The dreams were getting worse.
Not the kind that left you sweating or screaming—no, these were worse because they felt real. Too real. Vivid in ways that memory couldn't explain. A battlefield under a violet sky. Shadows carved from bone. And in the distance, a figure in black robes, eyes like dying stars, whispering something in a language I shouldn't understand.
Come home, Scion.
I woke with a start, pulse hammering. My ring pulsed once—faintly—then settled.
I hadn't told Arielle about the dreams. Not yet.
Not when I wasn't sure they were dreams at all.
The day after Darrin's memorial, the air in Manhattan felt thinner. The guild compound was on lockdown, the streets were buzzing with Watch drones, and the mana in the atmosphere had spiked to measurable levels.
Word was spreading.
Not just about me.
About the dungeon.
"Did you hear what came out of AX-33?"
"They say a warden-tier boss broke containment."
"No—someone summoned it. A necromancer. From the old blood."
Old blood.
I didn't know how they even came up with that, but it stuck.
Reema and Roland kept me off the guild roster for now, which was probably a good thing. I wasn't ready to answer questions I didn't have answers to.
Instead, I spent the day doing what I did best:
Watching. Listening. Studying the world I was now part of.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: STATUS WINDOW OPEN]
Name: Elijah Voss
Rank: F (Awakened)
Class: Necromancer – Ancient Variant
Title: Scion of Bone
Mana: 450/450
HP: 270
STR: 11
AGI: 12
INT: 24
WIS: 30
CHA: 8
Summon Slots: 10
Sacred Ground Access: [Purgatory – Level 1]
Signature Summons: [Ashbourne – Awakened]
Triad Sigil Progress: 1 / 3 Active
Every time I looked at the window, it felt a little more alive. Like it wasn't just information—it was watching me back.
That night, Purgatory changed.
Within Purgatory
When I entered the sacred ground, the edges had shifted again.
More land.
New ruins.
A hallway of half-formed doors spiraling away into a place that hadn't existed the day before.
Ashbourne stood near the center, his scythe resting against his shoulder.
Ashbourne:It grows with you.
Purgatory?
Ashbourne:The more you remember who you are, the more it remembers what it was.
That unsettled me.
What was it?
But Ashbourne didn't answer. He turned his head toward the western edge of the growing realm.
A low pulse echoed from that direction.
Ashbourne:Something has breached the outer veil.
What does that mean?
Ashbourne:You are not the only one listening now.
I woke to find a letter slid under my apartment door.
No signature. No wax seal.
Just three words scrawled on parchment too old for this century:
"He walks again."
No return address.
No explanation.
No sender.
Arielle arrived ten minutes later, still in her support bands, silver streaks glowing against her skin like veins of light.
"You're not going to like this," she said.
"Too late."
She handed me a tablet. "Read it."
The screen lit up to display a restricted report stamped with the seal of the Council of Ascendancy—the global governing authority that controlled guild licensing, dungeon allocations, and high-tier Ranker permissions.
It also controlled information.
The report detailed a dungeon collapse in the outer regions of Algeria. Entire guild wiped. Rift fluctuations off the charts. But that wasn't the headline.
It was the signature.
Mana traces matched only one known source.
Class: Necromancer.
Variant: Null
I stared at the screen.
"This… this shouldn't exist."
"It doesn't," Arielle said quietly. "According to the Council, all necromancers—true necromancers—were purged in the first century after the Surge."
"Purged?"
She nodded. "Outlawed. Feared. Anyone with the class was hunted. Executed or absorbed."
"But why?"
She hesitated. "Because they didn't follow system rules. They grew in ways the system couldn't contain."
Because they were like me.
I looked again at the report.
No name.
Just one chilling line:
Subject believed to be the reanimated form of "Maledictus the Hollow."
Status: Undead.
Target: Global.
That name meant nothing to me.
But it meant something to Purgatory.
That night, when I descended into the realm again, the second book on the pedestal had changed.
Its lock had cracked.
A single word now glowed on the cover:
Maledictus.
Ashbourne waited near it, his form more vivid than before. More… solid.
Ashbourne:The name is forbidden. The soul behind it more so.
He's alive?
Ashbourne:No.
He's dead?
Ashbourne:No.
Great. Really narrowing it down.
What is he?
Ashbourne turned, and for the first time, I saw uncertainty.
Ashbourne:He was the last who tried to bend Purgatory to his will. Before you. He failed.
And now?
Ashbourne:Now he walks without flesh. His bones belong to no realm. His mind, fractured.
The thought made me cold.
And you think he knows about me?
Ashbourne:He will.
Outside Purgatory, things weren't much better.
News was spreading fast. The Council had issued a temporary containment protocol across every dungeon in North America. Field guilds were scrambling. The Watch was locking down zones near surge rifts.
And the media?
They were having a field day.
"Unknown Ranker saves team from dungeon collapse."
"Unranked becomes F-rank with forbidden class."
"Is necromancy returning?"
People were scared.
Not of me specifically—but of what I represented.
A power the system didn't control.
A bloodline they thought was buried.
Later that week, I was summoned to Roland's office again. This time, alone.
He didn't make me wait.
"You're not the first necromancer I've seen," he said.
That caught me off guard.
"You knew?"
"I suspected. Most of them didn't last. The world doesn't make room for your kind."
"And yet here I am."
He leaned back in his chair, studying me like a puzzle.
"You've got something more than the others. Something ancient. Your mana reads like a fossil."
"Thanks?"
He didn't smile. "The Council's already watching you. They'll send someone soon."
"Who?"
"A Tier Agent. Maybe a Herald. Someone sanctioned to deal with system anomalies."
"So I'm an anomaly now."
"You were always an anomaly," he said. "But now you're a public one."
I frowned. "Why are you warning me?"
Roland stood and walked to the window, overlooking the city skyline—jagged, scarred, but alive.
"Because you're still one of us. For now."
That night, I found something new in Purgatory.
A door.
Carved into a mountain that hadn't been there the day before.
And on its surface—three sigils.
One I recognized: mine.
One still dormant.
And one… glowing with a black light I couldn't name.
Ashbourne stood beside me, silent.
Ashbourne:The doors will open in time.
What's behind them?
Ashbourne:Not what. Who.
I turned to him.
And when they do?
Ashbourne:The war begins.