Hero Of Broken History

The walk back through the mausoleum should have felt like victory. Souls freed, death mancer dead, promise kept. So why did Avian's teeth still ache?

He stopped at the entrance to the main chamber, that fishing-hook sensation pulling at his awareness again. Different this time. Not the wrongness of trapped souls - they were gone, finally at peace. This was something else. Something that made his instincts scream 'unfinished business.'

Fuck.

He turned back, studying the chamber with fresh eyes. The broken circles still glowed faintly, residual death magic dissipating like smoke. The dust that had been the mancer lay scattered where he'd collapsed. Everything looked final.

Too final. Too clean.

"Arrogant prick spent five hundred years building this," he muttered, moving back into the chamber. "No way he didn't have insurance."

The mancer had been charming, funny, completely confident even when fleeing. That wasn't the attitude of someone who thought they could actually die. That was someone who knew they had a backup plan.

Avian closed his eyes, extending his senses. Death magic left traces like oil on water - slick, wrong, persistent. The main chamber reeked of it, but underneath... there. A different flavor. Fresher. Leading deeper into the complex.

"Of course there's more. There's always fucking more."

He followed the trace through passages he hadn't explored during the chase. The mancer's domain was larger than he'd thought - chambers branching off chambers, some filled with preserved specimens, others with research notes in languages that predated the Empire.

The trail led to what looked like a dead end. Solid stone wall, no visible mechanisms. But the death magic stench was strongest here, and the stone itself felt wrong. Newer than the surrounding rock. Placed rather than carved.

"Cute." He pressed his palm against it, channeling gravity. "But I don't have patience for puzzles."

The false wall crumbled like dry cake, revealing a narrow passage beyond. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in three steps. Frost crunched under his boots despite the depth underground. His breath came out in visible puffs.

The hidden chamber was small, intimate. Personal in a way the main collection hadn't been. And in the center...

"Motherfucker."

A ritual circle, carved deep into the floor. But not just any circle - a Return Circle. The kind that could anchor a soul to a specific location, pull it back from death if you were willing to pay the price. The kind that was fucking illegal in every civilized nation because of what it did to the natural order.

This one was spent. Recently. Burn marks at the cardinal points, soul ash scattered in patterns that suggested violent activation. A cracked mana crystal lay in the center, drained of power but still humming with echoes.

Avian knelt beside it, reading the signs. The mancer hadn't tied his whole life force to those souls - just enough to make it convincing. The rest had been anchored here, waiting. When his body died, the fragment snapped back, reconstituted somewhere else.

"Clever bastard. Played dead while playing for keeps."

The walls were covered in notes. Not the neat script from the main chamber but frantic scrawls in necromantic shorthand. Observations, theories, revelations written in real-time. His eyes caught on specific phrases:

"Soul recognition despite physical transformation - implies continuity beyond death"

"Subject demonstrates memory persistence across incarnations"

"If death is not final, if souls return, then true immortality is not preservation but iteration"

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"The Commander lives. The Commander has always lived. How many times?"

More notes, growing increasingly excited. The mancer hadn't just seen him as an interesting specimen. He'd seen him as proof of concept. Evidence that death could be cheated not through undeath, but through return.

And at the bottom, carved deep into stone with power rather than tools:

"One death barely counts as an introduction, Commander. I'll be watching your miraculous iterations with great interest. Try not to die too soon - I have so many questions for our next meeting."

"Son of a bitch."

The mancer was out there. Somewhere. In a new body or his old one reconstituted, but alive. Probably already taking notes, making plans, preparing for round two. And now he knew Avian's secret - or at least part of it.

Avian stood slowly, fury building. Not hot rage but the cold kind that made smart decisions. The death mancer had tortured his soldiers for five centuries. Used their suffering for his convenience. And now he'd escaped real justice because Avian had been too focused on the emotional satisfaction of making him break his own spell.

"Should have been thorough. Should have checked for contingencies. Fucking amateur move."

But he'd been distracted by Tommy, by all those familiar faces finally finding peace. Let emotion override tactical thinking. The kind of mistake that got people killed.

Or in this case, let them get away.

He memorized the chamber - every note, every symbol, every trace of magical signature. Next time they met, he'd be ready. No more dramatic justice. Just thorough, complete elimination. The kind that involved burning every possible anchor, salting every potential return point, making sure death stuck.

The walk back to the surface felt longer. Dawn was breaking by the time he emerged, painting the cemetery in shades of gray and gold. The fog had lifted, leaving everything sharp and clear and somehow less honest than the shadows.

His soldiers were free. That hadn't changed. Five hundred years of torment ended, souls finally at rest. That was what mattered.

But the death mancer's escape left a bitter taste. Another enemy in the shadows, another threat that knew more than they should. And this one had seen his soul, recognized the impossibility of his existence.

"Watching my iterations," he muttered, heading back toward the inn. "We'll see who's watching who when I find you again."

The Silver Swan was just stirring when he arrived. Kitchen staff preparing breakfast, early-rising guests stumbling toward coffee. He slipped in through the back, hoping to reach his room without-

"Where have you been?"

Kai stood in their doorway, already dressed and looking deeply unamused. "You disappear in the middle of the night, leave me to explain to the innkeeper why my companion might be bleeding in an alley somewhere, and now you show up looking like you've been grave robbing?"

"Cemetery research," Avian said, pushing past him into the room.

"You smell like death magic and disappointment." Kai closed the door, studying him with those too-sharp eyes. "What really happened?"

Avian considered lying. Considered maintaining the facade of mysterious noble youth with hidden depths. But he was tired, and the death mancer's escape gnawed at him like a broken tooth.

"Found what was attracting the ghouls. Death mancer, collecting souls from the Demon War. Had to put him down."

"Had to," Kai repeated. "Alone. In the middle of the night. Because that's a completely normal Bronze-rank adventurer thing to do."

"It's handled."

"Is it?" Kai settled into a chair, not breaking eye contact. "Because you look like someone who handled most of something but not all of it. Like someone who won the fight but lost the war."

Too fucking perceptive for his own good.

"The mancer escaped," Avian admitted. "Had a contingency. Return Circle, soul fragment anchor. He's out there somewhere, probably already taking notes on our interaction."

"Our interaction. You mean where you revealed capabilities no twelve-year-old should have?"

"Something like that."

Kai was quiet for a moment, processing. Then: "This is going to come back to bite us, isn't it?"

"Probably."

"And you're going to hunt him down eventually."

"Definitely."

"Great. Wonderful. My investment in your success now includes death mancers with grudges." But Kai was smiling slightly. "At least you're consistent. Nothing about you is ever simple."

"You could always find a safer noble to follow around."

"Where's the profit in that?" Kai stood, stretching. "Besides, someone needs to watch your back while you're having midnight adventures. Next time, maybe mention the death mancer hunting before you go? I could have helped."

"Next time," Avian agreed, though they both knew he'd probably do the same thing again.

"Right. Well, since you're obviously not going to sleep, might as well get breakfast. You can tell me about this death mancer over food. I have a feeling he's going to be relevant to our future survival."