The dead didn't whisper in words.
They pulsed.
They echoed in the marrow of Elijah's bones like half-formed memories and broken prayers. He felt it most at night, when the noise of New York dulled into static, and the city that never slept shifted from chaos to uneasy silence.
That's when they called to him.
And now, for the first time, he was ready to answer.
He stood in the center of an abandoned church in the Bronx—windows shattered, moonlight slicing through dust like broken glass. The pews were gone, ripped out decades ago. All that remained was a cracked stone floor and a faint hum in the air like the city's soul was holding its breath.
Elijah knelt beside a coffin-sized slab of marble pulled up from beneath the altar. Old bones lay beneath it—human, mostly. Fused into the stone like time itself had tried to bury the past.
He placed a hand over them. The sigil in his palm glowed faintly.
A whisper stirred at the edge of his mind:He is ready.
Elijah whispered the word. Not loud. Not demanding.
But full of certainty.
"Awaken."
The air snapped.
A wind burst from beneath the slab, spiraling into the air as the bones rose like puppets pulled by unseen threads. They danced and clicked, finding each other with frightening precision.
The skeleton was humanoid—taller than Elijah by half a foot, its bones scorched black at the edges, fused in unnatural ways. Its skull bore a single horn, jagged like a broken blade. Blue light flared in its sockets, brighter than anything Elijah had seen.
Then it bowed.
Not to grovel.
To acknowledge.
Elijah stepped back, startled. He had summoned undead before—small things, mindless things. This was different.
It was… aware.
"You… know me," Elijah murmured.
The skeleton looked up. Its jaw didn't move. But Elijah heard a voice anyway—inside his head.
"You carry the Flame of Old. We are bound. My name, once, was Karu'zen. But you may call me Karu."
Elijah blinked. "That's… new."
"You called. I came."
Karu's voice wasn't human. It was deeper. Layered. Like three people were speaking in unison—one ancient, one broken, and one just waking from a long sleep.
Elijah took a slow breath. His heart pounded—not from fear, but from awe.
He wasn't just summoning. He was remembering.
Karu stepped forward. Its posture was regal, movements fluid. A far cry from the shambling corpses you saw on Rift patrols or in the AWC's training manuals.
And there, on Karu's back, forming from nothing, was a curved blade of bone and shadow. An armament, born of the summoning. Not standard issue.
Karu tilted his head."Where are the others?"
"The others?"
"The Triad. The Ones Who Remember. The Ashbound."
Elijah didn't know what that meant. But Karu's words settled into him like fate already unfolding.
He wasn't ready for this. Not even close.
But the pieces were already moving.
Back in Midtown, Selene stood at the edge of a rooftop garden, watching the skyline flicker. Below her, the AWC headquarters burned with light—another Rift flare on the outskirts of Harlem. The fourth one this week.
Something was happening. A pattern no one wanted to admit.
Footsteps behind her.
She turned to find a familiar face—Mason, the teen genius who'd once built a drone swarm using spare microwave parts and pure spite.
He wore a high-collar trench coat two sizes too big and carried a data tablet under one arm.
"Found something," he said.
Selene raised an eyebrow. "What, another government file on Elijah?"
"No. I decrypted part of his summoning signature using remote echoes from the Rift logs. And… Selene, his signal's not just unique. It's ancient."
She frowned. "Ancient how?"
"Pre-Surge. Possibly older. Something is buried deep in the Aether that shouldn't exist anymore. His summons aren't coded like normal undead. They're layered with what looks like a personality lattice—an actual neural imprint."
"You're saying his summons are… alive?"
"Worse," Mason said. "They remember who they were."
Selene's stomach twisted.
Because if that was true… Elijah wasn't just a necromancer.
He was something else. Something old.
Back at the church, Karu remained silent, standing guard as Elijah paced.
"I need to test something," Elijah said.
He raised his hand toward a fallen plank of wood across the room. Concentrated. Willed.
Karu moved instantly. Inhuman speed. The blade flashed.
The plank split in four pieces.
Then exploded into dust.
"Okay," Elijah said, voice low. "You're terrifying."
Karu didn't move.
Elijah looked around. "Alright. What next? You got spells? Skills?"
Karu raised his left hand. Blue energy pulsed from the bones, forming a rune in midair.
Soulfire: Minor.
A jet of ghostly flame fired across the church and incinerated the remains of an old flagpole.
"Jesus—" Elijah ducked. "That's a minor spell?"
Karu turned."I am not yet whole. With battle, I grow. With memory, I return."
"You evolve," Elijah said slowly. "Like… like players do."
Karu nodded once."We are bound. My growth is your legacy."
That hit differently.
Because for the first time, Elijah realized he wasn't alone in this.
He wasn't just a summoner. He was a guide to the things he summoned. A commander of evolving dead.
And if Karu was only the first?
He couldn't even imagine what the other two would be like.
The next morning, Elijah returned to the city. AWC patrols were thicker now—black-armored officers with mana rifles and rune-dampeners. Rift breaches had doubled in the last 48 hours, and the press was circling like sharks around blood.
He met Selene at a diner near Grand Central, one of the few places that still served real eggs instead of protein cubes.
She slid him a plate as he sat down. "Tell me everything."
"I awakened one of them," Elijah said quietly. "He calls himself Karu."
Selene blinked. "He gave you a name?"
"More than that. He… he remembers things. He's not just obeying. He's choosing."
Selene's face darkened. "That's not normal."
"Yeah. I figured when he set a flagpole on fire using something called Soulfire Minor."
Mason slid into the booth beside them, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.
"I checked with a restricted archive," he said, voice low. "The last recorded necromancer to summon a sentient undead was Xelior the Hollow, right before the Surge."
"Isn't he the one who blew up an island?" Selene asked.
"Blew it up, raised it again, turned it into a mobile fortress, and vanished. So yes."
Elijah buried his face in his hands. "Fantastic. I'm the next ghost pirate king."
Selene reached out, placed a hand on his.
"You're not him," she said firmly.
"But I am something different."
"That doesn't make you evil."
"Doesn't make me good either," Elijah murmured.
For a moment, silence fell between them.
Then Mason leaned in. "If you really want answers, there's someone you need to talk to."
"Who?"
Mason hesitated. "The Archivist. She runs a neutral zone out in the ruins of the old Bronx Library. People say she knew the Surge when it happened. Knew it personally."
Selene looked at Elijah. "Could be a trap."
"Or it could be the first real lead we've had."
Elijah stood.
"Let's go meet a ghost."
Miles beneath the city, in a crypt that didn't exist on any map, Karu knelt before a shattered throne.
His flames flickered blue-white as if in mourning.
Above him, two statues stared down—figures carved from black stone. One with a scythe. The other with wings made of ash.
"Soon," Karu whispered, voice echoing in the dust. "The Triad will walk again."