Music Suggestion:
đ” "Lux Aeterna" by Clint Mansell
(Brooding orchestral power, building tension and divine chaosâperfect for Lucian's unraveling.)
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The wind was different that night.
It didn't howl. It hissedâlike something had broken loose beneath the bones of the world and now searched for a throat to devour.
Lucian stood alone in the stone chamber once used for executions. The shackles still hung, rusted. The altar still bore its stains.
He had asked Renak to clear the room. Not even shadows were allowed near him now.
He unbuttoned the last of his black tunic and stepped forward barefoot, until the markings beneath the dust met the soles of his feet.
The glyphs carved into the floor had not been touched in centuries.
They were forbidden for a reason.
He opened the book in his handâone that should've been destroyed after the warâand read aloud in the old tongue.
Words no one should remember.
Words only monsters bled.
The candles around the chamber went out.
But the darkness did not fall. It rose.
It swirled from the glyphs like smoke from a god's breath, cold and oily, twisting up Lucian's legs, licking his spine, then clawing its way into his mouth as he spoke the final word.
The last word he had sworn never to speak again.
Kyrell's name.
---
In a forest far from there, Damien froze.
He had just returned to the cave, a satchel of herbs in hand, and found Kyrell gone from the bindings.
Only the warmth of where he'd once lain remained.
But something worse had arrived.
A wind, thick with scent and memory. With him.
Damien clutched the stone wall.
"LucianâŠ" he whispered.
He could feel it like heat from a wound. Lucian had awakened something ancient.
And it was calling.
---
Kyrell was running.
Not walking. Not dreaming.
Running.
He didn't know how he had gotten freeâonly that he had to move before Damien returned. Before whatever had whispered his name through the walls returned for real.
His body ached, but not from weakness.
From change.
The dreams had broken something open. And now Lucian's voice⊠had reached him. Not in sleep. Not in imagination.
But in truth.
He stumbled into a clearingâand fell to his knees.
His breath clouded in the unnatural cold.
Then he saw itâhovering in the air in front of him.
A figure, not real, not flesh.
A projection of darkness and ash and violet flame.
Lucian.
But not as he was.
As he used to be.
Crowned. Winged. Terrible.
"Where are you?" the vision said.
Kyrell's lips parted. "Here," he whispered, choking on tears. "I'm hereâŠ"
The wind tore through the trees, the projection flickeredâ
And vanished.
---
Back in the chamber, Lucian collapsed to his knees.
Blood trickled from his nose. His breath came in ragged gasps.
But he had found him.
Not with maps. Not with spies.
With power.
A power that now tasted him again.
Like an old lover.
Renak burst into the chamber, having felt the tremor from above. "What have you done?" he demanded.
Lucian looked up, and his eyes glowed like a god long buried.
"What I should've done the moment they touched him."
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