The forest did not simply end; it rotted away. As Fang and Isgram pushed through the final thicket of brambles, the vibrant green of the woodland surrendered to a jaundiced, sickly grey. Smoke was usually a creature of restless curiosity, but here he was still.
The small animal huddled against Fang's ankle, his long ears pinned tight against his skull. His nose twitched with a frantic rhythm, sensing a wrongness that permeated the very soil.
When they stepped into the clearing, the world seemed to lose its breath.
Before them stretched a long, open field, but the grass was a secondary feature. It was a graveyard of steel and bone.
Thousands of broken swords protruded from the earth like jagged, rusted teeth.
Shattered shields, their noble defence long ago eaten away by oxidation, lay half-buried in the dirt like the shells of dead beetles.
Amidst the metal were the remnants of the fallen. Ribcages bloomed from the soil, and skulls stared with hollowed-out sockets at a sky they could no longer see. The very earth felt bruised, as if the weight of the ancient slaughter had permanently pressed the life out of the ground.
"This is not right," Isgram whispered. The big man's voice was uncharacteristically thin. He narrowed his eyes and kept his hand white-knuckled on the grip of his weapon. "The death magic here is thick, Fang. It is like breathing through a wet cloth."
Fang did not respond immediately. He was staring at a rusted spear that had been driven through a soldier's breastplate, pinning the skeletal remains to the ground. The atmosphere was not just heavy; it was sentient. It felt like a subtle, invisible smoke was being forced into his nostrils with every inhalation.
"This place reeks of decay," Fang muttered, shifting his weight.
Isgram cast another look at the direction they came from, only to find a mist covering the entire field.
'Strange, it was clearer just a moment ago. This is one fucking red flag.'
Fang's hand moved instinctively to the hilt of his dagger. The shadows at the edge of the field were acting unnaturally. They flickered and stretched toward the center of the clearing as if drawn by a vacuum.
Just as he opened his mouth to speak with Isgram, the world tilted.
The colors of the clearing inverted. The grey grass turned a blinding, ghostly white, and the sky bruised into a deep, violent purple. Then, the fire started.
It was a vision, sudden and savage, slamming into Fang's consciousness like a physical blow.
The silence was shattered by screams of hatred, echoing in his mind louder than anything he encountered before.
He was no longer looking at a graveyard.
He was standing in the middle of a slaughterhouse.
He saw the field alive with the rhythmic clatter of marching boots and the wet thud of steel meeting meat.
Fang stood as a ghost amidst the carnage. He watched as a battalion of soldiers in silvered plate was met not by another army, but by the ground they stood upon. The death magic did not just kill; it reclaimed. He saw a young soldier, his face twisted in a silent scream, look down as his own shadow rose from the grass like black liquid. The shadow reached up, wrapping around the boy's throat with the solidity of iron, and dragged him into the soil without leaving a ripple.
Men clad in gleaming armor fought for their lives. Their faces were set in determination, but beneath that grit was an encroaching, paralyzing terror. They were not fighting an army. They were fighting a single figure.
In the distance, atop a mound of the freshly slain, stood a lone necromancer. He did not carry a sword. He carried a staff carved from the femur of an unknown creature, marked with endless carvings that glowed purple and red.
Every time he tapped the wood against the earth, the ground heaved.
Fang watched in horror as the necromancer raised a pale hand. The magic did not fall from the sky. It rose from within the soldiers themselves. He saw men scream as their own shadows became physical, reaching up to claw at their throats, ripping them out instantly.
The necromancer spoke a single word, and the air turned into a thick, purple miasma that entered the soldiers' lungs and burst outward from their chests in a spray of bone shards.
This was not a war.
It was a harvest.
The lone figure moved with a terrifying, slow grace, turning the very life force of the thousand man army against itself.
In the midst of the chaos, the vision focused. The necromancer turned.
His eyes were twin pits of glowing dark energy, his robes dark red.
A voice echoed in Fang's mind, vibrating through his teeth and ribs.
"The soil is sated with the souls of men who met their end.
A feast is laid for hollow hearts on which the dark can bend.
The father grants no gifts to life nor any warm reprieve,
He only fills the vessel that is willing to receive.
Rest within the rot and rust and let the silence lead, Claim the strength of a thousand men to serve your growing need."
