Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 92: Into Hell

Morning broke over the Wastes without ceremony or light. No golden dawn, no bird song. Just the low groan of wind scraping across dead land.

Above the Black Fall, the sky hung bruised and swollen — a mass of unmoving, sallow gray clouds that clung to the heavens like rot.

The air smelled of sulfur and old magic.

The ground, cracked like the flesh of something long dead, radiated a heatless dryness that clawed at the lungs.

Every road led here — to the great Gate that split the world like the blade of god.

Around the Gate, the camp had increased.

Hundreds had gathered, drawn by fate, greed, prophecy, or desperation.

Mercenaries with rough scars and teeth filed to points. Cultists daubed in ash and symbols too old for the tongues that spoke them.

Exiled nobles in cracked armor, bounty hunters with steel in their eyes, mad prophets whispering to the dust. And, perhaps most dangerously of all — hopefuls.

Glory-seekers, thrill-chasers, people who believed the Gate offered salvation instead of damnation.

They came for the First Descent Tournament. And today, it would begin.

Ian stood apart from the press of bodies, leaning against a warped wooden post that once bore a sign — now too weathered to read.

A half-spent cigarette burned between his fingers, tendrils of smoke curling lazily toward the gray heavens.

He watched without emotion as a pair of veiled twins in crimson performed a blood rite beside a broken cairn.

They sliced their tongues and let their blood drip onto the bleached bones of a goat arranged in a perfect spiral.

Not far off, a group clad in blue imperial armor secured glowing chains to a summoned beast — a hulking thing with three heads and eyes that wept liquid light.

Its breathing was ragged. The ground beneath it hissed with steam.

"Ian!"

The voice cut through the noise like a blade through silk — too cheerful for the gloom, too warm for this place.

He didn’t turn. Not right away.

He didn’t need to. It was Lyra, again.

Boots crunched over dead earth.

First came a light, half-dancing set of steps.

Then another — heavier, slower, more deliberate. The rhythm of two people who had walked together for a long time and still moved in their own ways.

Lyra and Caelen.

The siblings were a study in contrast. Lyra — all confidence and spark. Her hair was braided tight, copper rings clicking softly as she moved.

Her face was all sly smirks and mischief.

She wore a longcoat only half-buttoned, her twin sabers slung across her back. Each blade hummed with cursed wind mana, the kind that sliced both flesh and spirit.

Caelen, meanwhile, moved like a man shaped by discipline.

His cloak was neat, his posture composed, and his sword — a long, ancient thing bound in leather and silence — radiated the weight of buried history.

He said little, but when he did, it carried.

"You ready, demonboy?" Lyra asked with a smirk, stepping up beside Ian.

He took a slow drag, then exhaled.

The smoke curled through the dry air, a whisper in a world of noise.

Caelen stopped a few paces behind his sister, arms folded, scanning the encampment with cool disdain. His eyes swept across the mercenaries, the blood-priests, the opportunists.

"They’re foaming at the mouth," Caelen muttered. "Too many fools with too many enchanted blades. This is going to turn into a bloodbath before noon."

Lyra leaned her shoulder against the same post Ian rested on, her expression playful. "Not you though, right?" she teased. "You’ve got that whole calm-antihero vibe. Like you already saw the ending and just haven’t told the rest of us." ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

"I haven’t seen anything," Ian said, voice dry. "I just know where I’m going."

She chuckled, then reached into her belt pouch and pulled out a small black stone — glassy and rough, with a sigil pulsing just beneath its surface.

It looked like something plucked from the ruins of a dead star.

"Catch," she said, tossing it gently.

Ian caught it without looking. He turned it over in his palm.

It was warm. Faintly alive.

"Synchronization shard," Caelen explained. "Most teams use them. Prevents the Gate from flinging everyone into different sectors of the First Reach."

"Without it, the Gate spits you out wherever it wants," Lyra added. "Heard of a guy who landed in a nest of boneflies. Four minutes later, all that was left was screaming."

Ian stared at the shard. It throbbed with a subtle heat, like something that remembered it was once part of a heart.

"You brought me a rock," he said flatly.

"We brought you a chance," Caelen said.

Lyra grinned. "You’ve got those killer eyes and cursed blades. We’ve got charm, strategy, and ridiculously good hair. What’s not to love?"

Caelen gave her a sidelong glare.

"Fine," she shrugged. "Mostly strategy."

Ian said nothing.

Around them, the Gate began to urge.

Energy began to resonate from the black column, pulling at nerves, whispering to blood. Teams started forming lines — not by command, but by instinct.

The Gate wanted it that way. A silent summons echoing in marrow.

Above, the clouds darkened.

The pulsing from the Gate became audible now — a low, grinding hum that burrowed into the spine.

Someone near the rear of the crowd began chanting in an old dialect. A jet of green flame erupted, then vanished.

Caelen turned. "It’s time."

Lyra looked back at Ian, gave a mock salute. "See you on the other side, demonboy."

She turned, coat flaring, and strode toward the Gate.

Caelen lingered a moment longer.

"There are worse fates than standing beside people who understand the storm," he said, voice even.

Then he, too, was gone.

Ian watched as they reached the Gate. The obsidian surface rippled like disturbed water. Energy twisted. The ground cracked beneath them. White and violet light spiraled upward.

And then — they vanished.

Dissolved into threads of light.

Ian stood alone.

The shard pulsed in his hand. Waiting. Offering.

He stared at it for a long moment.

Then let it fall.

"I didn’t come here to make allies," he whispered.

And he walked forward.

Step by step, toward the Gate.

The ground fractured beneath him. Reality rippled. Heat and cold surged through him, then nothing.

Then everything.

And the Gate of hell opened to meet him.