Chapter 128: The necromancer
Rhys’s small army of Vindicators had been left behind, a final, disposable barrier to buy them time. He could feel their connections being snuffed out one by one as the horde outside overwhelmed them.
He held Emma’s hand, his grip firm.
"Stay close," he said, his voice a low whisper that was loud in the dead quiet.
The inside of the castle was a maze of crumbling corridors and vast, empty halls. Moonlight streamed in through high, shattered windows, illuminating thick cobwebs that hung like funeral shrouds and piles of rubble that blocked their path.
The silence was unnerving. They were in the lair of the puppet master, yet there were no undeads, no traps, only dust and decay.
"The crypts are below the main hall," Emma whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
"That way." She pointed down a wide, dark staircase that led deeper into the earth.
Rhys nodded. He took the lead, his feet making no sound on the stone steps. Every instinct in his body was on high alert. He could feel the malevolent will that controlled the city.
It was not attacking them. It was watching them. It was luring them deeper.
They descended the stairs, the air growing colder and damper with every step. The staircase opened into a vast, circular chamber.
The ceiling was so high it was lost in shadow. The floor was made of polished black stone, and in the center of the room, on a raised dais, stood a single, massive stone throne.
But it was not the throne that caught their attention. It was the man sitting on it.
He was chained to the throne.
The chains were not made of iron. They were thick, heavy bands of a strange, golden light that pulsed with a faint, divine energy.
They were wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, and his chest, binding him completely to the cold stone.
The man himself was un moving. He was little more than a shriveled corpse, his skin like dry, cracked leather stretched tight over a skeletal frame.
A few thin strands of long, white hair clung to his scalp. His eyes were closed, and he looked as if he had been sitting there, dead, for a thousand years.
Rhys and Emma stopped at the entrance to the chamber, stunned into silence.
They had expected a monster, a Lich King, a vengeful spirit. They had not expected this.
A prisoner.
This was the source of the immense, evil will they had felt. This was the puppet master of the entire city of the dead.
And he was trapped.
As if sensing their presence, the man’s eyelids fluttered, then slowly opened. His eyes were not the empty, glowing blue sockets of the undead.
They were sharp, intelligent, and they burned with a cold, malevolent light.
He looked at them, not with the mindless hunger of his puppets, but with the ancient, weary gaze of a being who had been waiting for a very long time.
"So," the man’s voice was a dry, raspy whisper, like the sound of dead leaves skittering across stone. "Visitors. It has been a long time."
Rhys pushed Emma slightly behind him, his hand on his sword. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice steady.
A dry, crackling sound that might have been a laugh came from the chained man’s throat.
"I have had many names," he rasped. "But you may call me the Warden. For that is what I have become. The unwilling guardian of this forgotten place."
He was the necromancer. He was the master of the undead army. The pieces did not fit.
"You control them," Rhys stated, gesturing vaguely towards the world outside. "The dead. Why?"
"They are my jailers," the Warden said, a flicker of ancient anger in his eyes.
"And my tools. They rise to stop any who would seek the prize I was denied."
He looked past them, his gaze fixed on a massive, stone door at the back of the chamber, a door covered in the same glowing, golden runes as his chains.
"The portal."
"You know of the portal?" Emma asked.
"Know of it, little princess of a fallen house?" the Warden’s lips pulled back in a lipless grin.
"I am the reason it is guarded. I was like you, once. A seeker of forbidden knowledge, a defier of the gods. I found this place. I found this backdoor to the universe. I sought to use it to escape the laws of this world, to ascend on my own terms."
He looked down at his golden chains, his voice turning bitter.
"But the so-called ’God of Karma’ had other plans. The fundamental law of this world, it is a jealous and petty thing. It could not allow such a transgression.
It could not destroy me, for my power is tied to the very concept of death, a force it cannot unmake. So instead, it imprisoned me.
It bound me to this throne with its divine law and gave me a single, eternal task: to guard this portal. To stop anyone else from using the path I had found."
Rhys listened, a cold understanding dawning on him. The undead army was not an act of aggression. It was a security system, an automated defense protocol.
"The portal does not just lead to the Unclaimed Territories, does it?" Rhys asked, his mind piecing together the information Emma had given him.
The Warden’s eyes glinted with a sharp, intelligent light.
"You are more perceptive than the others," he said.
"No. The Unclaimed Territories are just the antechamber. This portal is a relic from a time before the Seal was created. It is a tear in reality that the Seal was built around.
With the right knowledge, the right key, it can lead you through the Seal, to the world’s beyond. It is the only true escape from this cage."
Emma gasped. Her mother’s research had been real. The key existed.
The Warden was quiet for a moment, his ancient eyes studying Rhys with a new intensity.
"I am tired," he whispered, his voice full of a weariness that was a thousand years deep.
