Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 86: Ashes of Faith

The Sanctum’s Great Church towered against the storm-streaked heavens, its spires clawing skyward like the fingers of a god dying.

Pale light spilled from the vast stained-glass windows, painting the cracked stones below in hues of crimson and gold. Within its sacred walls, the air was heavy — not with incense, but a tense heaviness.

In a chamber behind the altar — deeper still, past locked iron doors and muttered prayers — two cardinals sat in a windowless office, their faces grim in the candlelight.

The room was spare and cold.

A single oaken desk separated the two men. Books bound in cracked leather stacked the corners. Scrolls of doctrine lay scattered across the desk.

A map of the Hellscape’s First Reach was pinned to the wall behind them, stained with fresh inked notations of skirmishes and losses.

Cardinal Varlen, a severe man with sunken eyes and silver-streaked hair, leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin.

Across from him, Cardinal Mavrek, broader of shoulder and darker of gaze, scowled at a crumpled missive resting on the table between them.

Neither spoke.

The silence between them was brittle, ready to snap.

A heavy knock shattered the stillness.

Without waiting for permission, the door swung open.

A Paladin, still clad in his travel-worn armor, strode inside, the iron shod boots ringing sharply on the stone floor. Mud and blood splattered his white surcoat, the mark of the sunburst sigil nearly obscured by the grime of battle.

He saluted, fist to chest, and bowed low.

"My Lords," the Paladin said, voice clipped. "I bring grave news."

Varlen’s eyes sharpened to razors. "Speak."

The Paladin swallowed visibly. "The troop sent to intercept the target... the full company of over two hundred... they have been wiped out."

A long, suffocating pause.

Mavrek’s hands curled into fists atop the table. His lips drew back in something halfway between a grimace and a snarl.

"All of them?" Varlen asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

"All, my Lord. Not a single survivor."

Another pause, heavier now, the very air seeming to thicken.

The Paladin shifted nervously under the weight of their gazes.

Mavrek stood suddenly, the chair scraping back with a harsh screech across the floor. His hand slammed onto the desk, rattling the candlesticks.

"This is madness," he growled. "We cannot keep throwing away men — faithful men — for a cause that demands far greater force!"

Varlen stared at him coldly. "And what do you suggest, brother?"

Mavrek leaned forward, voice low and fervent. "I suggest we dispatch a Lightcrusader. Just one. That would be enough to capture him. To bring him to heel."

Varlen’s mouth thinned into a tight, bloodless line.

"You think I have not considered it?" he said. "The higher ones will not approve the disbursement of a Lightcrusader for this matter."

Mavrek scoffed, almost laughing bitterly. "Short-sighted fools! Do they not understand the significance?"

He slammed a finger against the table, jabbing the cracked parchment.

"Ian Night is the last of the Sovereign line."

Varlen’s expression flickered — a shadow of unease crossing the practiced calm.

"The last," Mavrek repeated, voice dropping to a hiss. "Perhaps the one to fulfill the Prophecy of the Fourth Convergence. We stand on the edge of a second cataclysm, and they dither about protocol and politics?"

The Paladin stood frozen by the door, eyes wide, as if he could not believe what he was hearing spoken aloud.

Mavrek’s voice sharpened to a knife’s edge. "The Church must act. We must capture him — or kill him — before the hourglass runs dry. Anything else will spell doom, for the Sanctum, for the Empire, for all of us."

Varlen rose slowly, smoothing his robes, his expression carefully neutral.

"The higher ones are well aware of the stakes," he said. "Do not mistake their silence for ignorance."

Mavrek’s jaw clenched.

"But there is a line we cannot cross," Varlen continued, voice grim. "The gods themselves accepted his oath of demon subjugation. His blood — his soul — was judged worthy."

He locked eyes with Mavrek.

"To send a Lightcrusader against an Oathbound Subjugator..." he said, his voice heavy with the weight of doctrine, "would be a sin too great for even the higher ones to bear. It would risk damnation itself upon the Church."

Mavrek’s nostrils flared.

"That is why," Varlen said softly, "we must do this ourselves."

The flickering candlelight cast long shadows across his face, turning his gaze hollow and dark.

Silence returned — deeper now, more lethal.

At last, Mavrek broke it, his voice quieter, but no less fierce.

"You know we must stop him before the First Reach is complete?"

Varlen nodded once. Slow. Grave.

"Yes," he said.

"I know."

Mavrek straightened, smoothing the front of his crimson-trimmed robes.

"Then what is the plan?"

Varlen turned away, stepping toward the map pinned to the wall. His fingers traced the blood-inked marks across the terrain — a slow march of slaughter.

"We will not send another wave," he said. "Nor will we send Paladins alone. We will forge a spearpoint — hand-picked members of our demon subjugation force. An elite group. No more than six. Each one bound to secrecy and absolution."

He glanced over his shoulder, a cold light burning in his eyes.

"And we will have Ezrai lead it."

Mavrek smiled then — a thin, humorless thing.

"So be it," he said.

The Paladin at the door saluted again, fists trembling.

Varlen waved him off.

"Go," he said. "Prepare the way."

The Paladin fled like a man escaping a noose.

In the echoing silence that followed, Mavrek chuckled softly — a low, brutal sound.

"A Prophet of Death," he mused. "That is what they call him now."

Varlen turned back to the desk, gathering the bloodstained reports into a pile.

He did not smile.

"He will be a prophet of nothing but ash," he said, "by the time we are through."

And in the dying light of the candles, two cardinals of the Sanctum — once pillars of faith, now conspirators against the will of gods — began their final preparations.

The storm outside roared louder, battering the ancient stained glass with fists of rain.

And somewhere, beyond walls of stone and certainty, a dark sword was lifted once more.