[You Died.]
Simple as that. Those two words echoed in the cold, empty space, lingering in the void where Ludwig’s consciousness once resided. It was the last thing he saw, etched in blinding, ominous letters against the dark backdrop of his mind. Death, swift and cruel, had claimed him just moments after he arrived in the strange, fantastical world that was supposed to be his grand adventure.
There was no epic quest, no heroic victory—only the cold, abrupt end of a life filled with dreams unfulfilled.
Ludwig Heart, a teenager of fragile hopes and vast ambitions, had grown up cloistered in a grand, gilded cage. The son of a powerful family, he was surrounded by books that whispered of distant lands, mighty heroes, and impossible wonders.
Yet his world was small, confined to the towering walls of his family’s palace, where his experiences of life were limited to the occasional, heavily guarded outings to the city beyond.
He had never tasted freedom or felt the rush of wind against his face as he raced toward destiny. He had never seen the ocean or climbed a mountain, never loved or lost, and never fought for anything beyond the chessboard battles of his mind. The chance to visit another world had seemed like his escape, his opportunity to become the hero he always dreamed of being.
But in that moment, all of that was snuffed out, reduced to a fleeting wish as his heart stopped and the warmth drained from his body.
Ludwig’s dreams died with him, along with the countless stories that might have been told. Yet, this wouldn’t be a story worth telling if it ended so abruptly—would it?
The world was still as two cloaked figures approached Ludwig’s lifeless body. The necromancers, their faces obscured by dark hoods, stood over the fallen hero. They waited patiently, unmoved by the stillness, until the last drop of blood had pooled beneath him, darkening the earth in a macabre stain.
One of the men pulled out a black leather-bound tome, its cover embossed with runes that writhed like living things, and began scribbling arcane symbols in the air around Ludwig’s corpse. The faint glow of the markings cast a sickly pallor over the dead boy’s face, creating a haunting contrast to the vibrant life he had once embodied.
The writing took an eternity, or so it seemed. Each stroke of the quill was deliberate, precise, and laced with an eerie purpose. When the sigils were complete, the necromancers knelt beside Ludwig, their robes brushing the blood-soaked ground. They drew out gleaming knives, their blades cold and merciless, and began the grim work of extraction.
His heart, lungs, liver, intestines—each organ was carefully removed and placed into jars filled with preservative fluids that bubbled and smoked. Nothing that could rot or decay was left behind; even his brain and eyes were scooped out with practiced precision, leaving only a hollow shell of bone and sinew.
The necromancers moved with a ritualistic grace, as though they were performing a sacred dance rather than a grotesque dissection. The air grew heavy with the stench of death, mingling with the faint, acrid scent of the alchemical fluids. The black tome, now resting at the center of the circle, began to glow faintly, the runes pulsing with an unholy light.
The necromancers recited incantations in hushed, reverent tones, their voices blending into a haunting chorus that seemed to resonate from another realm.
From the darkness of the tome, a purple glow erupted, snaking outwards to form an intricate magic circle around the remains of Ludwig’s body.
[The Sacrificial Ritual to the God of Death, Necro, has begun.]
“We offer this heroic spirit to the God of Death! We, your eternal worshippers, beseech you to grant us a mighty Undead Spirit! Show us the might of your creation!” the lead necromancer chanted, his voice echoing with fervor and desperation. The air around them seemed to thicken, charged with the weight of the ritual.
The ground beneath Ludwig began to tremble as the magic circle activated. Ethereal arms, ghostly and skeletal, materialized from the circle’s edges, reaching out like the hands of desperate souls yearning to escape the abyss. They grasped Ludwig’s flesh, ripping it apart with brutal efficiency. Nerves, tendons, and sinew snapped and unraveled, leaving only his bleached bones behind.
It was as though unseen forces were stripping away every remnant of his humanity, piece by piece, until only a crude mockery of life remained.
But then, something went terribly wrong.