"I am tired of this endless duty. I am tired of this prison of bone and dust. I see in you a power that is not of this world. A power that might be strong enough to break these chains."
He looked directly at Rhys, and for the first time, Rhys saw a flicker of something that was not malice.
It was a desperate, pleading hope.
"I will make you a deal, outsider," the Warden said, his voice a tempting whisper.
"I will tell you everything. I will tell you the true nature of the God of Karma. I will tell you the real history of the Seal, the truth of the ancient war that created it.
I will give you the key to navigating the portal, the knowledge your little princess’s mother died trying to find. I will give you all the secrets of this world. In return, you will do one thing for me."
"What?" Rhys asked, his voice a low rumble.
"You will break these chains," the Warden said, his voice full of a desperate longing.
"And you will grant me the one thing I have craved for a thousand years. You will end my suffering. You will kill me."
Rhys looked at the chained necromancer. The offer was a monumental one.
The secrets of the universe, in exchange for a single act of mercy. He looked at Emma.
Her eyes were wide, a silent plea for him to accept. This was the answer to all her questions, the key to her freedom.
"I will listen," Rhys said finally.
And so, the Warden began to speak. He told them of a time before the great sects, before the Tianlong Empire.
He spoke of a cosmic war, a battle between gods of Light and Void that had shattered the heavens. He told them that their world had been on the losing side.
"The God of Karma," he explained, "is not a god. It is a law. A system of cosmic balance created by the victors of that war. It is an immune system for the universe.
Beings like me, who defy the natural order, beings like you, who carry a karmic debt too great to be measured... we are a disease. And the system’s only purpose is to contain or purge us."
"And the Seal?" Emma asked.
"The Seal is not a prison," the Warden rasped.
"It is a quarantine. This entire world was sealed off after the war. Not to trap something in, but to protect the rest of the universe from the lingering corruption of the defeated gods.
The ’feeding’, the sacrifice of your young disciples, is a desperate, crude measure to keep the quarantine field powered."
Rhys felt a profound, world-altering shift in his understanding. He was not just an outcast from a small province.
He was a citizen of a quarantined world, a prisoner in a cage he had never known existed.
"And the portal?" Rhys asked, his voice tight.
"It is the flaw in the system," the Warden said, a triumphant glint in his eyes.
"The one way out. My research was almost complete. I found the runes, the incantations needed to navigate the pathways beyond the Unclaimed Territories.
I will give them to you. The path to the other side of the Seal. The path to true freedom."
He finished his story. The vast, dark chamber was silent once more. The Warden looked at Rhys, his ancient eyes full of a desperate expectation.
"I have told you everything," he whispered. "Now, as we agreed. Free me. Break these chains and end my suffering."
Rhys looked at the Warden. He looked at the glowing golden chains that bound him to the throne. He understood now.
The chains were not just a physical restraint. They were a conceptual lock, a piece of the universal law, the will of the God of Karma made manifest.
To break them would not just be an act of destruction; it would be an act of defiance against the very order of their world.
He also looked at the man himself.
A being of immense evil, a necromancer who had tried to break the fundamental laws of the universe for his own selfish gain.
If freed, he would be a plague upon any world he entered.
Emma looked at Rhys, her face pale, her heart pounding. She did not know what he would do. She saw the cold, calculating light in his eyes.
Rhys raised his hand.
The Warden’s eyes lit up with a final, hopeful gleam.
But the hand that Rhys raised was not aimed at the chains. It was aimed at the Warden himself.
The small, thin blade of the Twilight Edge, a silent construct of pure blackness, formed in his palm.
The Warden’s hopeful expression turned to one of utter disbelief, then to a final, sputtering rage.
"You dare betray our pact?" he shrieked, his voice a thin, reedy sound.
"You would leave me to this eternal torment?"
"You are a threat," Rhys said, his voice flat and devoid of all emotion.
"Your purpose, given to you by a power far greater than my own, is to guard this portal. I will not unleash you upon the world."
He paused, a flicker of something that might have been cold pity in his eyes.
"But I will grant your wish."
He flicked his wrist.
The shadow blade shot forward. It did not make a sound as it cut through the air. It touched the Warden’s forehead.
There was no sound of impact. There was no blood. There was only a brilliant, silent flash of pure white light that erupted from the ancient necromancer’s head.
When the light faded, the Warden’s body slumped forward, limp and lifeless, still bound to the throne by the golden chains.
His eyes were still open, but the malevolent blue light was gone, all thought and suffering erased from them forever.
The moment the Warden died, a deep, collective groan echoed from the city outside.
Then, silence.
The undead army, their master gone, had collapsed into lifeless piles of bone and dust.
Rhys and Elara were left alone in the silent chamber.
The portal, the door to the Unclaimed Territories and the worlds beyond, was now unguarded, waiting for them.