The rain still clung to my hoodie as I stepped through the hotel doors. My shoes left wet prints across the marble floor, each step heavier than the last. I couldn't stop thinking about him—the boy in the woods, his precision, his speed, and the way his blue lightning carved through the storm like it was alive. His name still echoed in my head: Lucien.
I reached my room and shut the door behind me, pressing my back against it. My chest rose and fell sharply.
"Lucien… who are you?"
I tossed my soaked hoodie onto the chair and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at my trembling hands. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't sure if I could win against someone like that.
But something else gnawed at me. The voice I'd heard during my fight earlier—my mother's voice—still rang faintly in my ears. Son... It was more than a coincidence. Something was happening, something bigger than this tournament, and I was right in the middle of it.
I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, but no rest came. The storm outside rattled the windows, thunder booming like war drums in the distance.
And then—
Beneath the arena, deep in the shadows where no one dared tread, he moved.
??? wore a black hooded cloak , the hood pulled low over his head, casting his face in shadow. He knelt before a bloodstained altar, its surface slick with crimson. A boy's body—lifeless, pale—lay atop it, his chest carved open with ritualistic precision. Dark glyphs pulsed on the stone walls, glowing faintly in time with the victim's fading life force.
The hooded man smiled, baring razor-sharp teeth that glinted in the torchlight. His voice slithered like venom through the cold chamber.
"Another offering… and the seal weakens."
He dipped his clawed fingers into the boy's blood and drew a sigil on the ground. As he completed the last stroke, the glyphs on the walls erupted in a sinister red glow.
"Just one more..." he whispered, licking the blood from his fingers. "One more child of power to break the chains…"
He rose, his hoodie shifting slightly as he tilted his head back, gazing upward through the cracks in the stone ceiling as if he could see the arena above.
"Kuro…" his voice dripped with twisted reverence. "The perfect vessel. The boy marked by fate, born to bleed for my king."
His laughter echoed through the underground chambers, sharp and manic.
"Soon, Demon King… soon you shall walk this earth again."
Aboveground, lightning split the sky, and I jolted upright in bed, my chest tight.
A sudden chill ran down my spine, though my room was warm. I didn't know why—but somehow, in my gut, I felt it.
Something terrible was moving beneath our feet.
And Kuro… he was at the center of it.