They called me Death long before I ever earned the title.
Funny, isn't it? How the world gives you names before you can shape them yourself. I used to laugh at that. Now… not so much.
The wind howled through the jagged bones of a ruined skyscraper, its frame barely holding together after a dungeon breach tore through it two years ago. Twisted rebar stuck out like ribs from broken concrete. Mana roots slithered across the floor, pulsating faintly in rhythm with the corrupted energies deep beneath the earth.
From here, I could see most of what used to be Manhattan. The skyline was scarred, a fractured silhouette of its former self. Neon lights flickered weakly against reinforced guild towers, and holographic billboards hovered over streets that never really slept—just waited.
Dungeons pulsed below like tumors. Power struggles festered above them. Guilds fought for control. F-rankers huddled behind walls barely high enough to hide their fear. A-ranks postured for contracts and sponsors. And above them all, the S-ranks—national-level threats in tailored suits—played kingmaker from corporate penthouses.
And then there was me.
The sigil on the back of my hand pulsed faintly—three points forming a triangle etched into my skin. One point glowed bright. One flickered, faint and dull. One remained cold, lifeless.
Ashbourne was awake.
Lilith stirred.
Lucifer still slept.
Behind me, silent and still, stood Ashbourne—the first of the Triad. His shadow stretched beside mine, scythe gleaming under moonlight. His form shifted with the air like mist made solid, half-spirit, half-something else entirely. The longer he existed in the material world, the more he resembled what he must have once been.
The others—Lilith and Lucifer—remained within Purgatory. One waiting. One dreaming.
Lilith had begun reacting to threats through the barrier itself. Once, when I was ambushed by a rogue C-rank, her magic pulsed outward without me calling her. A flash of golden energy—shield-shaped and sharp as will—intercepted the blow before I even sensed it. She wanted out.
She just wasn't ready.
Lucifer… was deeper. Still resting. Still rebuilding. But I felt his gaze sometimes in the quiet hours. Ancient. Unblinking. Disapproving.
The ring on my finger—an unremovable black band fused to my soul—throbbed once. Cold as the grave and older than recorded history, it bound me to Purgatory, my sacred realm. My soldiers waited there, silent and obedient. Not corpses. Not puppets. Spirits. Beings. Some remembered who they once were.
Most didn't.
But all of them answered one word.
"Awaken."
I didn't speak it.
Not yet.
The battlefield wasn't ready.
Neither was I.
A voice slid into my thoughts like warm wind through a cracked window.
"You always come here when you're thinking too hard."
I didn't turn. Her presence made the air lighter, her aura a soft buzz just beneath my skin. Where my mana decayed, hers pulsed with life. Where mine corroded, hers empowered.
"Arielle," I said.
She stepped beside me. Same height as me now, though I remembered when she barely reached my shoulder. She wore a cropped battle jacket and dark jeans, her fingers wrapped in focus bands that glowed softly with amplifier runes. Her curls were pulled back into a tight ponytail, and her grey eyes—storm-colored, always—searched the skyline like it owed her something.
Arielle Quinn. My best friend. My first heartbreak. My longest silence.
We'd grown up in the same orphanage, scraping together meals and dreams, until the day she was adopted and I was left behind.
That was twelve years ago.
We reunited two years back—on opposite sides of a dungeon. She'd awakened as a rare Support-Class. An Amplifier. Someone who could evolve others with proximity, boost traits, even enhance class affinity. A walking cheat code, if you knew how to use her.
I never did. She chose to walk beside me anyway.
"You're brooding again," she said.
"I'm always brooding."
"You've been standing here for two hours."
"Time moves differently when you're planning the end of the world."
She gave me a sidelong glance. "Are you planning to end it today, or just writing poetry about it again?"
"Bit of both."
She leaned on the railing, mirroring my stance. "Do you ever get tired of pretending you're alone?"
"I'm not pretending. Most people just can't follow where I go."
A pause.
"You know, the system didn't matter when we were kids," she said. "No ranks. No stats. Just hunger. Streets. And that broken vending machine that only gave out root beer."
I let out a dry laugh. "I hated root beer."
"I loved it."
"I know. I gave you all mine."
"You said it tasted like death."
"Still does."
She smiled and looked back toward the horizon, where the mana towers blinked like sleepy sentinels. "You've changed," she said. "Since last year."
"Funny. I feel the same."
"No. You used to hide your power. Now you carry it like a warning."
"Shouldn't I?"
"They're already afraid of you."
"They should be."
She didn't argue. "They summoned you. Again."
"The Council?"
She nodded.
"They love their meetings," I muttered. "Like they're trying to manage an apocalypse with paperwork."
"They want answers."
"They'll get silence."
"You're making enemies."
"I'm making room."
She looked at Ashbourne, who hadn't moved an inch. His eyes burned in his skull—cold blue fire, fixed on the skyline.
"They're not like other undead," she said.
"No," I agreed. "They're not."
Ashbourne was learning. He adjusted his movement mid-fight now. Anticipated patterns. Avoided overkill. The others—even the lesser ones—were starting to communicate without commands. They responded to emotion. Some even remembered fragments of their past.
It was both progress and a warning.
"Do you ever wonder what they'll become?" she asked.
"I try not to."
"You think they'd betray you?"
"Some already have."
"And the Triad?"
"They're not capable of betrayal."
Her tone dipped. "Yet."
I didn't answer. The silence that followed said more than I ever could.
I turned away from the ledge. Ashbourne's form flickered once, then evaporated into shadow. The symbol on my hand pulsed. One glowing point reappeared.
He'd returned to Purgatory.
Arielle followed me as we walked through the abandoned upper floor, stepping over vines and cracked tiles. The building was condemned, but I kept it as a vantage point. A place to think. To remember.
And sometimes… to regret.
At street level, the city vibrated with life and conflict. Vendors shouted over traffic. Recruiters barked at low-rankers. Screens blinked with live dungeon feeds. A C-rank in Rio had cleared a corrupted E-class in record time. In Tokyo, a dungeon collapsed during a failed raid. Dozens dead. No ownership shift.
None of it mattered.
Because something worse was coming.
And I knew it.
The Surge hadn't ended 500 years ago. That was just the opening act. Something else was waiting. Watching. Beneath the dungeons. Beyond the cracks.
The Surge tore a hole in the world. Something looked through.
And it remembered me.
Far away, in a forgotten chamber buried beneath centuries of ash and stone, something stirred.
Runes older than scripture burned to life, humming with dimensional friction. A hand—clawed, obsidian, cracked with light—twitched in the darkness. Something laughed without breath.
It had no name.
But it remembered Elijah Voss.
And it was hungry.
Back in New York, I walked into the Council's chamber alone.
My coat still smelled like dust and mana. My eyes were heavy from too many hours spent navigating the tombs of Purgatory, plotting the structure of the undead ranks, building the future army that the world would one day kneel before—or burn resisting.
Seven seats circled me, each filled by a representative of the United Guild Nations.
Seven pairs of eyes watched me like I was a loaded weapon left on a table.
"Necromancer Elijah Voss," the central voice began, "you stand accused of unregulated summoning, breach of summon capacity, and refusal to register a recognized guild affiliation."
I remained silent.
"You are dangerously close to S-rank status. Your summons defy classification. Your sacred ground defies containment. We ask you—"
I raised my hand.
The room fell silent.
Then I smiled.
They called me Death before I ever earned it.
Now?
Now, I wear it like a crown.