The Necromancer’s Game

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 tasted blood.

A man Eira could still love.

“Draven?” A voice so soft it struck like a blade.

He turned.

She was standing in the sunlight, hair glowing like spun fire, eyes bright blue and unbearably gentle. Wearing the white healer’s robes she had worn the day they first met.

Eira.

Alive. Whole. Smiling at him with so much trust it felt like a wound.

His legs nearly gave out.

She walked closer, brow folding in concern. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He almost laughed. Or cried. He didn’t know which.

“Eira…” His voice cracked. “This isn’t real.”

Her smile faded, confusion replacing it. “What do you mean?”

He forced himself to breathe. “You’re a memory. A trial. This world—none of it exists.”

For a moment, she only watched him with that healer’s instinct—quiet, steady, seeing too much.

Then she stepped closer and touched his hand.

Warm. Solid. Alive.

“If this is only a memory,” she whispered, “then why can I feel your pulse?”

His heart lurched. The illusion was too perfect.

The gate behind him pulsed faintly, the Sentinel’s voice echoing in his mind:

“The Scythe fragments feed on truth.”

Meaning he had to face something here. Something the real Eira had taken with her into death. Something the Reaper wanted him to relive.

Draven tried to step back.

But the memory shifted.

The courtyard dissolved.

Suddenly he stood in a dark chamber—brick walls, iron chains, torches flickering weakly.

His breath caught.

It was the night of his arrest.

He heard boots crashing down the hall, soldiers shouting his name, metal scraping on stone. Eira grabbed his hands, tears streaking her face.

“Please,” she whispered, “Tell me you didn’t do it.”

His heart twisted violently. “Eira—”

“This magic you’re studying… these rituals… Draven, they said you brought back an entire battalion. They said you disobeyed the Crown. They said your spells devour souls. Tell me it’s not true.”

Draven squeezed his eyes shut.

He remembered this moment too well.

The moment he had lied.

“I did it to protect us,” his past-self said.

Draven watched himself speaking the words he had once believed. “The Empire is falling. Necromancy is the only thing strong enough to—”

“No,” Eira breathed. “Necromancy is forbidden because it costs lives. You promised me you would stop.”

Past-Draven kept going, blind, desperate, so full of pride he couldn’t see the ruin he was walking into.

But the memory was not repeating exactly.

Eira turned—and looked at the true, present Draven.

Her eyes were no longer confused.

They were accusing.

“You betrayed me long before they took you,” she said quietly.

He staggered back. “This isn’t you. You never said that.”

“But you knew it was true.”

The air around them pulsed—light rippling across the walls like heartbeat waves.

The memory shifted again.

He was now standing atop the battlements where he had unleashed his greatest mistake—the night he raised the dead army that destroyed half of Solenhold.

Below him, spectral soldiers marched in silence, eyes glowing with unnatural fire.

“Why did you do it?” Eira asked, appearing beside him. Her voice was barely more than breath. “You could have walked away. You could have chosen love instead of power. But you didn’t.”

He swallowed hard. “I thought I could control it. I thought I could save us.”

“And instead,” she whispered, “you destroyed everything.”

He wanted to shout that he knew, that he had paid for it with death, with damnation, with years wandering between worlds.

But her gaze cut deeper than any blade.

The scene blurred again.

Now they were in the execution hall.

Chains wrapped around Draven’s wrists. The council pronounced his sentence. Eira stood at the back of the room, her face hidden in her hands.

His past-self looked at her only once before the blade fell.

Draven felt the weight of that final glance like a crushing stone.

Memory-Eira approached him now, slowly.

“You never asked me what happened after you died.”

His breath froze. The scene held still. His heartbeat hammered painfully.

“What… happened?” he whispered.

Her eyes were pools of winter-blue grief.

“I tried to bring you back.”

His vision blurred. “No… Eira, you—”

“I thought if you returned, we could fix everything. Undo everything. But the ritual failed.” Her voice broke. “And the backlash nearly killed me.”

Draven felt the world tilt.

He had never known. Never imagined. Never even dreamed she had loved him that desperately.

“I lost everything the day you died,” she whispered. “And the day I failed to save you… I lost myself too.”

The memory began to crack at the edges—black veins spreading outward like fractures in glass.

Eira stepped closer, cupping his face with trembling hands.

“You cannot change the past, Draven. But you can choose what you become.”

The darkness shuddered.

The memory world started collapsing, buildings folding inward, sky splitting, stone melting.

Eira’s form flickered.

She was being pulled away.

“No—no, wait—Eira!” Draven reached for her.

She smiled sadly, like sunlight breaking through clouds.

“This is the truth you needed to see.” Her fingers slipped through his. “I never hated you.” Her voice softened. “I only wished you had chosen life… instead of death.”

The world imploded.

A shockwave blasted outward—

—and hurled Draven backward into blinding light.

He crashed onto cold stone.

The memory realm vanished.

He was back in Aetheris.

Seren knelt beside him, shaking his shoulders. “Draven! Can you hear me? Say something!”

Lucen hovered above, pale and anxious. “You were gone for too long. I thought—” He stopped, swallowing.

Draven didn’t answer.

Because something was glowing in his hand.

A blade-shaped shard of black metal, humming with power.

The first fragment of the Scythe.

Seren exhaled in relief. “You did it.”

But Draven barely heard her.

Because as he stared at the fragment… he could still hear Eira’s voice in the back of his mind.

“I never hated you.”

His chest tightened.

He closed his fist around the fragment—

—just as the ground beneath them began to shake.

Lucen’s eyes widened. “Um. Draven?”

A tear in the air ripped open above the ruins—dark and crackling.

Something was coming through.

Something huge.

Something ancient.

The trial wasn’t over.

Not even close.

Draven rose slowly, the Scythe fragment burning in his hand.

And from the rift above them…

A shape of pure shadow descended—

Reaching for him.