Necromancer Dreams of Mechs Chapter 61: Chapter 67

Read chapter 61 of Necromancer Dreams of Mechs by Magic on NovelPedia.

Chapter 61: The Weight of the World The silence in the booth wasn't just quiet; it was pressurized. I could feel the necrotic hum in my veins vibrating against the sterile, clinical threat Festivus had just leveled at me. You are going to lose someone important. I looked at Ciara. She stood there, Level 0 and fragile, her face a map of heartbreak and confusion. The "Merchant Husband" lie, the layers of silk and leather Harold had dressed me in, the cold mask I’d been wearing since I stepped out of the Hell Glade—it all felt like a suit of lead. Seraphine felt it too. She was a Marquis, a woman of sharp instincts and sharper steel, and she was smart enough to recognize a landslide before it started. She didn't say a word. She didn't make a scene. She simply let go of my arm, her eyes wide as she watched the "Lord" she’d been trying to claim dissolve back into a boy. I didn't think. If I had thought for even a second, my social anxiety or my fear of the God’s prophecy would have locked my knees in place. Instead, I surged forward. I gave her no space to retreat, no time to ask another question. I closed the distance in a blur of movement that probably looked like a teleport to their Level 0 eyes. I pulled Ciara into me, my arms wrapping around her with a desperation that bordered on violent. The "Lord of the Dead" broke. As my head tucked into her shoulder, the two months of isolation slammed into me like a physical blow. I felt the phantom spray of blood from when Lord Langreth’s son died. I felt the hollow, rhythmic thud of the thirty Fleshed Squires I’d forcibly dragged back from the peace of the grave. I felt the cold, systematic tally of the two thousand souls my Reapers had just harvested in the streets outside. I was sixteen, and I had more blood on my hands than the city’s High Spire had stones. "I've got you," I whispered, though I wasn't sure if I was saying it to her or if I was pleading for her to hold me together. "I've got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I didn't care that Nathan was watching with wide eyes. I didn't care that Serhii and Lee were likely analyzing my "weakness" for future leverage. I didn't even care that Seraphine was standing right behind me, watching her "Lord" weep into the shoulder of a Level 0 Barbarian. For the first time since the "Long Night" began, the HUD, the levels, and the necrotic power didn't matter. The weight of everything—the deaths, the resurrections, the cold-blooded optimization of my own soul—it all came pouring out into that hug. Ciara stiffened for a heartbeat, shocked by the sudden reversal, but then her arms locked around my waist, her tears soaking into my doublet. The silence at the table returned, but the "pin-drop" tension had shifted. It wasn't about the "Wife" anymore. It was about the fact that Allen Voss had come back from the dead, and he had brought the weight of a cemetery with him. The silence held for another long moment, broken only by the ragged sound of my own breathing. I eventually pulled back, the embarrassment finally catching up to the grief. I wiped my face with the back of a gloved hand—the same hand that had crushed the skulls of monsters in the Hell Glade just days ago. Ciara didn't let go of my other hand. She looked at me, her eyes searching my face, trying to find the boy she knew under the exhaustion and the "Merchant" disguise. "Okay," Sarah whispered, her voice trembling as she stepped in. She was the first to move, her maternal instincts overriding the shock. She gestured nervously to the booth. "Okay. Let's... let's sit. Everyone sit. We’re making a scene." She was right. The tavern was loud, but a crying teenager in noble clothes hugging a barbarian was drawing eyes. We slid into the booth. It was a tight squeeze. I sat next to Ciara, refusing to let that contact break. Seraphine sat on my other side, her posture perfect, her presence acting like a frost that kept the others from crowding too close. Serhii and Lee took the far ends, their e