Darkness pressed against his senses like wet ash.
Lucan blinked once.
Twice.
Pain bloomed in slow-motion behind his eyes, a molten throb that radiated from every nerve like he'd been remade with fire instead of flesh.
[System Reboot: Initiating Recovery Protocol]
[Sin Stability: F̶͎͂͠L̴̜͐̽U̶̖͝C̵̯̋T̵̤̐U̶͈̕À̸͉T̸̢̓Ḯ̸͖N̴̼̊G̴͈͂]
[Host Status: Critical… But improving. Unfortunately.]
A distorted flicker of light overhead. Pale. Sickly. A glyph pulsed across the curved ceiling, shaped like a serpent devouring a sun.
Lucan exhaled. It came out ragged.
Wherever he was... it wasn't Ashvale.
He pushed himself upright—barely. The stone beneath him was smooth and black, traced with sigils that weren't divine but still spoke. They hissed secrets in a tongue older than the Rite. Symbols that hated being looked at.
His breath fogged.
The air here didn't feel like air. It felt like breath held for centuries.
[System Alert: L̷͚͐o̵̥͛c̷͙͠ä̴̖́ẗ̸͚́i̸͍̚ő̴̲ṉ̴̀ ̷͍̑Ư̷̲n̷̲̈́k̷͕̍n̸̛͕o̶̦̽w̴̦͝n̸͎̕]
[System Integration with surroundings: REJECTED]
[Surveillance nullified. You are off the map.]
Lucan staggered to his feet. His limbs ached, but they obeyed. Barely.
"What did you pull me into?" he whispered to no one.
The system buzzed.
[That's the pr̷̪͘o̷͉͝blem, Apost̶͇͂å̴̝te. We ḏ̵͒i̸̩̿dn't.]
---
He walked out of the chamber.
Or maybe it let him go.
The corridor stretched like a ribcage of obsidian and bone. In the dim blue torchlight, he passed murals carved into the walls—gods burning, angels falling, mortals crowned in spite.
At the first junction, he saw them.
Three figures.
Armed.
Waiting.
Their armor wasn't holy. No gold. No flame sigils. Instead: warped steel, reinforced runes, blades curved like crescent moons on execution nights.
One of them tilted their head at him, almost... amused.
None of them spoke.
None of them moved.
Lucan kept walking.
They didn't stop him.
But their silence said: you're breathing because we're curious—not kind.
---
He stepped into a larger chamber—arched like a cathedral turned inside out. Chains hung from the ceiling. Thorn-vines pulsed along the walls.
That's when he heard her.
Boots on stone. Calm. Measured. Daring the world to flinch.
She emerged from a side alcove with the casual grace of a panther in a bloodstained temple.
Rivenna Drae.
And she was... stunning.
But not in any way the world had earned.
Her beauty wasn't delicate—it was deliberate. A blade forged, not born. Built of discipline, ruin, and the kind of silence that came after a battlefield had finished screaming.
Her hair spilled like inkfire down her back, streaked with something too dark for moonlight. Her features were sharp, intentional, carved by control. Eyes unreadable—almost cruel in their composure—but framed by lashes thick as shadows. A mouth that didn't smile, just... calculated.
She didn't try to be alluring.
She just was.
Power hummed from her like heat from a forge—reined in, not hidden. The cloak she wore was torn in places from a recent fight, her gauntlets still stained from where someone else's blood had tried and failed to hold her back.
Lucan's system pulsed sharply when she stepped into full view.
[Entity Identified: UNKNOWN — MATCHING V̵̡̔O̷̲͌I̵̟͗D̸̩̍STEEL Trace from Previous Engagement]
[Threat Status: UN̴̞̄C̶̙͘LASSIFIED]
[Note: This entity killed seven Inqú̵͖i̴̙͂sitors and a W̵͗ͅarden in 13.4 seconds. You were un̸͓̈́conscious. She did not m̶̦̏i̷͇͐s̸͙̾s.]
[Memory Sync Fragment Found — Re̵̤̕constructing Visual: RIV̴̟̿Ë̶̖́NNA DRAE]
Lucan blinked.
It was her.
The woman who'd torn through the ambush at Chainspire like a war hymn dipped in silence. He hadn't seen her face then—not fully. Just movement, impact, the clean finality of death delivered without rage.
Now he was seeing her. And somehow, it was more terrifying.
More... compelling.
She looked at him like she'd already measured the weight of his bones and found them wanting—but interesting.
"I'm surprised," she said, voice like cooled obsidian. "Most people I save don't survive this long."
Lucan said nothing.
His eyes tracked the runes along her gloves, the way her stance never quite rested. Not hostile. Not exactly. But defensive in a way that said: I know how to kill you. And the room behind you. Simultaneously.
