The city streetlights glowed a dull amber, their light blurred by a curtain of morning fog that clung low over the ground. Eleres walked along the sidewalk in a daze, his expression vacant, lost in another world. In his ears, the soaring soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings played on repeat, as if orchestrating the fantasy realm still echoing in his heart.
He had just binge-watched the entire trilogy—three times in a row. His mind was still trapped in Middle-earth, intoxicated by the glory of war and the breath of ancient magic. He could almost see himself as an elven prince, loosing his final arrow in a rain of silver death, or as a lone ranger, sword flashing as he cut down a monstrous beast in the shadows of a ruined fortress.
The line between fantasy and reality had grown perilously thin.
And in that blurred moment—he heard it.
A truck horn, loud and close. Too close.
Then came the screech of brakes—sharp, metallic, violent. It tore through the early morning stillness like a blade through silk.
Bang!
A deafening crash.
And then—nothing.
Oblivion.
…
When he opened his eyes again, Eleres wasn't lying in a hospital bed. He wasn't sprawled on the cold concrete of the street.
He was lying on a battlefield.
A wasteland soaked in blood stretched around him. The sky above was a sheet of iron, smothered by heavy clouds. Fires burned in the distance, flickering against the gloom, and the air was thick with the stench of scorched earth and fresh blood.
All around him were the dead. Dozens—no, hundreds—of bodies in twisted armor, their faces locked in expressions of pain, fear, or fury. Tattered banners fluttered weakly in the wind, their emblems half-burned, unrecognizable.
Eleres was lying half-buried in the mud, his face pressed against cold earth, another corpse pinned beneath him. His entire body throbbed with pain. When he tried to move, a sharp stab in his ribs made him suck in a breath. His side felt like it had been slashed open, and his chest was sticky and wet. He looked down and saw dark, half-dried blood, and something more—torn flesh.
It was as if someone had gutted him alive and then stitched him back together in a hurry, like a butcher fixing broken meat.
He trembled.
Caught between death and something else entirely, Eleres shuddered in the dirt, heart pounding and breath ragged.
He didn't know where he was.He didn't know why he was still breathing.All he knew was this—something was terribly, impossibly wrong.
Then—A voice.Cold. Metallic. Inhuman.Not from the outside world, but from somewhere deep within his skull. It was emotionless, exact, and terrifyingly clear.
[Host vitals: critical.][Black Seal System initializing…][Status: Near death.][Objective: Escape the battlefield perimeter within 30 minutes. System will attempt full tissue reconstruction and blood flow restoration.][Countdown initiated: 29:59]
Eleres's breath caught in his throat.
What… was that?
A system?Had he… transmigrated?Was this someone else's body?
Questions exploded in his mind like thunder—but he had no time for answers.
He gritted his teeth and forced his battered body to move. Pain shot through his ribs and abdomen like knives, but he didn't stop. Not now. Not here.
He shoved himself upright, staggering forward like a dying man pulled by instinct alone. Every step was a gamble—one wrong move and he'd collapse again, maybe for good. But something primal, something buried deep inside screamed at him to keep going.
The battlefield around him was a graveyard.
Charred armor lay cracked and twisted. Spears jutted from the ground like gravestones. Crimson banners, torn and soaked in blood, flapped weakly in the wind. The air stank of magic, death, and smoke.
Eleres didn't know where he was.He didn't know who he had become.He didn't even know why he was still alive.
But he knew one thing with burning certainty—He had to survive.If not for answers, then for the mere right to ask the questions.
He stumbled onward, toward the nearest ridge—toward something, anything beyond this nightmare.
And behind him, time continued to tick away.
29:41… 29:40…
On the far side of the battlefield, a squad draped in gray-blue cloaks moved methodically among the fallen.
They belonged to the logistics reconnaissance division of the Kingdom of Elarian, normally tasked with recovering wounded soldiers, recording casualties, and confirming the deaths of high-ranking officers.But today, their expressions were tense—their movements focused.They weren't searching randomly.They were hunting for someone.
"Here... This should be where the Third Prince fell," one soldier said quietly, kneeling beside a wide pool of darkened blood, his brows tightly knit.
"Where's the body?"
"…Gone."
The silence that followed was immediate—and heavy.
The squad leader's face darkened. Without a word, he pulled out a glowing communication crystal and sprinted toward the signal tower on the nearby ridge.
Meanwhile, deep within the heart of Elarian—in the royal capital of Starlore, within one of the high towers of the White Bloom Palace—a council of nobles was meeting in urgent session.
"You're telling me... Prince Eleres truly fell on the battlefield?" asked a silver-haired elder seated at the head of the obsidian roundtable. His voice was low, and his gaze sharp with unease.
"Confirmed," a younger noble replied. "His Fatebrand shattered. No life signs remain."
Before the weight of that declaration could settle, another councilman in a dark blue robe rose from his seat, a sealed dispatch in his hand.
"However," he said, his voice like a drawn blade, "a new report has just arrived. The prince's body... is missing."
The chamber fell silent.
Someone's expression twitched—barely—but they said nothing. They hid it well.
Moments later, a cold, unquestionable command echoed through the hall:
"Dead or alive—bring him back."
Eleres lay slumped at the mouth of a cave carved into the hillside, his body drenched in blood. Most of his wounds had gone numb, but the fire burning in his chest remained—searing, agonizing, and unrelenting.
Proof that he was still alive.Or rather, that he hadn't entirely died yet.
Just as his consciousness began to fray, the voice returned—cold, mechanical, utterly detached.
[Warning: Excessive death energy detected within the host's body. Vital integrity nearing collapse.][Assessment complete: Host's physical vessel is critically degraded and incapable of sustaining organic recovery.][Initiating forced class assignment protocol.][To ensure survival, a subclass has been bound—Necromancer.]
He didn't even have time to react before the voice continued, like a verdict from some long-dead god:
[Black Seal contingency activated.][Class assigned: Necromancer (Undying Path).][New directive unlocked: Sustain life by commanding the dead. Rebuild strength through undeath.]
Slowly, Eleres lowered his gaze.
The black sigil on his arm had begun to spread—writhing like a living serpent, crawling over his skin until it formed a ring of death-gray markings that sank into his flesh.He could feel it pulsing beneath the surface, as if his heartbeat now belonged to something else—something ancient and cold.
A forgotten power was awakening, not to consume him… but to accept him.
Now he understood.
His survival amidst a mountain of corpses had nothing to do with luck.
He no longer belonged to the world of the living.
"Repairing my body… with the dead?" he muttered.
A bitter smile touched his lips.
It was not the smile of surrender.It was the calm before the hunt.
He would tear apart the living world—with the hands of the dead.