The ground screamed.
Not in sound but in pressure. Like something ancient was clawing up from beneath reality, dragging with it the weight of a thousand forgotten truths.
Lucien stood at the center of the chaos, hands raised, the air around him trembling like glass about to shatter.
Behind him, Naeriel braced herself, shadow-runes spiraling up her arms.
Above them, Saradin the Choirbreaker descended slowly, wings stretched to their full, radiant length twelve in all. His golden armor glowed like a dying sun, and in his hand he held a blade forged from silence itself. No flame. No light. Just the absence of sound.
> "You awaken what should remain buried," Saradin said, voice neither cruel nor kind.
"And still, you do not understand what you are."
Lucien's voice was low, but it cut through the storm.
> "Then show me."
Saradin struck first.
A line of light tore through the clearing an arc of force that split the earth for miles. Trees turned to dust. Sky darkened. The air caught fire.
Lucien didn't move.
The blast hit him square in the chest.
But he didn't fall.
He didn't bleed.
He absorbed it.
The energy sank into him like water into dry ground.
Then Lucien raised his hand and returned it tenfold.
A sphere of warped reality pulsed outward. Not light. Not fire.
Just pure unfiltered wrongness.
The Choirbreaker staggered, his wings folding in tightly as he slid backward across the sky. Several of the angels behind him screamed, falling from the air as the pulse passed over them.
Their halos cracked.
Naeriel was at Lucien's side in an instant.
"Your seal," she said quickly. "It's breaking."
Lucien's hands were shaking.
"I didn't know I had a seal."
Naeriel's voice dropped.
> "We all do. We were bound to keep the Architect asleep."
Lucien turned to her.
"The what?"
She didn't answer.
Because the ground opened beneath them.
And the world changed.
They fell not through stone, but through layers of reality.
Time buckled. Light bent. And they landed in a place that shouldn't exist.
Not earth.
Not hell.
Not even the void between.
This place was made of echoes.
Reflections of all that could have been.
The sky was a mirror, cracked and spinning. The ground was black glass. In every direction, versions of Lucien flickered some older, some monstrous, some already dead.
But one figure stood alone.
Tall. Armored. No wings.
Just a crown of thorns wrapped in silver thread and a blade made from broken halos.
He turned to face Lucien.
And Lucien recognized himself.
Older.
Colder.
Without mercy.
> "You think you're the first," the reflection said.
Lucien's heart pounded.
"You're"
> "The last version that lived long enough to see what we really are."
Naeriel stepped forward, runes glowing dangerously. "This place is sealed. We're not meant to be here."
The reflection nodded. "That's the point. You're not supposed to see the end."
Lucien looked around. "The Architect… they built this place?"
The reflection stepped closer. His eyes were silver and red but lifeless.
> "The Architect didn't build the world.
They broke it.
And we… are the pieces that remember."
The mirrored version drew his blade.
"Kill me now, and you might keep yourself."
Lucien didn't move.
"I don't want to become you."
> "Then make a new path.
Or repeat mine."
They clashed.
Steel met light.
Magic met memory.
Lucien fought not just for his life but to remain himself. Every strike from the reflection tore at his control, pulling darker instincts to the surface. The desire to burn, to dominate, to erase the gods who tried to control him.
But then Naeriel screamed.
Not in pain. In warning.
The mirror sky above cracked.
And something enormous looked down.
One eye.
Red and silver.
Not Lucien's.
Not Naeriel's.
Older.
The First Rift.
The one even the Architect feared.
Lucien froze.
The reflection froze.
Even the ground stopped moving.
The eye stared down at them and Lucien understood:
He wasn't the spark.
He wasn't the weapon.
He was the lock.
And the key?
Was waking.
End of Chapter 7