[Error! The Spirit of a Hero conflicts with the Undeath Ritual! Error.]
The air shimmered violently as the ritual faltered. The two necromancers froze, their confident expressions replaced by confusion and fear. They had not anticipated this—an error in the ritual of such magnitude was unheard of. Heroic undead had been raised before, so why was this different?
“What the hell is happening?!” one of them, a gaunt man with sunken eyes, exclaimed, his voice cracking with panic.
“It’s—It’s an error! But why? He was just a hero, wasn’t he?” the other necromancer stammered, desperately rifling through the pages of the tome for an answer. But the truth was staring them in the face, hidden in plain sight. The summoning circle’s arcane language, the complex runes—they had made a fatal, linguistic mistake that would cost them dearly.
A Heroic Undead was not the same as a Summoned Hero. The former were those who had performed great deeds in life and were reanimated through dark rituals. But a Summoned Hero was a being blessed and chosen by the Virtue Gods of Ikos, marked by divine favor and destined for greatness.
To attempt to bind such a soul to the will of death was not only an affront to the natural order but a direct insult to the gods themselves.
The ground beneath them began to quake violently, as though the earth itself rejected the abomination they were attempting to create. Divine light, pure and radiant, burst forth from the altar, clashing with the sickly purple glow of the death magic. Holy and unholy forces collided, creating a cacophony of light and sound that rattled the very stones of the temple.
“We’ve offended the God of Life,” one of the necromancers whispered, horror dawning on his face. In a frantic bid to salvage the ritual, he attempted to smear away the runes with his sleeve, while his companion turned to flee.
But their actions were in vain. Necro, the God of Death, was intrigued by the powerful soul that had been offered to him, and he was not so easily denied. Divine auras clashed, swirling around the altar like a storm of conflicting wills. The gods waged a silent battle, but in the end, the dead could not return to the realm of the living.
Ludwig’s soul was no longer a thing of purity; it was in the domain of Necro now.
A final, resounding pulse of magic settled the dispute. The holy light retreated, leaving behind only the unyielding presence of death. The ritual resumed, and Ludwig’s remains began to twitch and stir. Bones, once stripped of flesh, reassembled themselves into a skeletal figure. The reanimated corpse rose, its posture hunched and awkward, a macabre puppet held together by unseen strings.
Its empty eye sockets flickered with an eerie blue glow, as though staring out at the world for the first time with a hollow, unseeing gaze.
The nearest necromancer gasped in awe. “Oh, it worked, Sebas! It worked! Come back, you cowardly fool!” he shouted, stumbling to his feet. The violent clash between the divine and unholy had left him shaken, but with the ritual’s completion, hope stirred anew in his heart.
Sebas, the other necromancer, who had been halfway to the exit, hesitated. “It’s… it’s actually working. We need to tell the Black Tower Master,” he mumbled, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and excitement.
A sharp slap to the back of his head snapped him back to reality. “Are you stupid?!” the first necromancer hissed. “If he finds out we used a Summoned Hero for this, he’ll kill us. You think he’ll be pleased we wasted the chance he’s been searching for all these years?”
But before they could argue further, a figure emerged from the shadows at the edge of the altar. Tall and imposing, the newcomer wore a long coat of black leather, tailored to perfection and adorned with arcane symbols that pulsed faintly under the flickering torchlight.
His youthful face was framed by dark, wavy hair, and his eyes, hidden behind circular black glasses perched precariously on his nose, gleamed with a dangerous curiosity. His smile was wide and sharp, a predator’s grin that promised nothing good.
“Tower Master!” the two necromancers exclaimed in unison, dropping to their knees as terror gripped them. This was not the time to be caught improvising.
“I see you’ve been busy,” the Tower Master said, his voice silky smooth as he slowly clapped his hands. The sound was light, almost mocking, but each clap reverberated in the hearts of the kneeling men, sending a shiver down their spines.