All Chapters of The Necromancer’s Game: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
26 chapters
The Blood Covenant
Dawn crawled slowly across Veilmoor’s ruins, reluctant and pale, as if even the sun feared to touch what the night had become.Draven sat at the edge of the shattered square where the Queen of Ashes had fallen. The spectral glow had faded, leaving behind only dust and silence. The air smelled of iron and burnt magic. His hands still trembled, though not from weakness — from the echo of power that refused to die inside him.Lucen hovered near the fountain, faint light flickering in and out. “You’ve been quiet for too long,” he said. “That’s never a good sign.”Draven didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the mark on his chest. It pulsed faintly now, but with a second rhythm — something alien threaded through it, something old. The Queen’s magic hadn’t just touched him. It had fused with the Reaper’s brand.Seren stirred beside him, clutching her arm where the invisible chains had bitten into her skin. “Whatever she did, it’s still in you.”He finally looked up. “She was right about one
The Shattered Gate
The fall into the next realm felt nothing like the others.No spinning void. No twisting corridors of shadow. No whispers clawing into his mind.Just silence—vast, absolute silence—as if the world itself were holding its breath.Then the ground rushed up beneath them.Draven landed hard on stone, instinct breaking the impact. Seren stumbled beside him with a curse. Lucen flickered into existence a heartbeat later, light sputtering as if the air itself resisted him.The sky above them was not a sky at all—just a gray, endless expanse, cracked like shattered glass. Every fracture pulsed faint blue, leaking what looked like… starlight.Seren whispered, “Where are we?”Draven rose slowly, staring at the landscape.Miles of stone ruins stretched in every direction, swallowed by fog. Statues of forgotten kings lay toppled. Towers once tall enough to kiss the heavens now stood snapped in half. Broken bridges hung suspended in midair, held by threads of impossible magic.Aetheris.He could fe
The Memory That Bleeds
Darkness swallowed Draven whole.Not the emptiness of the void he had fallen through before—this was denser, heavier. A darkness made of feeling, thick with memory and grief. It clung to his skin, pulled at his bones, whispered along the shell of his mind.When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t in Aetheris anymore.He was standing inside a sunlit courtyard.Warm wind danced through flowering vines. Gold banners fluttered from high balconies. People laughed in the distance. The scent of fresh bread drifted on the air.Draven’s throat tightened.This was the palace garden of Solenhold. His home. Before everything went wrong.He took one step—and the world trembled, settling into place like a storybook that had been waiting for him to open it.Behind him, the gate he’d fallen through shimmered faintly, now nothing more than a tall mirror resting against a hedge. His reflection stared back—not the scarred man he was today, but the version the mirror wanted him to be.A man who hadn’t yet tast
The Hunt That Should Not Exist
Night draped itself over Veilmoor like a shroud, heavy and breathless, as Draven pushed deeper into the ruined district. The air was colder here—thin, strained, like the city itself was trying not to breathe.Lysandra walked beside him, unusually quiet, her senses sharp. Behind them, Aric kept turning his head, eyes narrowing at shadows that twitched without wind.The city wasn’t sleeping.It was watching.“Three necromancers,” Lysandra murmured, her hand brushing the hilt of her curved blade. “All bearing Death’s mark. And all playing the same game as you.”Draven scoffed. “Death always hated being bored.”But even as he said it, something gnawed at him. A question he had been avoiding ever since he rose from the coffin:Why him? Why again? Why now?He didn’t ask it aloud. Every time he thought about Death’s voice—the amused cruelty, the way it curled around his spine—something inside him twisted.He wasn’t ready for the answer.They reached the shattered gate of the Blackwater Court
Death’s Truth
Silence swallowed the courtyard as the figure approached. Not just silence—absence. A stillness so complete that even the fog froze around them, suspended like glass dust.Death did not walk. He arrived, existence bending to make room for him.Draven could not breathe.He faced the one being he once served… the one who had ended him… the one who had brought him back.Death’s eyes—dark, depthless, unreadable—rested on him with a quiet fondness that made Draven’s skin crawl.“Hello, my favorite disappointment,” Death murmured.Lysandra stepped forward immediately, blade half-drawn. “Don’t come closer.”Death didn’t even look at her. He did not need to.Her blade trembled in her grip, refusing to leave its sheath.Aric backed up behind a half-crumbled column, heart pounding so loudly Draven could hear it.The rival necromancers lowered their gazes, forced into a wordless bow by the weight of Death’s presence.Draven alone stood unmoving—the only one who dared to meet Death’s eyes.And De
