Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 111: A Man Who’s Forgot How To Fear

"It’s not severed," Ian said coldly, eyes narrowed. "It’s hunting."

They all stared down at the thing beside the path. At first glance, it looked like a dismembered hand.

Human. Pale. Unmoving.

But the fingers twitched again, spasmodic and searching, not random.

They weren’t flinching. Not exactly.

They were reaching. Blindly. Slowly.

As if tasting the air for warmth. For movement. For life.

For them.

Ian moved past it cautiously, coat brushing the stone.

The hand twitched harder.

It brushed his coat.

And then it moaned.

Not from a mouth.

From the nails.

A soft keening, like bone being dragged across glass, barely audible—but everyone heard it.

No one spoke.

They didn’t need to.

---

Beyond the cliff lay a field of statues.

Hundreds of them.

Men. Women. Children.

All shapes, all ages. All frozen mid-motion.

All sculpted in the throes of finality.

They stood in ragged clusters, some alone, others huddled together, reaching out to loved ones who had already turned to stone.

Every one of them bore the expression of someone who had seen too much—eyes stretched wide, mouths open in soundless screams, faces contorted in terror.

One man looked skyward, hands raised—not in prayer, but denial.

A woman clutched her child, face buried in its shoulder. freēwēbnovel.com

The child stared straight ahead, unblinking.

Selene stepped forward, hesitant. "Are these—"

"Don’t touch them," Ian said. His voice was iron. "Don’t speak near them. Just walk."

"But are they—"

"Not statues," he said. "Not really."

Loras glanced at one figure frozen mid-run, his legs half-sunk into the ground. "Then what are they?"

Ian walked forward, his shadow stretching behind him.

"More memories," he murmured. "Memories of flesh. Or what’s left of it."

He passed one that looked like a child. A boy. His hands clutched his face, mouth twisted in horror. His eyes—

Too real.

Too wet.

They gleamed in the darkness. Watching.

Ian did not look back. He didn’t need to.

He had seen this before. In the old texts Elise brought. The forbidden scrolls of the southern necropolises.

They had a name.

Votive Remnants.

The Reach fed on memory. It devoured fear. When that fear became too rich, too thick—when it drowned the soul completely—it shaped the remains.

It did not leave behind corpses.

It did not grant ghosts.

It forged monuments.

Living tombs of dread.

They walked carefully, feet soft against the ground, disturbing no dust. Not even a whisper among them.

The further they went, the tighter the air became.

Halfway through the field, Selene stopped.

She was staring at one of the statues. Rigid. Pale.

Ian followed her gaze.

And then he saw it.

It was her.

Same hair. Same face. The cheekbones, the curve of her jaw. But aged. Hardened. Scarred.

She knelt in the dirt, arms raised toward the sky, mouth stretched in a scream of such raw pain it transcended sound.

Frozen.

Forever.

"No," Selene whispered, stumbling back. Her breath caught, shallow and panicked. "No, no, no, what is this—what is this?!"

Ian turned, voice sharp. "Look away. Now."

"I don’t—how—"

"You’re seeing a possible future," he said, his voice lower now, calmer. "The Reach is showing you what it wants. What it feeds on. Don’t let it in."

But it was already too late.

The orb dimmed.

The darkness grew teeth.

From the edges of the field, where vision blurred and forms lost their meaning, things began to stir.

Not the statues.

Something behind them.

Not fully visible. Not entirely real.

Just impressions.

Of limbs. Of teeth. Of skinless wings and void-gaping maws.

The kind of shapes the eye wasn’t built to see.

Ian stiffened. Cold whispers coiled in his skull, slithering behind his thoughts.

They couldn’t touch the body.

But they could stir the soul.

Loras began muttering under his breath.

A prayer. Church language.

Ian’s eyes flicked toward him.

Sanctum dialect.

A follower?

Maybe.

A heretic?

Unlikely.

Selene backed into Ian, trembling. "We need to leave. Now."

They obeyed.

They exited the field as quickly and quietly as they could.

But the statues never stopped watching.

---

Beyond the field, the path bent downward—into a tunnel.

It wasn’t carved from stone.

It was flesh.

The walls pulsed gently.

Veined. Wet. Warm.

They glistened as if oiled from within, dripping with some clear fluid that hissed when it struck the ground.

Every breath inside echoed like it passed through lungs.

The rhythm beat—not like a heart, but like something pretending to have one.

No one spoke.

Even their footsteps changed.

Quieter. Fearful.

Selene began to weep. No sobs. Just tears running down her face, as if summoned by the tunnel itself.

She didn’t know why.

None of them did.

The tunnel ended in a chamber.

Narrow. Suffocating.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were lined with mouths.

Toothless.

Wide.

Whispering.

Endlessly.

Nonsense syllables, drifting like smoke.

Until Ian entered.

Then they screamed.

"D̸̨́̐Ő̸̰̐ ̴͇̄̈́͜Ń̵͚̲O̵̟̐Ṯ̷̀̿ ̸̤͎̐̿R̶̢̛̀E̸͇͛̈M̸͖͎̓̈́E̵̟͠M̸̱̌̈B̶͇̉͘E̵͚͛͌R̴̰͌͝ ̷̯́Ḣ̶̩̜̽I̷̘̩̓M̴̪̗̔—"

He didn’t flinch.

He walked.

They screamed louder.

"̸F̶̙̔͜͝O̸̢̯͛R̵̡͇̿G̵̹͈͋̿Ë̸͕͙́̈́T̷̘̓ ̴͙̱͋H̷͕̫̋͝Ḯ̶̹̈́M̸̘̤̓͌ ̷̝̚W̸̼͍̓̐H̴͚͚̓Ò̷̻͘ ̴͚̓͘W̷̯̚͝A̵͚͊̏L̴̲͛̊Ḱ̷͓̎S̵̢̓̚ ̷̠̓B̶̼̳̈́E̵̲̒T̷̻́W̶͇̬̍Ę̷̤́Ḛ̷̳̍N̶̰̏͠—"

Ian stopped.

Inhaled.

Exhaled.

And said quietly:

"I’m not here to be remembered."

The mouths fell silent.

One by one.

Then all at once.

---

Later, when the darkness thinned—no sunrise, but something like it—they stopped to rest.

A moment of stillness.

Selene sat apart, hugging her knees, staring into space.

Dain cleaned his blade for the tenth time. It had never left its sheath.

Loras whispered to himself. Words meant only for the gods, or for madness—a bargain for his sanity.

Ian leaned against the cold stone and looked upward.

He could feel it.

The thing above.

Still watching.

Still waiting.

But it wouldn’t come tonight.

Not while the Reach still weighed him.

Not while the mouths still remembered.

And far below them, beneath the crust of the world, the voice returned.

The one that had whispered his name first.

"He remembers you, Ian.""

"And he is waiting."

Ian didn’t blink.

Didn’t smile.

He just said, low and steady:

"I’m looking forward to it."

The voice of a man who had forgotten how to fear.