Deus Necros

The land changed as Ludwig pressed farther west. The rolling prairie began to bleed into softer earth, each step sinking just slightly deeper, the crunch of grass giving way to the sticky pull of marsh. A faint mist had begun to creep low over the ground, clinging to reeds and trailing around his boots. The air thickened, too, no longer the sharp, clean wind of open plains, but the damp breath of swamps: rot, stagnant water, and the musk of things long decayed.

The sounds shifted too. The hum of grasshoppers was gone. Instead came the drone of mosquitoes, the occasional croak of unseen toads, the ripple of something vast disturbing water not far off. Each noise echoed strangely in the fog, making distance difficult to judge. Even Ludwig found himself glancing at shadows twice, not from fear but from caution. The swamp had always been the perfect ground for ambush, a place where silence swallowed both friend and foe.

He adjusted his grip on Nightbreaker, though the weapon’s sheer bulk still dragged at his muscles. He could feel how poorly it fit him. Even with the Wrathful Heart thudding in his chest, its aura binding him to the relic, it was clear he was still only borrowing the wrath that once defined it. Morde’Xander had swung this like a child’s toy. For Ludwig, it was an effort of will and strength to even carry it comfortably.

He remembered again the story etched into the mace: betrayal, torture, the cruel dismemberment of a man turned legend, then monster. He let the memory curl in his thoughts, grim but honest.

“Understandable,” he muttered again, his voice barely louder than the hiss of insects around him. The word felt truer the longer he carried the relic. Rage such as Morde’Xander’s was not just a burden, it was a reason, a momentum. Rage had raised him from death, reshaped him into something even necromancy could not explain. Ludwig’s fingers tapped lightly against his breastbone where the crystalline heart pulsed. A rhythm not his own, yet one that kept him walking forward.

“You were a good fight,” he whispered, not to Thomas this time, but to the phantom memory of the Wrathful Death himself. “But your kingdom betrayed you and paid the price. Their ashes are gone, their banners rotted. Your wrath was justified… but misplaced. I suppose I inherited it.”

For a moment he allowed himself silence. The swamp swallowed it easily, the mist coiling thicker around him as though listening. Then the Knight King’s voice cut through, low and measured.

“What a mighty weapon,” Thomas said again, his spectral gaze fixed on the mace.

“Yeah,” Ludwig answered, his tone faintly grim. “But weaker in my grip. I feel like a child holding his father’s blade. It should cleave mountains, and in my hands it just… drags.” He shifted the haft, the weapon groaning faintly with its own weight.

Thomas nodded in ghostly agreement. “It’s the armor. Only with the Wrathful Death’s own shell will the weapon truly awaken. Until then, Nightbreaker is half-asleep in your grasp.”

“Level 200,” Ludwig muttered again. The number had been haunting his thoughts like a milestone too far to see. “Not an easy climb here. But necessary.” His eyes narrowed, searching ahead into the reeds. “And there are worse things waiting than training goals.”

The ground grew softer still, water rising in black pools that reflected dull fragments of sky. Ludwig’s boots sank with each step, pulling free with sucking sounds that echoed too loudly in the stillness. He brushed a reed aside, only to find more mist pressing around him, thicker than before, reducing the swamp to narrow corridors of vision.

Then he saw it. A pale, broken mound rising from the mire: bones, half-sunk and glistening with muck. He stopped, leaning Nightbreaker into the earth for support, and let his gaze settle on the ruin.

The ribs jutted up like bleached towers, long and curved, each one wide enough for a man to walk across. The spine stretched jagged, twisted, half-buried. The skull at the far end was massive, long and blunt, fangs jagged and serrated like daggers even in death. Moss clung to the sockets, and reeds grew from the hollowed gaps of bone.

“Looks like the corpse of a giant salamander,” The Knight King observed. His voice was even, but Ludwig caught the undertone, recognition of something dangerous even in death.

Some of its bones however were shattered, not natural.

“Looks like it was hunted,” Ludwig said.

“For something to destroy a Giant Salamander… not many can do such a feat.”

Ludwig recognized the meaning from the Knight King’s words. There was a hunter around here. Though this corpse might have been dead for weeks if not months…

Ludwig stepped forward, letting the mist curl around his ankles. He tilted his head, studying the ruin of the beast, then let a slow smile curve his mouth. “Just what I needed.”

“What use is it to you? This corpse?”

Ludwig smiled, “What is a corpse for one who dabbles in Undeath?”

He raised his staff. The jewel atop it caught the little light that filtered through the fog, flickering once like a cold star. His other hand stretched outward, palm hovering over the ribcage. The air thickened immediately. Even the mosquitoes fell silent, as though sensing a disturbance.

“Rise Undead.”

The words fell from his lips with the weight of iron, a command, not a request. The swamp seemed to recoil. Mist pulled inward, the reeds bending low. A chill not of the bog itself crept over the ground, as though the swamp remembered fear.

The bones shuddered. Mud slipped from them in clumps. The skull trembled, its maw opening in a slow, dreadful creak that seemed far too alive for a corpse. Water spilled from its throat as the first rattles echoed from its spine.

Ludwig did not blink. His voice deepened as he repeated the command, his aura flaring faintly crimson around him, mingling with the black vapors of necrotic energy. The swamp’s stillness broke under the sound of shifting bone and the groan of a skeleton forcing itself free from centuries of rot.

The giant salamander’s ribs pulled up, scraping together like spears, and with a slow, rattling breath that was not air but dark magic itself, the creature rose to its feet.