The Echo of Who He Was
Draven didn’t hit the ground.He simply kept falling, suspended between worlds—weightless, breathless, swallowed by a darkness that felt ancient, patient, and terribly aware of him.The abyss around him pulsed like a living heart. Not hostile. Not welcoming. Just… watching.This isn’t death, he thought. This is memory.Whispers drifted through the black, drifting like smoke.“Draven Kaine…” “The Empire’s monster…” “The boy who never should have lived…”He reached for his magic, but his power felt muffled—as though the darkness didn’t want him to use it.Then a faint glow formed below him.A floor. A room. A memory.He landed gently.And the world snapped into shape around him like shattering glass.A small chamber. Stone walls. A single torch flickering in the corner.He recognized it instantly.The Imperial Apprentices’ Hall.Where he had trained when he was thirteen.Draven’s chest tightened. “Why bring me here?”A voice behind him answered.“Because this is where you began.”Draven
The Hidden God
The darkness peeled open like a great curtain, revealing the vast shape that waited beyond it.Draven felt the air thin.Not from fear.From recognition.He didn’t know this being… yet something in him responded, like an old scar aching before rain.The colossal silhouette leaned forward. Its form shifted—sometimes human, sometimes monstrous, sometimes nothing at all. A presence older than Death himself.Death stood beside Draven—not as a master, not as an enemy, but as a silent witness. And for the first time, Draven sensed it…Death was afraid of this thing.The being’s voice rolled through the abyss, calm and terrible.“You wonder who I am.”Draven forced his voice steady. “Tell me.”Its shape rippled.“I am the one who forged Death’s crown. The one who built the first Veil. The one who wrote the laws your world has forgotten.”Draven’s pulse hammered. A name formed on his tongue—one whispered only in forbidden texts.“The Architect,” he breathed.The being seemed almost amused. “Y
The Future That Should Not Exist
Draven didn’t fall into darkness this time.He fell into light—blinding, white, merciless.The world slammed around him all at once. Not like a memory. Not like a dream. Like a reality that had already happened… yet hadn’t.Wind tore at his cloak. Ash clung to his skin. And when he opened his eyes——he stood on the ruins of Veilmoor.The city was unrecognizable.No mist. No necromancers. No walls. Everything had collapsed into jagged stone and silent dust, as though the city had aged a thousand years in a single night.“Where… is everyone?” Draven whispered.The wind answered, rattling through the skeletons of broken towers.This is not memory, he thought. This is prophecy.A voice spoke behind him.“You arrive sooner than expected.”Draven turned sharply.A figure walked out from the ruins—long coat torn, boots armored, sword slung across his back. His hair darker. His eyes colder.His face brutally familiar.Draven froze.It was him.An older version of himself—maybe ten years ahead
Returned to the Living
Draven jolted upward with a sharp gasp.The void vanished. The ruins, the future, the Architect’s shadow—all gone.Cold air hit his lungs first. Then stone beneath his palms. Then the tremor of someone gripping his shoulders.“Draven—look at me.”The voice was warm, breathless, trembling.Eira.His vision swam, resolving into her face hovering over him—eyes wide with fear, hands cupping his jaw as though anchoring him to the world.He blinked hard, breath ragged. “Eira…?”Relief washed over her so intensely it almost hurt to see. “You were gone—you stopped breathing—Draven, what happened?”He couldn’t answer at first.His mind still hung between worlds. The Architect’s voice still echoed in his bones. And the memory of the future—that broken, empty Draven—still clung to him like frost.He squeezed his eyes shut.Eira touched his forehead gently. “You’re burning.”“No,” he whispered. “I’m remembering.”Her brows knit, confusion flickering across her face, but she didn’t push. Eira neve
Into the Hollow Crypts
The entrance to the Hollow Crypts yawned before them like the mouth of an ancient beast—jagged stone teeth, breath cold enough to sting their skin.Draven stood at the threshold, a torch in one hand, the other wrapped tightly around the hilt of a blade he rarely used. Magic was his strength, but in this place, magic was unreliable. The Crypts fed on it—twisted it—returned it broken.Behind him, Eira adjusted the strap of her satchel, determination simmering in her eyes. Lysandra stood beside her, sword drawn, posture poised and predatory. Aric lingered a step back, hands shaking slightly, but refusing to turn away.The wind rattled through the dead trees around the entrance, carrying a faint whisper that brushed against Draven’s ear.Turn back.He ignored it.The torches hanging near the crypt entrance flickered to life the moment he stepped forward, igniting in a spiral of ghostly blue flame. The ground trembled as though waking from centuries of sleep.Lysandra muttered under her br