Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 156: Pact of Ash

His name was Renner Voss.

Born under sun-bleached banners in the lawless southern wastes, where the bones of old wars were still being picked clean by scavengers and sons.

He had tasted steel and blood before his voice had deepened, and by the time he saw his sixteenth summer, he’d already left behind more corpses than memories.

In the south, they called him The pale slaughter, not for his skin but for how little emotion he showed when carving through men.

There was no poetry in his violence, no pride. Just hunger. The unending, gnawing ache to become something greater.

Esgard was the stage. The Crucible was the gate. And Ian—the Demon Blade—was the mountain he meant to climb and break.

But first, he needed power.

And tonight, beneath the cracked sky and beside the forgotten altar of some long-waiting entity, he was offered just that.

The thing emerged as a ripple in the darkness, no form, no scent, just a voice of cold iron and the outline of a hand made of starless shadow.

"You wish to step over the Demon Blade?"

Renner didn’t flinch.

He stood still, a tattered cloak hanging from his shoulders, his lean frame scarred from the southern campaigns. Around his belt were relics taken from every fighter he had ever killed—rings, chains, broken sigils, a dried braid of hair.

"Yes," Renner replied.

"Then come. Let me give you the power to."

The boy’s eyes, a washed-out green that had once been lit, narrowed. "What’s the cost?"

The entity laughed softly, like wind passing over graves.

"The price is simple. You will bear a mark, and when you rise, you will rise as my vessel. Your pain, your glory, your rage—it will feed me. And I will make sure no man can stand before you, not even him."

Renner thought of Ian Night.

The warrior that stole the arena with silence and slaughter, the one the nobles whispered of as death incarnate.

He thought of the way Ian had walked out of the Crucible bloodstained and unbothered. A beast. A storm given flesh.

And for the first time in years, Renner had felt something.

Not fear. No. Envy.

The kind that festers. That consumes. That claws at your spine and hisses that you were meant for more.

He stepped forward. "Then mark me."

The shadows shifted, and the hand—more smoke than flesh—pressed against his chest.

Pain bloomed. Not like a wound. Like a fire catching inside bone. Like his soul was being sewn to something vast and ageless.

Renner screamed, but he did not fall. He clenched his fists, let the agony take him, and stayed standing.

When it was done, the hand withdrew, and there on his chest was a brand—a crimson spiral with eyes that seemed to blink once, and then closed.

His skin steamed. His breath came ragged. But when he looked up, he felt it. Power. Raw and uncoiled.

He didn’t need instruction. It was already in his blood now.

The whispers of forbidden movement, of strikes no human could counter, of speed drawn from something deeper than mana.

The demon’s knowledge didn’t teach—it rewrote.

"Kill. Climb. Win." the entity intoned.

"And when the time comes, bring him to his knees. The one they call the Whisperer of Death. Show the world that gods fall like men."

Renner didn’t smile. But his heart, long hardened by fire and betrayal, gave one steady thump of satisfaction.

"I’m coming for you," Renner whispered to no one. "I’ll tear you down."

He closed his eyes, and deep within him, something laughed.

---

Far beneath the mortal lands, deeper than stone remembers, beyond the last threshold where light can live—there lies the Fourth Reach.

A vast chasm of endless night.

The bones of fallen gods littered the ground like broken monuments.

Rivers of ash coursed through canyons carved by ancient sins. In the silence of this abyss, nothing dared to breathe unless it was born from suffering.

And there, amid a throne of blackened iron twisted into impossible shapes, something moved.

Two figures stood at the edge of a precipice that opened onto a void that had no bottom. Their forms were cloaked in shifting flame and shadow, neither beast nor man, neither flesh nor spirit.

Archdemons, old as the third war.

One of them stirred.

Eyes like eclipses opened. The demon exhaled smoke and whispering tongues.

"It’s done," the first said, his voice a slow, grinding thunder. "The vessel is planted."

A silence followed, long enough to stretch across centuries.

The second figure shifted—massive, crowned in burning horns, its voice lower and colder.

"Will it be enough?"

The first demon gazed upward, as if seeing through realms, through time. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. But he is the first of many. The seed has taken root in mortal blood."

"The Whisperer of Death should not draw breath much longer," the second rumbled. "He walks with the echo of Sovereigns. That line was never meant to rise again."

The first demon did not flinch. "And yet it did. And now it feeds on soulfire and silence. That one... was not part of our design."

A rumble passed through the Reach—distant, like a scream being swallowed whole.

"You fear him?" the second asked, amused.

"I remember him," the first said. "Or rather, what he carries. The one who wore the first black crown. The one who turned Heaven’s gates to bone and hell to darkness."

The second demon was silent, contemplative. Then he spoke, slow and deep.

"So what now? What if your vessel fails? What if he is not strong enough to kill the Deathborn?"

The first demon turned, his silhouette forming wings of razored void. "Then another will rise. We scatter our sparks. One will catch flame."

"And when it does?"

A smile, subtle as an executioner’s breath. "Then our greatest enemy will burn. And through its ashes, we will walk again."

A silence fell once more between them, but it was not empty.

The Reach listened.

Above, the world turned. Unaware. Unprepared.

Below, two Archdemons watched the ember of war flicker into life. Not with rage. Not with hope.

But with certainty.

This was how world’s ended.

Without drums.

Just whispers.