The vision snapped like a taut wire. Fang's lungs seized as he felt the sudden return of the physical world. He let out a choked gasp, his knees buckling under the weight of his own body.
"Fang! Talk to me!" Isgram was there in a heartbeat, grabbing Fang's shoulder to keep him from collapsing into the rusted debris. "What is going on? You look like you have seen a ghost."
Fang took a ragged, steadying breath. The metallic tang of the air still burned his throat, tasting of old blood and copper. He looked at the scattered weapons, seeing them now as vessels of that necromancer's horrific work. His head throbbed, the rhythmic rhymes still echoing in his skull like a lingering fever.
"A voice," Fang rasped, his eyes unfocused. "Someone was speaking. I do not know who, or what... but they showed me the harvest. They showed me how this field was made."
Isgram's brow furrowed as he scanned the empty clearing, his grip tightening on Fang's arm. "Who spoke to you? I did not hear a thing but the wind."
"I do not know," Fang admitted, shaking his head slowly as the vertigo began to recede. "It felt like a servant, or a messenger. It was cold. So cold. It told me to stay. It told me there is a feast here if I am willing to be a vessel."
He dropped to one knee, his vision doing slow, nauseating circles. Isgram supported him with his shoulder until the world finally stopped spinning, replaced by a cold, hollow clarity.
"If this place is tied to that kind of power, it is not safe," Isgram said. His discomfort was palpable. "I do not like it. We have got to move out of here, Fang. Whatever that voice was, it was not human."
Fang shook his head, his fingers digging into the dirt. "No. I need to do this. I will stay here and meditate. You take Smoke and head back to the cave. Salvage what you can from the battlefield. There is metal here. Anything that can be smelted down and used for something else, make sure to take it."
Isgram hesitated, clearly torn. He did not want to leave Fang alone in a place that reeked of the abyss, but he also knew that the choice was Fang's to make. "You're out of your mind, but I can't tell you what to do.
Just promise me that you will not endanger yourself more than needed."
Fang sat on both knees and took a deep breath.
"I swore I'd make a haven for our kind.
I must understand what power is calling to me here, but it is certainly going to be dangerous.
Stay safe, Isgram. I will be back soon."
With a final glance at the clearing, Isgram turned and led Smoke back toward the cave. He carried a heavy shield that was to be dismantled, its metal groaning under the weight. The rabbit formed a faint, nervous shadow in the distance as they vanished into the trees.
---------------------
Fang, left alone in the stillness of the battlefield, settled himself onto the earth. He did not know whose voice had reached out to him, but the invitation was a tether he couldn't ignore. He closed his eyes and began to breathe.
For a long while, nothing changed. But then, something bubbled beneath the surface. A purple miasma spread from the ground to his chest.
A sudden wave of pain shot through him. He clenched his muscles and held firm. The vision from earlier reappeared, more clearly this time.
He saw the necromancer again, now atop a mountain of gore and blood.
Holding his staff, he willed his magic to cover the entire field, and the bodies started melt.
As Fang saw this taking place, his eyes were bleeding slowly, and a drip of blood rolled down his cheek.
The figure turned toward him, eyes fixed on Fang.
The voice echoed in his mind once more, a chilling reminder of the path he was choosing.
"The soil is sated with the souls of men who met their end.
A feast is laid for hollow hearts on which the dark can bend.
The father grants no gifts to life nor any warm reprieve,
He only fills the vessel that is willing to receive.
Rest within the rot and rust and let the silence lead, Claim the strength of a thousand men to serve your growing need."
Fang's heart pounded. He reached out, stretching his hand at the figure who slowly crossed his legs in the air till he was in a sitting position, keeping him floating.
"Who... What are you?"
The figure stayed silent, its empty eyes gazing at Fang from above.
"I.. am... I... am..."
Silence.
The figure brushed his hand on his staff, and his magic pulsed through it in purple and red mana.
"I... You... Not... Me..."
Fang realized that the answer he was seeking was not there to be found, so he let the question go.
He just sat there silently, breathing in and breathing out.
As the rhythmic breathing took hold, the horrific imagery of the melting army began to soften at the edges. The screams of the dying transitioned into a low, thrumming vibration that hummed in Fang's very marrow. He stopped trying to understand the figure's broken speech and instead focused on the gaps between the words.
The figure didn't move, but the purple and red pulses from the femur staff grew more frequent, timed perfectly with the beating of Fang's own heart.