She walked closer. The air shifted around her. Even the glyphs in the walls dimmed.
"You lost a lot of blood," she said. "A lot of faith, too, I hear."
Lucan tensed as a strange cold passed through his chest.
The system buzzed again.
[Unusual Arcane Pulse Detected: Source — INTERNAL]
[Glyph Signature Residue: ACTIVE]
[Encryption Unknown. Decryption? DENIED.]
He felt it, now.
Something embedded. Faint. Dormant.
Watching.
Rivenna didn't mention it.
But she looked at him like she already knew. Like she was giving him the chance to figure it out himself.
"You're the gods' discarded child," she said, circling him once. "Burned, broken, branded. And yet—"
She paused.
"—still breathing. Inconvenient, isn't it?"
Lucan met her gaze. "So what now? You saved me just to study me?"
That earned him a whisper of a smirk. Almost a smile. Almost.
"I saved you because watching something divine fall should be art," she said. "And you're still mid-stroke."
She stepped past him, toward a wall etched with a map—no labels, just blood-lines and scorchmarks forming territories no longer claimed.
Then, without turning:
"You're not the only one marked, Lucan. Just the only one they regret."
He stared after her.
And for the first time since the altar, since Aelira, since the betrayal burned through his veins—
He didn't feel like prey.
He felt seen.
And somewhere, buried beneath blood and rage and prophecy…
That was more terrifying than any god.
LOCATION: ASHVALE — INNER SPHERE OF THE DIVINE ORDER
SUB-SECTOR: THRONESHIELD VAULT, Council Chamber Prime
The doors of living stone groaned open.
The council chamber pulsed like the inside of a dying god's ribcage—walls of veined marble, glowing with ever-burning glyphs. Seven thrones. Seven factions. All arranged in a circle around a pit of nullfire where heretics used to be "corrected."
Today, the flames were black.
And Mother Halix stood in the center, eyes closed, fingers laced in prayer that had long since lost meaning.
She opened them the moment Ezekar Nythe entered.
He did not walk. He descended—robe of abyssal silk trimmed with flayed celestial script, his presence folding reality like parchment dipped in frost. His face was carved like it had forgotten softness. Eyes like voids that didn't blink—they appraised.
Power shimmered behind him like a second skin. He radiated control, entropy, and doctrine older than most bloodlines.
"You overreached," Ezekar said, voice flat as judgment. "And now the Rite has collapsed."
Halix didn't flinch. "I contained the fallout."
"You contained nothing," he spat. "You shattered the altar, killed the Warden of Flame, and turned the Apostate into prophecy incarnate."
She turned toward him slowly, the glyphs at her back forming a halo of red.
"He was never meant to survive."
"No one ever is," Ezekar replied, stepping into the circle. "But the boy lives. And the System still clings to him."
A few of the other thrones flickered. Disciples of lesser influence appeared in projection—some cloaked, some masked, none daring to speak aloud.
Ezekar continued: "We cannot kill him."
A ripple of silence.
Halix tilted her head, just enough for warning.
"Explain."
"He is bound to something older than our code. Older than the Choir. Possibly older than the Seven Pillars themselves," Ezekar said. "You didn't just birth a rogue. You birthed a key."
"To what?" Halix snapped. "To some forgotten horror? To the vault of failed gods? We've dealt with prophecy before, Ezekar. They burn."
He smiled, and the chamber dimmed.
"To something worse than gods."
---
A projection flared behind him—Lucan's corrupted system interface spinning, glitching, fractured.
[Subject: Lucan Malryk – Designation: Apostate]
[System Corruption: 79.3% — Irreversible]
[Influence Detected: EXTERNAL | Deity-Class Source: UNVERIFIED]
"Something watches him," Ezekar said softly. "And now, because of you, it watches us."
Halix's jaw tightened. "I have already issued kill orders. Inquisitors, Wardens, Seers—"
"All dead or missing," he cut in. "And your precious Aelira? She let him go."
Halix's eye twitched.
"She placed a glyph," she muttered. "Tracking. Perhaps more."
Ezekar arched a brow. "And you trust it?"
"I trust the leash," Halix said coldly. "Not the dog."
The flames in the pit crackled violently at that.
Another voice—one of the lesser Thrones—finally dared to whisper, "Then what do we do?"
Ezekar turned, gaze slicing across the chamber like a guillotine.
"We do what we've always done," he said. "We twist the knife deeper."
He looked at Halix now—not as a rival, but as a mirror.
"We let him run. Let the world fear him. Let prophecy sharpen him like a blade too dangerous to touch."
"And when he finally breaks the heavens…"
He smiled again, slow, cruel, inevitable.
"…we take the pieces."