The rain tasted like rust.
Lucien stood in it for hours motionless letting the red droplets roll down his arms, soaking into his skin. Around him, the forest smoldered. Ash drifted on the wind like snow. The trees bore burn marks not from flame, but from raw, unshaped magic his magic.
And beneath the red-soaked soil, the bodies of the Hunters lay still.
They had called him Riftborn. Mistake. Monster.
But only the last one had said something that truly rattled him.
> "I was the one who came first."
Lucien had never heard of another like him. Not from Heaven. Not from Hell. Not even from the Watcher. Yet the resemblance had been… perfect. Like a distorted mirror. A sibling, maybe. A failed prototype.
A shadow of himself.
Or worse the real version.
The raven let out a harsh cry, circling above him once before diving toward the north, toward the deeper part of the woods.
Lucien followed.
He trusted the raven. Not because it spoke because it didn't.
Its silence was honest in a world full of twisted prophecy.
The forest changed.
The deeper he went, the older everything felt.
Trees towered like forgotten gods. Their trunks twisted around ancient runes that pulsed faintly in the shadows. The ground became uneven, cracked by long-dried riverbeds. Somewhere beneath the moss and dirt, he felt it a presence. Something vast, sleeping. Not watching. Dreaming.
The raven landed on a broken stone slab.
Lucien approached.
It wasn't a grave.
It was a door.
Buried in earth and roots. Carved with language he didn't recognize. And yet, when he laid a hand against it, the symbols flared to life responding to him like a heartbeat syncing with his own.
The slab shuddered.
And began to open.
A stairway descended beneath the world.
Cold air rushed out air that hadn't touched the surface in eons. Lucien stepped into the dark without hesitation. The raven followed, gliding soundlessly.
Torches lit one by one along the curved stone wall, as if recognizing him.
As if welcoming him.
At the bottom, he reached a massive chamber.
And inside…
He found names.
Hundreds of them.
Etched into obsidian walls, glowing faintly red. Each name carried a title beneath it:
Veyra, The Bound Flame
Solan, Child of the Void
Naeriel, The Twin-Eyed Curse
Lucien Vale… The Final Rift
Lucien stepped back, heart racing.
His name wasn't at the top.
It was the last.
At the bottom of the wall, a sentence burned into the stone.
> "The First born of breach. The Last born of truth. Eight shall awaken. The ninth shall choose."
Lucien's hands trembled.
"Eight…"
He counted the names.
Nine.
If this wall was telling the truth he wasn't the first.
And worse?
He wasn't alone.
A low hum echoed through the chamber. Not sound. Not voice.
A summoning.
One of the names began to glow brighter Naeriel.
The wall cracked.
And from it, something began to emerge.
A shape thin, tall, feminine dripping with liquid shadow, eyes burning with the same silver-and-red as Lucien's.
Not human.
Not angel.
Not demon.
Like him.
She looked at him with ancient recognition. As if she'd been waiting.
Lucien tried to speak.
But she beat him to it.
> "Took you long enough, brother."
End of Chapter 5