Kai hesitated for only a second before gripping Orlin’s outstretched, gloved hand.
The instant their palms t, a pulse of energy surged through him.
Sothing ancient.
Sothing cold.
Kai gripped it tighter and shook it. "I accept."
Orlin grinned, his eyes changing shape from beneath his hood. "Excellent. Absolutely excellent!" He squeezed Kai’s hand firmly before releasing it.
Without warning, Orlin stood up from his chair and wandered towards the exit.
Kai rolled his fingers, still feeling the odd energy lingering in his palm. He followed his new ntor. "So, what now?"
Orlin leaned on his cane. "Now, you begin the first step of your training. And when your training is complete, you will help ."
Kai’s brows furrowed. "With what?"
The old man only chuckled. "In due ti, my young disciple. First, your task."
Orlin pushed the doors to the front yard open and strolled outside. The light seed to bend around him as though his body rejected it.
’I’m not signing a deal with a devil or anything, am I? There aren’t devils or demons in this world, surely.’
Orlin gestured toward the ruined city beyond the manor’s crumbling gates.
"You will bring the force of all the dead here under your command."
Kai’s breath hitched.
"All of them?"
"Every last one."
Kai swallowed. "How many?"
Orlin tapped his chin, then shrugged. "A rough estimate... three hundred or so."
"Three-"
"Hundred," Orlin confird, grinning. "They lost their master long ago. Now, they wander aimlessly, attacking anything living that crosses their path. By taking control, you will beco a much more proficient necromancer."
Kai exhaled sharply.
"But three hundred undead? That’s..."
He shook his head. "Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the skill or spell for it or have enough Life Essence. I’d burn through all of it before I even hit fifty."
Orlin shrugged. "For eight years old, you are rather perceptive. Because of this, I believe you will find a way. I cannot provide you with all of the answers, young Kai Tensen."
Kai scowled. "Of course you can’t."
Orlin chuckled. "Now, go. Your undead await."
Kai stood at the edge of a ruined plaza, eyeing the shambling undead.
So were rotting corpses, others skeletal husks, all aimless, mindless, and hostile.
"One at a ti."
He focused on a single undead.
A skeletal warrior.
Its armour was rusted, its sword chipped, but the hunger in its empty sockets remained.
Kai raised a hand.
Black tendrils of necrotic energy coiled from his fingertips, snaking through the air toward the skeleton’s brittle bones.
It stopped. Twitched.
Then it turned toward him.
"Shit."
With an uneven rattle, the skeleton charged.
Kai clenched his fist and cast Raise Undead.
The magic latched on, but the skeleton resisted.
"It’s different from raising a fresh corpse."
Sweat beaded on Kai’s brow as he wrestled for control.
"Co on..."
He pushed deeper, his magic grinding against whatever old command bound the skeleton.
And then it snapped.
The skeleton staggered.
Then, slowly, it knelt.
A wave of exhaustion crashed into Kai, nearly forcing him to his knees.
"That took way too much Life Essence."
He clenched his jaw. "There has to be an easier way."
After another hour of testing, experinting, and nearly being gutted by his own skeleton, Kai discovered it.
A spell buried deep in his instincts.
A spell that didn’t just raise the dead, but stole them.
"Undead Enslavent."
It was violent, crude, and ruthless.
Instead of trying to convince an undead to follow him, it ripped its connection from whatever past master it once had and forced it into submission. If it had no master, it still wrestled with the free will of the creature until it fell under his control.
But the cost?
Life Essence.
Way, way too much Life Essence.
After enslaving just four undead, Kai staggered against a wall, his body drained.
"I can’t keep this up. At this rate, I’ll be dead before I reach fifty, let alone three hundred."
His stomach twisted.
He needed Life Essence.
But this city was dead.
The only living being here was Orlin, and he wasn’t an option.
’So, how?’
Kai returned to the manor. Defeated and desperate. He thought about his options.
Orlin walked into the living area and sat down beside him.
"Having trouble, Kai Tensen?"
"I don’t really know how to enslave them all without killing myself in the process. If I get too weak, they’ll just eat ."
"Well, maybe a little more knowledge before you begin isn’t the worst idea." Orlin stood up. "Co," he beckoned. "There is sothing else I must show you."
Kai followed as the old necromancer led him through the halls of the manor, down a long corridor he hadn’t explored before. At the end stood a door, unlike any other in the mansion, black wood, inlaid with silver runes that twisted when he looked at them.
Orlin placed a hand on the door. It pulsed once before slowly swinging open. The door felt alive.
Full of power.
Full of souls.
A library stretched before him, bigger than should have been possible. The shelves towered high, vanishing into shadows above, much taller than the mansion looked from the outside. Kai looked at Orlin with awe.
"Mhm. Spacial magic. This library actually sits in another dinsion and is not actually inside of the manor."
The towering shelves were packed with books so old they seed older than the ruins outside. Ladders moved on their own, shifting between shelves, and spectral figures floated silently, carrying books from place to place.
"This... is incredible," Kai murmured.
Orlin grinned. "It should be. I built it."
Kai turned to him, startled. "You?"
"As you will learn, your magic is not just about raising the dead, boy," Orlin said, striding forward. "It is about preservation. Knowledge, too, must be preserved. What use is power if those who hold it are ignorant?"
He raised a hand, and several books flew from the shelves, stacking themselves neatly in midair before floating toward Kai.
"These are your next lessons," Orlin declared. "They contain knowledge of the undead far beyond what you have faced. So of these creatures, I doubt even you could na."
Kai caught one of the books and turned it over in his hands. The title was faded, but as his fingers brushed the surface, a na burned itself into the cover: The Forsaken Beasts of the Beyond.
His gaze flickered up to Orlin. "Where did these books co from? They seem... ancient."
Orlin chuckled, a strange gleam in his eye. "Older than the city outside. Older, perhaps, than even I. So of these tos predate the Purge. Others were salvaged from lost civilisations. And so... well, let’s just say they should not exist, and yet they do."
Kai swallowed hard. "Why give them to now?"
Orlin’s smile faded. "Because you are about to step into a world where ignorance will kill you. You have taken your first steps as a necromancer, but understanding your enemies, truly understanding them, is what will keep you alive."
He gestured to the floating books. "Study these before you attempt to take control of the undead city. You must know what you are up against."
Kai nodded, taking a deep breath. "Alright. Where do I start?"
Orlin smirked. "Start with the ones that whisper to you. Those usually have the most to say."
Orlin bowed before turning away.
"But they’re just books. They have nothing to say!"
All Kai heard was a chuckle escape Orlin’s lips as he left the library.
Kai set the books out in front of him, and before randomly choosing one, a quiet sound nestled in his mind.
A voice.
A whisper.
"Open ."
A book spoke to him. The furthest one from him, its title reading ’Beyond the Veil: A thodical Study of Necrotic Beings’.
Kai picked the book up, and the voice stopped. He felt the presence within the to.
A soul.
Trapped.
Forgotten.
Kai scoured the text within the living to. The words imprinting onto him more easily than any book he read in his past life. He continued like this for days. Completely captivated by the feeling of absorbing knowledge from the books.
"Liches, Grave Maws, Ghosts, Vampires, Zombies, Skeletons, Living Shadows, and so much more... I can’t wait to control them!"
[Languages Translated: Ancient Irian, Salan]
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