Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion

The pit was colder than he expected.

Not in temperature—no, the blood-slick floor steamed with the heat of torn bodies dragged off moments before—but cold in a way that reached deeper. In the stone. In the silence. In the air itself, thick with the memory of violence.

It was a place that remembered.

Every scream. Every broken jaw. Every death that wasn't quick or clean.

It remembered—and it welcomed him.

Renner stepped forward into the ring.

Bare-chested. Barefoot. No armor. Only the thinnest of black wrappings around his wrists and ankles, like a ritual garb from some forgotten order. His skin, pale as bone, shone beneath the flickering torchlight. Fresh bruises bloomed along his ribs. Blood crusted at the corners of one eye.

But he stood straight. Unbothered.

Above him, the crowd thundered.

This was not the Crucible. This was the pit beneath it—the place where champions were born or buried. There were no rules here. No names chanted in glory. Only cold-eyed spectators watching for a reason to forget the world above.

The announcer's voice rang out, cruel and giddy.

"This next match features the boy they call The Pale Slaughter! Let's see if the rumors bleed true!"

The crowd howled.

The gate across the pit groaned open.

Three fighters emerged.

They moved with a confidence that came from having killed before—men and women honed by the survival of ghe slums, shaped by its lawless hunger. And yet… not one of them could mask the way they studied him.

Not fear, not yet. But wariness. A discomfort they didn't understand.

Renner didn't move yet.

He watched.

The first to his left was a brute. Thick arms, thicker neck. Missing fingers on his dominant hand. Carried a rusted axe nearly as tall as himself. Powerful, but predictable.

The center—a wiry woman with short hair and knives glinting at either hip. Her feet shifted constantly. Fast, twitchy. An opener. She'd test his reflexes, bleed him slow if she could.

The third—older. Weathered face, ritual scars. He wore the tattered blue-and-gold of the fallen Sanctum, and his glaive was etched with old prayers. A war-cleric. Dangerous. Disciplined.

They were seasoned killers.

But he wasn't like them.

Renner tilted his head, listening to something only he could hear. Something beneath the crowd, beneath the surface.

And then, without warning—

They charged.

The twin-blade woman came first, blades flashing in opposite arcs toward his neck and thigh. Fast. Efficient.

He didn't flinch.

At the last instant, he moved. Not away—but in.

His hand shot forward, caught her wrist mid-swing. The other blade sliced across his ribs—blood sprayed, but shallow. His grip tightened. Bone cracked.

She screamed.

He dragged her forward and slammed his elbow into her jaw—once, twice—until her eyes rolled back and her body crumpled.

The brute came next.

Slowed by instinct, by shock.

Too late.

Renner let the woman fall in the brute's path. He hesitated, misjudging the step. That was all it took.

Renner surged low under the swing of the axe and burst upward inside the man's reach.

One palm pressed to the brute's chest.

He whispered something.

"Die."

And jammed his fingers into the man's eye.

The scream tore out of the giant like a dying bear.

Renner twisted, yanked down, and crushed the man's throat with a clean elbow. His body folded to the floor, twitching.

The crowd erupted.

But Renner didn't raise his arms or roar in triumph.

He just turned.

To the last.

The cleric hadn't moved. Not one step.

He stood at the edge of the ring like a grave marker, one hand raised in a solemn gesture, the other gripping his glaive.

"I know what you are," the cleric said, his voice like gravel ground under boot. "The mark is on you."

Renner's pale eyes flicked upward.

"You serve the same thing that shattered the Sanctum," the cleric continued. "I watched it happen. The black flame. The city on its knees. I saw the sun turn."

Another step.

"I was there when the Last Arch fell. When our gods wept. You are the shadow that crawled out of that wound."

Silence stretched between them.

Renner spoke, low and quiet.

"I am no one's shadow."

Then he moved.

Faster than thought.

Faster than human.

He was a blur—dust kicked, blood trailing behind like a whisper.

The glaive came down in a sharp arc—but he was already past it. A fist drove into the cleric's ribs. A knee cracked against the thigh. An open palm struck the throat. Bone shattered.

Still, the cleric stood.

Still, he swung.

A shallow cut opened across Renner's chest.

He didn't even blink.

"You call them gods," Renner whispered, circling now. "But they left you to burn."

The glaive came again—this time slower. Sloppy.

Renner caught the haft, spun, and drove it back—hard—into the cleric's temple.

A sickening crack.

The weapon dropped. The old man fell to one knee.

Blood dripped from his mouth as he looked up.

"I stood for something," he rasped.

Renner placed one hand on the top of the man's skull.

The other under his chin.

"So did I," he said softly.

And pulled.

The snap echoed.

The body fell.

Dead.

The pit froze.

One breath. Two.

Then the eruption.

The crowd became thunder. Fists slammed stone railings. Chains rattled. Dust shook loose from the rafters. Above it all, a name echoed—screamed—smeared across a thousand mouths.

"Slaughter! Slaughter! Slaughter!"

Renner stood in the center, drenched in blood, still breathing hard.

He didn't smile.

He only closed his eyes.

And saw him.

Ian.

The Demonblade. The Sovereign. The Whisperer of Death.

The man who had risen from nothing and made the city kneel.

Renner opened his eyes.

He wasn't afraid of Ian.

He pitied him.

Because Ian still clung to purpose. To memory. To the idea of control.

Renner had none of those things left.

Only the spiral burned into his back.

Only the voice that whispered beneath his thoughts.

Only the truth.

He was becoming something more.

And when he stepped into the Crucible next—

He would not just kill a legend.

He would end the myth.

Forever.