Deus Necros

In his hand, Ludwig carried the scroll, a single strip of parchment, creased and faintly stained from travel, that bore the sketched coordinates of the scouting party’s last known path. The wax seal had been cracked open by another hand, but the inked lines remained sharp, each mark pressed with hurried purpose. He ran his thumb along the edge as if the weight of the parchment itself carried the lives of those who had not returned. With that knowledge tucked into memory, he turned his back on the camp and stepped into the wild.

The prairie stretched wide and unbroken before him. Tall grasses swayed in the restless wind, their tops brushing together with a sound like waves breaking against stone. Every breath of air carried with it the faint scents of earth and the distant swamps, wet, mineral, tinged with decay. Behind him, the din of the outpost still lingered faintly: the hammer on iron, the call of quartermasters, the thud of boots. Yet with every step forward those sounds dimmed, until they became little more than a faint memory pressed against the back of his ears.

To an onlooker, his figure would have seemed out of place in such a landscape. A lone man striding toward marsh and mist, garbed not in armor but in a noble’s regalia. Black manticore leather hugged close to his frame, its sheen broken by the gleam of silver lining. He looked more suited to a council hall than to a battlefield. No heavy packs or bundles weighed him down. No shield braced his arm. All he carried was a crooked sword strapped across his back, and in his other hand the long, jeweled staff of ancient wood whose grain seemed to whisper of centuries.

Still, Ludwig walked with unbroken rhythm. His boots pressed into the soil, each step deliberate, slow but sure, like a man marching not into danger but into inevitability. He did not look back, not once, as the rows of tents shrank into dots and the flags and watchtowers dissolved into horizon haze. Soon the world of men and soldiers was gone, leaving only grass, sky, and silence.

“Right,” Ludwig said under his breath once the last sounds of the camp had truly faded. He paused long enough to draw in the clean silence. “This is much better.” The words carried a trace of relief. The air out here tasted sharper, more honest.

“Looks like you’re finally back in your element,” came Thomas’s dry echo.

Ludwig smirked faintly. “Maybe. At least here I don’t have to keep pretending to listen to fools.”

“I don’t like the fact that you didn’t bring Oathcarver…” the Knight King’s tone sounded forlorn, heavy with reproach.

Ludwig’s hand brushed against the empty place where the blade once hung. “Oathcarver’s done more than enough for me,” he said, quiet but firm. “It’s earned its rest. I left it with Joana. She knows a pretty good blacksmith, the same guy who patched up Durandal for me….”

Thomas’s silence held for a beat. Then, skeptical: “So it’s only Durandal?”

“Well… yes.” Ludwig tilted his head slightly. His fingers brushed the air, summoning another weight from his inventory. His lips curved at the thought. “That, and one more.”

Metal and aura gathered in his grasp. The air seemed to bend around him, pressing down, as if something vast and ancient had stirred. The outline formed first: the jagged crown of spikes, the thick haft. Then it solidified, heavy and whole, slamming into existence with a weight that vibrated through the earth beneath his boots.

Nightbreaker.

The war-mace stood in his hand like an abomination given form, a weapon shaped for nothing but ruin. The head was vast, studded with fangs of steel sharp enough to gouge stone. The haft was thick as his arm, dark with age, grooves running along it like veins. Even in the light of day the weapon exhaled a dim shadow, as though the air itself recoiled from its presence. Holding it was like holding the memory of a battlefield, all screams and smoke and broken bodies compressed into one impossible object.

The swamp wind shifted. The grass leaned away from him. Even the insects fell still, as though instinctively fearing it.

[Inspect]

Tier: Undefined / Relic – Scaling Tier

Condition of Use: Heart of Wrath

Category: Weapon

Type: War Spiked Mace

Abilities:

Tectonic Shift (Active, 1-minute cooldown): Upon contact with terrain, the mace reshapes it, raising jagged stone pillars like waves or sundering earth into deep fissures, all guided by the wielder’s will.

Recall (Passive): Nightbreaker always returns to its wielder, distance and barrier irrelevant.

Singularity of Wrath (Passive): Strikes leave marks. Survivors bear a stack of Wrathful Singularity. At five stacks, the marks detonate, unleashing catastrophic force.

[Singularity of Wrath: Each stack strips 10% of the target’s defenses and grants it to the wielder.]

[Unknown]

Lore: The weapon of the Wrathful Death, Morde’Xander. Once a hero, once a savior of his people. Betrayed by those he bled for. Poisoned and bound, forced to watch his children and wife slain before him. The king who feared him ordered this weapon brought down upon his body until nothing remained but ruin. His broken flesh was scattered across the mountains that now bear his name: Solania. The mace endured, drinking his rage. The heart endured, beating with wrath. And so death itself was forced to bend, returning him as The Wrathful Death.

***

Ludwig’s grip tightened as the words of the weapon’s past etched themselves into his mind. The story crawled beneath his skin, unsettling and heavy. He grimaced, not out of disdain but out of recognition.

Morde’Xander. Betrayed hero. Husband, father, protector, turned to monster by the cruelty of men. His wrath had not ended with death, it had grown, hardened, consumed. Rage so pure it clawed past the grave and demanded to walk again. Rage so vast it birthed the titan of steel Ludwig had fought: a body of armor, a heart of crystal, a soul of fury.

And now that heart beat inside his chest.