The Necromancer King

The King In The Dark

Kane ran until the sound of the knights faded behind him.

He stopped in the middle of the dark forest, bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. No boots behind him. No torches cutting through the trees. Just rain and wind and silence.

He straightened up and looked at the blue box still glowing in his vision.

NECROMANCER KING SYSTEM

Power Level: 1 of 100

Active Undead: 2 of 3

Mission: Survive 24 hours- IN PROGRESS

Two soldiers left. The fire had taken one at the cemetery gate.

He pressed his back against a tree and tried to think clearly. By morning his face would be on every church door in Valdris City. The Silver Order never stopped hunting. He had no food. No money. No shelter. Just two skeleton soldiers standing silently behind him in the rain and a power he never asked for and did not understand.

He closed his eyes.

Then a voice spoke from somewhere inside his own head.

It was not his voice. It was deep and calm and carried the weight of someone who had not been in a hurry for a very long time.

"You survived. I will admit that surprised me."

Kane spun around fast. Nothing behind him but trees and darkness.

"I am not out there," the voice said. "I am inside you. Stop looking around."

Kane pressed two fingers against the side of his head. "Who are you."

"My name is Malachar."

The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. Kane knew it. Everyone in Valdris knew it. The Church put it in every warning and every sermon. The dark king. The great evil. The name mothers used to make children behave.

"You are dead," Kane said.

"Yes," Malachar agreed. "And yet here we are."

Kane opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked at his two skeletal soldiers standing in the rain, patient and still, purple fire burning in their hollow eyes. Nothing about this night made any sense at all.

"Why are you in my head," he said.

"Because you carry my power in your blood," Malachar said. "You woke it tonight at the cemetery. When it woke, I woke with it."

"What do you want from me."

A short silence passed between them.

"Revenge," Malachar said simply.

Kane frowned. "Revenge against who."

"That is not something you need to know right now."

"You are living inside my head and you want me to help you and you will not tell me who we are going after." Kane pushed off the tree and stood straight. "That is not how this works."

"You do not get to decide how this works," Malachar said. His voice did not rise. It did not need to. It simply became the kind of firm that closed doors. "You were chosen for this, Kane. Not by me. Not by anyone you can argue with. The power chose you and the power does not make mistakes."

"I am a grave digger," Kane said. "I dig holes for dead people. I do not even own a second pair of boots. Whatever you are planning, I am the wrong person for it."

"You are the only person for it."

"Why me. Why not someone stronger. Someone trained. Someone who actually knows what they are doing."

"Because I do not need someone strong," Malachar said. "Not yet. I need someone who has nothing to lose and every reason to be angry." A pause that pressed heavily against the silence. "You have both of those things. More than you even know."

Kane stood in the rain and turned that over in his mind. Every reason to be angry. He thought about three copper coins for a full night of work. He thought about bread lines and guards who shoved without looking at his face. He thought about the word grave rat said the way you say the name of something worthless.

"I have questions," Kane said.

"You will always have questions," Malachar said. "Most of them will be answered in time. The rest are not yours to know."

"That is not a good enough answer."

"It is the only answer you are getting." The voice was final in a way that felt like a wall. Solid. Immovable. "You have been chosen, Kane Ashveil. That is not a request. It is not a negotiation. It is simply what is true. The sooner you accept it the better prepared you will be for what is coming."

Kane clenched his jaw. "And what exactly is coming?

Malachar did not answer.

The voice pulled back from his mind the way a tide pulls back from shore. Still there. Just further away. Watching.

Kane stood alone in the dark forest with rain soaking through his thin shirt and two dead soldiers at his back and a thousand unanswered questions pressing against the inside of his skull.

He looked up through the trees at the black sky above.

Something was coming. He did not know what it was. He did not know if he was ready for it. He did not even know if he would survive long enough to find out.

But somewhere across the forest behind him, through the rain and the dark and the sound of the wind moving through the trees, he heard it.

A horn.

One long clear note cutting through the night.

The Silver Order did not use horns for regular patrols.

They used them when they were calling in a Hunter.