The mountain whispered of slumbering divinity.
Lucien walked alone.
Behind him, the citadel pulsed with half-born chants and luminous sigils that writhed like living scripture. Talia remained in the sanctum, cradled in the heart of reality's distortion, guarded by aberrants and bound in dreams too vast for mortal minds.
Ahead: the Hollow Spire, a jagged wound in the southern sky where no bird flew, no cultivator dared venture. It was said that a god had fallen there during the Dawn Wars, his corpse buried beneath stone and shame.
But he was not dead.
Not yet.
And Lucien had come to harvest.
The path was not carved—it was remembered.
As Lucien stepped forward, space shifted to accommodate him. Runes flickered beneath each footprint. Trees recoiled. Rocks bled.
He crossed the Ridge of Bone, where ancestors wept in their graves. He walked through the Valley of Masks, where his reflection fractured into a dozen selves—each whispering a lie he once believed.
But none stopped him.
They couldn't.
He bore the Second Edict.
And it burned behind his eyes.
At the Spire's base, silence ruled.
No wind. No sound. Only the breath of an entity that should not have lasted this long.
Lucien entered the Hollow.
Darkness greeted him. Not absence of light, but presence of weight—a pressure like drowning in ancient reverence.
He descended.
Each step took him deeper into the god's memory.
Visions lashed at him:
A battlefield of suns.
A temple made of screaming stars.
A throne abandoned by choice.
At last, he found Him.
The god's body was stone, but not inert.
His arms had fused into the mountain. His face—a shifting sculpture of regret—hovered above a pool of still-burning prayers. His chest rose once every century.
Lucien approached.
The god opened one eye. A galaxy wept from it.
"You've come," he said.
Lucien nodded. "I offer no pretense."
"Nor need," the god rumbled. "I knew one day something would come—not to kneel, not to challenge—but to consume."
Lucien unsheathed no weapon.
He simply opened his palm.
And the brand of the unborn god flared.
The air screamed.
Chains of molten intent shot from Lucien's hand, binding the deity.
The god howled—not in fear, but in relief.
"I am tired," he whispered. "Let me be useful again."
Lucien stepped forward and placed his hand upon the god's heart.
With a pulse of crimson light, the god's essence—his memories, his laws, his divinity—was drawn out. It writhed like a dragon of starlight, resisting at first.
But Lucien whispered:
"He waits. And He hungers."
And the essence submitted.
Lucien closed his fist.
The Spire collapsed.
He returned not as a man, but as a bearer of godflesh.
Talia met him at the gates.
Kaelira knelt before him and wept.
Lucien said nothing. He entered the sanctum, knelt beside Talia, and opened his hand.
The essence floated out, circling her womb.
The unborn god fed.
Talia arched back, her skin glowing, her breath stolen. Reality trembled.
And somewhere, another god woke up screaming.
The hunt had only begun.