CHAPTER ONE: THE 100,000TH VICTORY
"Only broken things become divine." : Mr. P
....
The cheers struck like thunder.
Eden's silver spires caught the dying light of a violet sky and refracted it into spears of brilliance, each mirrored tower bending heaven itself into cruel geometry. The Grand Sanctum of Valor was alive with noise: a million voices crashing together into a single name, chanted like an invocation, a war cry, a prayer.
LUTHER! LUTHER! LUTHER!
He stood atop the monolithic obsidian stage like a statue of himself.
White robes clung to his broad frame, Bare chest and battle scars that tell a thousand stories, flecked with golden threads that shimmered faintly as though burning from within. In his hand was the spear... Lux Caedis.. a long, beautiful horror of angelic bone and divine steel. It stood beside him now, its blade buried in the black glass of the stage like a gravestone.
Behind him, projected in massive glowing sigils for all of Eden to see, the latest kill looped again and again: Luther severing the head of the One-Horned Akuma in Zone 7 with clinical precision. The creature's blood thick, luminous, and wrong.. fanned into the air like shattered stars. The crowd roared every time the footage repeated.
But Luther did not watch.
He stared forward, at nothing, as if watching some distant point far beyond the walls of the citadel. To the crowd, he was an icon of poise and resolve. To himself, he felt like something hollow pretending to be whole.
The banners whipped in the wind. Rose petals, dyed red and gold, rained down from the upper balconies. Children held paper effigies of him aloft, their eyes wide with adoration. He could feel their gaze crawling over him like ants, the weight of a million expectations pressing down on his shoulders.
And yet…
Everything sounded muffled.
It always did now.
The cheers, the flags, the children's songs… dull echoes of a life he couldn't remember living.
Something inside him had died two years ago.
And no amount of worship would bring it back.
...
At the base of the stairs, the announcer's voice rang out, smooth and theatrical.
"Behold!! "
"The Shield of the Last Citadel! The Bane of the Black Flame! The Hero of 100,000 Victories! He who slew the Burning Seraph and turned the Sea of Akuma Blood to mist—LUTHER! THE DIVINE DELIVERANCE!"
A wave of screams. The sound shook the sanctum like a bomb.
Luther didn't move.
Not until he felt a small hand slip into his own.
He glanced down.
A child. A boy no older than seven, dressed in ceremonial white, his wide eyes shimmering with awe. Behind him, cameras zoomed in to immortalize the image: the savior and his people, the lamb and the shepherd.
Luther lowered himself to one knee.
He smiled... not because he wanted to, but because the world needed him to.
"Are you afraid?"... he asked the boy softly.
The boy blinked, confused. "Of you?"
Luther hesitated. Then shook his head faintly. "Of what's coming."
The boy looked at the projection of Luther beheading the One-Horned Akuma and smiled timidly. "Not with you here, sir."
Something deep in Luther twisted at that. His knuckles whitened around the haft of the spear. He wanted to tell the boy.. wanted to tell everyone:
I am afraid. I am terrified.... am really terrified. I want to weep . But your cheers make too steep for me to fall into this hole i ....You don't understand.. No.. you Can't.
I'm not real. I was made to be perfect… for your eyes but inside, something is screaming.
Instead, he nodded.
And rose to the thunder.
...
High above, behind mirrored glass in the Observer Tower, a man stood watching.
Zero.
The Prophet of Ascension.
His matte-black robes, stitched with silver scripture, hung like shadowed water around him. His pale gray eyes... flat, faintly glowing did not blink. He stood with his hands folded behind his back, and he did not move as the crowd below roared.
Behind him, the other Observers stirred.
Genna Vrae, musclebound and coiled like a blade spring, crossed her arms. "He looks worse," she muttered. "He's barely reacting to their screams."
Sera Velorian hovered in a throne of psionic blue light, her translucent skin faintly luminous. She smiled faintly, cruelly. "Oh, our sweet boy is definitely breaking. I can taste it from here. That smile wasn't real."
Callus Greaven, draped in a tattered cloak of broken circuitry and ashsteel plates, fiddled with a glowing relic in his hands. "He's served his purpose. Keep him alive just long enough to finish Project L," he said flatly. "Then dispose of the asset."
Zero said nothing.
Because Zero already knew.
...
Down in the shadows beneath the council floor, another figure watched silently. A ripple in the glass. A flicker in the reflection.
Rei Kagami.
The hidden Observer. The shadow of pride.
He whispered into his comm: "He's cracking. You're running out of time."
..
Far below, deep in the cluttered observation chamber filled with broken clones and half-dismantled drones, Mr. P spun lazily in a wheeled chair.
He was dressed in a bathrobe and mismatched sandals. His long spiky white hair that hadn't touched a hair clipper for years. With his Black sunglasses and bowl of cereal floated in midair above a softly humming force field as he crunched loudly.
The office smelled faintly of ozone and burnt toast.
A giant digital display flashed overhead:
LUTHER SIGNAL: STABLE — 94.5%
Mr. P chuckled through a mouthful of cereal. "Running out of time? My dear boy… I invented time. And then I told it to wait while I went to the bathroom."
Rei's hologram flickered above the desk, his sharp eyes narrowing. "Don't be an ass, Paku. If Luther breaks on stage, there's no coming back. He's fracturing."
Mr. P's spoon clinked into the cereal vortex. He stood slowly.
And then, in a rare moment of clarity, his eyes sharpened.
"Good," he murmured.
Rei tilted his head. "You dog… want him to break?"
Mr. P turned toward the stasis pod in the corner... the original shell where Luther had been forged. The glass hummed faintly with old runes and cables that glowed faintly blue.
"Only broken things," Mr. P said softly, "become divine."
...
On the stage above, the celebration reached its peak.
The crowd sang hymns now... old prayers once meant for God, now rewritten in Luther's name. Fireworks bloomed across the violet sky. The chants of Savior! and Deliverer!... rang louder than the thunder.
And still, Luther stood motionless.
The lights were too bright.
The voices… too loud.
His chest… too hollow.
And then he saw her.
Naomi.
Just beyond the crowd, a vision.. or memory he couldn't tell. Her hair white, her robes bloodstained. Her eyes cold, not with fear but with understanding.
You were made to end him, she whispered.
His heart seized.
Who?
Who had she meant?
The crowd gasped as he staggered.
His hand trembled on the spear. The polished black glass beneath his boots cracked faintly. His vision blurred.
And then, deep beneath the muscle and divine lattice of his engineered body, a voice stirred.
Soft. Like ash carried on a faint wind.
You're not a hero, Luther.
You're a blade.
And the one who forged you… is still watching.
The boy at his side tugged at his robe, whispering, "Sir…?"
But Luther could not hear him.
Not over the sound of the screaming inside his own head.
And high above, in the Tower, Zero smiled faintly.
Because patterns always crack.
And in those cracks… something new is born.
END OF CHAPTER 1