Redhollow City, late at night.
The lanterns lining the inner wall had dimmed. Patrols were light. Beast cries echoed from the woods—but few dared to step out past the barricades after dusk.
Few… except Ash.
Clad in black, with a bone charm around his wrist and Vulcan's mark hidden beneath his robes, Ash slipped past the final tower post. The forest was just beyond, silent in a way that made your bones feel watched.
Shen Mu's voice stirred in his mind like wind through dry leaves.
> "You feel that? Something's bleeding. Something strong."
Ash pushed through the undergrowth, guided not by sound, but by pulse—a strange wave of death-aligned energy that resonated with his own.
After twenty minutes of silent movement, he found it.
---
Beneath a collapsed tree, panting in fury and pain, lay a monstrous beast: a Nine-Horned Bull, nearly three meters tall, its steel-colored hide cracked and bleeding. Each horn gleamed with faint spiritual resonance.
Its eyes flickered with rage, but it was too injured to rise.
Ash stepped closer, heart pounding. Tier 3… maybe even borderline Tier 4. Normally impossible.
Shen Mu whispered, almost reverently.
> "It's dying… and alone. A rare moment. If you act now, you may bind it before its soul escapes."
Ash stood before the beast, then knelt beside it.
The bull growled low, eyes glowing red.
> "You hate me," Ash said quietly. "I don't blame you. But you're dying. I can give you a second existence—one that will let you trample again."
From his belt, he took out a bone fragment. Vulcan had carved it with runes earlier that week.
He placed it on the bull's head, just between its horns.
> "I, Ash of the Silent Throne, offer you new purpose. Rise—as my spirit."
A dark sigil burst from the bone, circling the beast.
The ground trembled as death qi surged out of Ash's palm, flooding into the bull. The spirit resisted—raging, snarling—but its flesh was too far gone.
---
Then it happened.
The eyes dimmed… and re-lit.
The bull's body collapsed fully, lifeless.
But from its chest rose a glowing form, a translucent echo of the beast—horned, massive, spectral.
Its head bowed once.
A mark imprinted on Ash's soul sea, just beside Vulcan's brand.
> [Spirit Claimed: Nine-Horn Bull – Tier 3 | Bound to Necro-Throne]
---
Ash fell back, panting.
His forehead was slick with sweat. But the thrill… the pull… it was like nothing he'd felt before.
Shen Mu said quietly:
> "You've done something even I couldn't do in life. That beast would never have submitted to chains… but you offered legacy. Remember this. Necromancy is not domination—it is bargaining with the forgotten."
Ash stood, called forth the spirit once.
The glowing bull emerged beside him, towering, quiet, and radiating raw pressure.
Then, with a whisper, Ash reabsorbed it into his soul.
---
He turned to return, but stopped.
A spirit beast tracker stone had been embedded in a nearby tree.
Fresh.
Someone had watched that fight. Or at least… sensed it.
Ash's eyes narrowed.
> "I need to move faster."
---
Back in Redhollow, Lian Rou stirred in her room, her spirit-sensing orb flickering faintly.
She frowned.
> "A Tier 3 death signature just vanished from the woods… near our post."
She looked out toward the trees.
> "What are you hiding, orphan boy?"