Wastes.

He wore no sigils yet, bound to no house but by flexible contract, but claimed titles from every arena south of the Shattered Coast.

They said he was the champion of five pit-realms. That his sword, Vurm, had drunk the blood of mages and beasts alike.

That his body was hardened from bathing in warfire.

But more than anything, they said—he wanted Ian.

His words came on the afternoon tide, shouted not in a bar, nor a camp—but from atop a brazier stand in front of the House of Scales, where all bets were tallied and fortune weighed.

He stood bare-chested in the cold spring wind, scars carved like runes across his chest, eyes blazing with fanatic hunger.

>"Let him come," Veyne roared, his voice shaking ash and dust from the ancient stone. "Let the Demon rise from his grave. I will break him. I will bleed him dry and carve my name over his."

"If Ian is here—then let him step forward. Let him fight in two nights. Or let him rot a coward."

A silence followed. Not shame. Not disbelief.

But anticipation.

As if Esgard had been waiting for a voice to shout into the dark.

And Veyne had given them what they craved.

By nightfall, the words were etched into a hundred tongues, shouted by drunkards, sold on scrolls, drawn in crude chalk on the alley walls of the Blackgrove District:

"Ian is challenged. The Demon must rise."

Two days to Arena Night.

Two days until the Crucible roared again.

And the stage was already set.

Inside the hidden quarters beneath House Elarin’s estate, Velrosa stood at the edge of the war-table, staring at a painted map of the Arena.

A single candle flickered, casting gold shadows across her bronze skin. She was still cloaked in white from her court session, but her eyes burned blue with purpose.

"They’ve taken the bait," she murmured.

Behind her, Blackrat chuckled and tossed a pouch of silvers onto the table. "They always do. You make ’em starve long enough, they’ll bite at anything with blood on it."

"I didn’t expect Veyne to be the first."

Blackrat snorted. "He’s got more brawn than brains. He doesn’t know what he’s poked."

Velrosa’s voice sharpened. "He’ll learn."

From the shadows, Ian spoke.

His voice was low, cold. Not angry—but inevitable.

"But you’re saying i should have restraint," Ian said. "Isn’t the first victim to be a spectacle."

Velrosa turned. Even in this dim room, his presence made the air colder.

He had changed in these months.

And it were as though that were clearer in the darkness.

His face was harder, shadowed not by exhaustion, but clarity.

The kind only blood and painful truth could buy.

His eyes—gray and storm-slick—held no doubt. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

"I’m not saying total restraint," she replied. "But you know the game, we have to manage the odds and excitement somehow."

Ian nodded once. "Understood."

Blackrat stepped forward, grinning wide. "I’ve got the rats planting stories in the market already. ’Demon stirs in Hollow. The sands will drink.’ You know—nice and dramatic."

"They’ll eat it up," Velrosa said.

Ian’s gaze drifted to the candle.

Its flame leaned toward him.

---

In the city, the fever spread.

Merchants painted Ian’s face on banners—half man, half skull.

Children carved miniature coffins with his name.

Gamblers wept as odds changed with each whisper.

And in the alleys of Durnhal’s Reach, a blind man with no tongue stood on a barrel and wrote in ash on the stone wall:

> HE WALKS AGAIN.

---

Meanwhile, Veyne trained in the barracks of House Briarhymn, sharpening his blade beneath a wall of skulls.

His men were loud, brutal things—former warlords, deserters, pit-thieves. They mocked Ian openly, roaring songs of victory while dragging captured beasts into cages.

But even Veyne, in the silence between strikes, looked at his own reflection in the steel—and wondered.

What if the stories were true?

What if the Demon wasn’t a man at all—but something born from pain and death?

He spat the thought away.

He would break him. He had to.

Two nights.

That was all.

The crucible would open.

And the blood would flow.

---

And deep in the Vaults beneath the Arena...

An empty nameplate shivered.

Waiting for a name to be carved.

Ian.

Or his many enemies.

One would rise.

One would vanish into ash and sand.

And the people?

The people would roar in delight of blood.