Deus Necros

Her voice lingered in the air like incense, light, fragrant, and unmistakably deliberate. The syllables of her final sentence drifted gently, and yet with a resonance that clung to the edges of Ludwig’s thoughts like moisture clinging to cold glass.

Ludwig didn’t respond right away. He let the silence stretch, not out of control, but calculation. His eyes remained fixed on her, unblinking, though his thoughts churned beneath the surface like murky water beneath clear ice. She was watching him too, but not in the way mortals often did. Her gaze wasn’t probing, it was patient, as if she already knew the answers and merely waited for him to arrive at them.

His fingers flexed slightly, an unconscious twitch born of carefulness, not need, as though reaching for the hilts of Oathcarver and Durandal. But of course, they weren’t there. The swords sat in plain sight, propped reverently beside a bookshelf, resting as though domesticated, like dogs trained to obey a different master now. The sight irritated him more than it should have. It wasn’t fear, it was displacement. A quiet violation of ownership.

He hated how silent it was here. No wind. No birds. No whistling kettle, no crackle from the hearth, not even the soft hiss of heat against water. The firelight flickered across the room with choreographed grace, casting long shadows that never seemed to move. It should have been cozy, but it wasn’t. It was too still, like a painting of warmth rather than the thing itself.

Even Thomas and the Knight King, had gone quiet. Their ghostly presences lingered, yes, but no words came. Just a shared tension. As if they, too, were weighing the balance of power in this place. Watching. Listening. Just as he was.

“I don’t suppose,” Ludwig said at last, each word drawn with deliberate care, “that you’d like to explain what the hell that means.”

His voice did not echo. It felt swallowed almost before it left his mouth.

“Also,” Ludwig added after a beat, shifting slightly in his seat, “it’s quite creepy that you know my name…”

Her reply came with the smooth certainty of someone answering a question before it was asked. “I know more than just that,” she said. “Though much of it… confounds me still. That metallic bird, how does it soar without wings or wind? The towers, those impossibly tall monuments of glass and steel, how do they stand? Why don’t they crumble beneath the breath of the sky? None of it weaves mana. None of it feels alive. A forest of stone where your people live at… mesmerizing”

She tilted her head, not in mockery but awe. “You come from a world that is so foreign… and so familiar. It is wonder without wonder. Power without reverence.”

Ludwig’s grip tightened beneath the table, bones flexing against the cloth of his glove. “Quite rude,” he muttered, “to spy through someone’s memories…”

The woman gave a soft exhale, a sound halfway between regret and inevitability. “I do apologize. It is not by will that I saw what you were. Nor what you became. These things… reveal themselves to me, as easily as mist curls around the breath of flame. And I understand your resentment, truly I do. To be torn from one’s home… to be toyed with by amateurs who play with dark arts like children playing with blades. To be remade into something that should neither live, nor breathe…”

Her voice didn’t change volume, but it deepened. Hardened. “And then to be further mutilated by a man who should never have dabbled in forces he does not fully grasp.”

She let the words hang there, carefully measured. Not accusatory, not pitying. Simply… observant.

Ludwig’s mind flicked unbidden to those first seconds after arriving in Ikos. The pain. The panic. The smirking faces of the asshole mages who’d yanked him from his world with all the grace of children pulling apart a beetle. Then Van Dijk, brilliant and broken, threading mana through his dead body with the obsession of a painter working on a cursed canvas. The Nephilium circuit. His hollowed-out bones, the reshaped soul.

“I guess,” Ludwig muttered, voice flat, “it wasn’t comfortable. But here we are. No use crying over spilled milk.”

A moment passed.

She let out a laugh, again. “I believe you have a great task ahead of you, Ludwig Heart. One of tremendous weight.”

He exhaled through his nose, slowly. “You mean the Usurpers.”

“They are not something you can handle, not yet. Not at your level.”

His eyes sharpened. “Then let’s not dance around the subject. If you know that much… what do you want from me?”

“I told you,” she said, folding her hands lightly before her. “It’s the other way around.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the one who invited me here…”

She chuckled then, gently. “My domain is not so crude. It does not summon like a conjurer calling spirits. This place, this moment, draws in those who are on the precipice of change. And you, right now, stand on that edge.”

Ludwig blinked once. His gaze darkened slightly, unreadable. “Hard to believe.”

“And your reasoning?”

He lifted one hand and made a slow, deliberate spin of his fingers. “Because no one calls you a witch if you’re known for helping people.”

The woman laughed at that, not offended, not defensive. Her laughter was clear and soft, like a bell muffled behind velvet. “Indeed. No one remembers kindness, especially when it frightens them. And those who pass through my land? They forget. Once this moment passes, you will forget me. You’ll think it a dream. A strange detour in a forest of fog. I exist only here, and only now.”

Ludwig opened his mouth, then closed it again. A flicker of something, confusion, maybe? No. Recognition. His mind was catching up with her words, and they left a faint taste of ash on his tongue.

After a few seconds, he asked, “What kind of help are you offering?”

Her eyes softened, not kindly, but with focus. “For starters, I cannot return you to your world.”

“I see…” he said, voice low.

“It isn’t for lack of power,” she added, as though correcting a suspicion before it could form. “But you must remember, I am removed from time and space. I cannot influence the external world. Even if I wished to, the barriers that separate us are… immutable.”

“Which means,” Ludwig said slowly, “the help you’re offering… must be something achievable here. In your domain. Something personal.”

“Indeed.”

He clicked his tongue once, then leaned back in the chair. The wood creaked faintly.

“I see your hesitation,” she said softly.

“No,” Ludwig replied. “It’s not hesitation. More like… realization. Nothing in this world is free. Nothing. So when you tell me I’m of no use to you, I find it hard to believe.”

She gave another of her laughs, light, dry, unbothered. “I see. But worry not. It isn’t anything you wouldn’t already be doing.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say,” she murmured, brushing one bandaged hand against her teacup, “that along your quest… you will complete a task of mine.”

Ludwig’s gaze flicked to the fireplace. “I can guess what it is.”

“Oh?”

“The death of one of the Usurpers.” For a better reading experience, visit NovelFire.

A pause.

“Quite the smart person you are,” she said. “Indeed… a very troublesome one at that.”

He gave a dry, hollow chuckle. “Wild guess. Envious Death?”

She stilled.

And her teacup ever so slightly, trembled in her grip. A single droplet of tea escaped the rim, falling onto the wood with no sound at all.

“That,” she said, “is an incredible deduction. How did you figure it out?”