From his throne of shattered light, Velyrion gazed into the void.
For eons, he had witnessed the course of gods and mortals alike: wars before their first clash, births before they were conceived, and deaths long before their victims ever spoke their own names. Fate had never been hidden from him.
Until now.
His eyes moved across countless threads of light.
Nothing.
Not a vision, not a possibility, not even the faintest fragment of what was to come. Only an impenetrable darkness.
Velyrion remained utterly still. For the first time in his existence, he had no idea how events would unfold.
—No... —he murmured, the word barely fading into the air.
He forced his perception once more.
He searched for the trace of a war.
Nothing.
He searched for a death.
Nothing.
He searched for the fate of the gods themselves.
Nothing.
The darkness remained, vast and absolute.
His fingers tightened around the armrest of his throne.
—Who dares...?
His voice made the Celestial Realm convulse. Golden clouds were torn apart, celestial temples trembled upon their foundations, and even the divinities at the farthest reaches of the heavens felt the shudder of his wrath.
But no answer came.
Velyrion fixed his gaze upon the abyss once more, and then he reached an even more disturbing realization:
The future had not been hidden from him.
It simply no longer belonged to him.
A fine crack appeared across the skin of his hand. He watched it in complete silence as a second fracture spread along his arm.
His divine essence was crumbling.
Faith.
For millennia, mortals had nourished the gods with their prayers, their fears, and their hopes. Yet that flow was dying, and with it, the power that sustained the heavens.
Velyrion clenched his teeth.
A god did not succumb to old age.
He died the moment he was forgotten.
And Velyrion was beginning to fade.
—Lusian Douglas...
The name escaped his throat, steeped in venom.
The Oracle forced his vision open once more. This time, he abandoned the future and traced the source of the disruption directly.
He found him.
A mortal duke.
A name absent from the Book of Fate.
An existence that should never have been.
Velyrion examined him for several tense seconds. He could not see his entire past, nor could he decipher the course of his steps. He could not understand why he existed in this world.
It was like staring at a page torn from creation itself.
An anomaly.
An error.
And errors had to be corrected.
Velyrion raised one hand, and his decree thundered across the heavens:
—Lusian Douglas is an enemy of humanity.
The sentence descended upon the mortal plane like a divine scourge.
At the altars, priests received the divine voice in violent convulsions. In the cities, multitudes heard the echo of the prophecies, and whispers spread like fire through dry grass.
A duke.
A traitor.
A blasphemer.
The man destined to condemn the world.
Velyrion watched as his verdict began spreading across the nations.
Yet the decree was not enough.
His power continued to diminish at an alarming rate. If he chose to descend to the mortal plane, the Divine Law would fall upon him without mercy:
A god who sets foot upon the earth ceases to be a god.
He would surrender his divinity, his eternity, and his immunity, becoming nothing more than flesh.
Vulnerable.
Mortal.
But Velyrion no longer had the luxury of choice.
The future was fading, and as long as Lusian continued to breathe, fate would never return to his hands.
The Oracle's eyes burned with sacred fire.
—Then I shall descend.
The halo of light surrounding his throne began to fracture into a thousand pieces.
What Velyrion did not know was that he was not alone on that journey.
Somewhere between the Celestial Plane and the mortal world, a presence lurked in the shadows.
Kheris.
The Fallen God had watched every move in absolute silence, and unlike the Oracle, he understood perfectly what was about to unfold.
A barely perceptible smile crossed his features.
The trap had been set.
Velyrion believed he was descending to hunt Lusian, unaware that he was walking of his own accord toward his own downfall.
Meanwhile, down below, on the mortal earth...
Lusian Douglas passed through the monumental gates of the capital of Carpathia.
He had no idea that the temples had just proclaimed him the supreme enemy of humanity, that the eyes of the heavens were fixed upon his back, or that a god was prepared to surrender his immortality just to eradicate him.
But he would not remain ignorant for long.
The beginning of the end had arrived.