The pain in his eyes was no longer a sharp sting but a heavy, throbbing heat. The blood trailing down his cheek felt like a line of liquid fire.
Finally, his single tear rolled off his cheek onto the ground.
Once his blood landed on the wilted blade of grass, it caused the figure infront of him to raise its hand from its staff.
The mana pulses stopped, and the figure whispered just loud enough for Fang to hear.
"I... Cried... Too...
This... Place... Not... Home...
I... Not... Death...
Death... Is... Me...
I... Not... Death...
I... Am... Me..."
The words hung in the stagnant air, brittle and fragile, as if the speaker were trying to remember a name long since buried under layers of dust. The figure's hand remained suspended, trembling slightly, as if reaching for a memory that vanished the moment it was touched.
Fang watched, transfixed, as the sitting figure began to blur. The sharp, terrifying robes of dark red started to unravel into wisps of smoke. The mountain of gore beneath it didn't just melt anymore; it began to evaporate into a thick, swirling fog of violet light.
"You were a man," Fang whispered, his own voice sounding distant to his ears.
The figure did not answer with words. Instead, it tilted its head, and for a fleeting second, the twin pits of dark energy in its sockets flickered. A face, tired and profoundly lonely, ghosted over the necromancer's features before being swallowed again by the void.
The silence that followed was heavy, but the hostility had drained out of it. The sentient weight of the clearing began to pull inward, toward Fang, like water rushing into a vacuum.
"I... Was... Death...
I... Did... Wrong...
I... Want... Safe..
I... Chosen... One..."
The purple miasma that had been hovering at his chest suddenly surged,
Yet it did not burn this time.
It felt cold, like a winter stream, as it poured into his lungs and flowed through his veins.
The energy from the field slowly bled out, and a pure purple mana trailed from everywhere to the spot where Fang sat.
His mana pool, which had always felt like a shallow, dusty basin, began to fill.
He felt the walls of his body stretch, and his mana overflowed.
The pain returned, but it was accompanied by a strange, addictive clarity.
He could feel the screams, the longing, the pain of love, the power of hate, and the downfall of fear.
The figure in the air began to fade into the vortex. As its lower half vanished, it looked at Fang one last time. Its hand reached out, finger tips almost touching the space between them.
"Wait!" Fang called out, reaching back. "You were a chosen one like me, weren't you?
Why are you giving me this power?"
The phantom reached out and placed a translucent, cold hand over Fang's heart. The touch did not bring the chill of the grave, but a sudden, overwhelming sense of understanding. It was an acknowledgment of Fang's vow to create a sanctuary for their kind.
"I... Believe... In... Your... Effort...
Take... This... Burden...
Turn... My... War...
Into... Your... Peace..."
The figure's mouth moved, and Fang saw a small smile.
He disappeared as well, becoming part of the swirling purple storm that now completely encased Fang.
In the physical world, the clearing erupted. A low, thunderous hum vibrated through the earth. It was loud enough to shake the rusted helmets from the skulls of the dead. The mist that Isgram had seen earlier began to glow with a sickly, beautiful luminescence.
Fang's body began to lift an inch off the ground, suspended by the sheer density of the mana. His eyes, still leaking that single trail of blood, snapped open. The pupils were gone, replaced by rotating rings of violet light.
One thousand and twenty-three.
The number solidified in his mind, not as a limit, but as a foundation. The energy settled, cooling from a raging storm into a deep, dark reservoir that hummed in the back of his consciousness.
He fell back to the earth, landing softly on his knees. The vision was gone. The mountain of gore was gone. The figure was gone.
He remained there for a long time, his hands pressed into the dirt. The clearing was different now. The heavy, suffocating pressure had vanished because the field was empty. He had taken it all. Every ounce of lingering intent, every scrap of necrotic residue left by the necromancer's harvest, was now sitting inside him.
He turned his gaze toward the forest, where Isgram and Smoke had vanished. He could feel them now. He felt the warmth of their life force moving through the trees a mile away. It was a new sense, a predatory awareness that made the world feel small.
"I am coming back," he said to the wind.
He began to walk. His steps were silent. He did not stumble over the roots or the uneven soil; he moved with a newfound, terrifying grace. The screams of hatred were still there, tucked away in the corners of his mind, but they were no longer screaming at him. They were waiting for his command.