Lucien stood under the open sky for the first time in countless years. The wind didn't greet him. It tore at him. Cold. Merciless. As if the world hadn't waited for him, hadn't remembered him.
His chains, once soaked in divine seals, now lay shattered at the mouth of the ancient chasm. The prison was gone. Collapsed. Swallowed by time and silence.
He looked up.
Above him wasn't the sky he remembered — it was fractured. Shards of color, streaks of darkness, and flowing rifts of energy pierced the heavens. Stars bled silver. Moons trembled behind veils of mist. The Void had kissed the world while he was gone.
Lucien stepped forward, barefoot over soil that cracked beneath him. His aura was unstable — not violent, but incomprehensible. Where his shadow stretched, the grass withered. Birds fled. The very concept of heat faded.
A flicker of memory — a face, a voice. "Lucien, if they find out what you are, they'll never let you leave this place alive." It was her voice.
He closed his eyes. Her name wouldn't come. But the betrayal echoed.
He touched his chest. No heartbeat. Not truly. Whatever had been done to him in that prison — by gods, by men, by those who called themselves 'Mentors' — had altered the very laws his body obeyed.
A pulse from deep within the earth answered him. Not a sound. A presence.
Lucien turned slowly.
From the mouth of the crumbling prison, black mist curled up like fingers. A voice, feminine and unhurried, whispered: "You were never alone."
He didn't respond. He only walked.
And far above, in a city of glass towers and heavenly soldiers, an old man with white eyes dropped his wine goblet. It shattered.
"The Void has taken form," the elder whispered. "He walks again."