Chapter 76: Crown of the Withered God
The air around the shattered battlefield pulsed with residual mana, thick like smoke from a funeral pyre that had burned for a thousand years. Rubble littered the obsidian floor—fragments of ancient runes that had once held the power to bind gods now glowing faintly under the moonlight that bled through the fractured ceiling above like silver tears.
Valerian stood with one boot planted atop the broken statue of the First King, grinding marble dust beneath his heel. The monument—a symbol of the old world’s glory—crumbled beneath him like everything else that had dared stand in his path.
"I should’ve known," he muttered, his voice carrying the weight of bitter revelation as he glared down at the bloodied corpse of Lord Veylin. The man’s final expression was one of pure betrayal, eyes wide with the shock of a father’s love turned to ash, lips parted in a silent scream as the sword of spectral flames still burned through his gut, cauterizing flesh and soul alike.
The metallic scent of blood mixed with the acrid smell of burnt mana, creating a nauseating cocktail that would have made lesser men retch. But Valerian had long since stopped being lesser than anything.
Behind him, Kael and Lira descended from the floating platform that had carried them into this inner sanctum of horrors. Both were wounded—Kael clutching his left arm where bone showed white through torn flesh, Lira’s face painted with ash and dried blood that wasn’t entirely her own. But they were alive, and in this place of death, that was miracle enough.
"You went too far," Lira hissed, staggering up beside him with the unsteady gait of someone fighting shock and grief in equal measure. Her eyes—once warm brown, now a bright silver that reflected the supernatural energies saturating the air—gleamed with fury that threatened to consume what remained of her sanity. "He was my father."
Valerian didn’t flinch. He’d learned long ago that mercy was a luxury he couldn’t afford. "He was a traitor. You know it. You saw what he was becoming with your own eyes."
The accusation hung in the air like a blade, sharp and cutting. Lira’s face crumpled for a moment—the mask of the hardened warrior slipping to reveal the grieving daughter beneath—before hardening into something resembling acceptance.
Kael stepped between them, his voice calm but grim, the tone of a man who’d seen too much and understood too little. "He was summoning something. That wasn’t just a contract ritual. That was—"
"A throne," Valerian finished, his gaze fixed on the ruined summoning circle that still pulsed with malevolent energy. "One that was never meant for mortals. One that shouldn’t exist in any realm governed by the natural order."
The implications of those words settled over them like a shroud. They’d all felt it during the battle—the wrongness that had emanated from Veylin’s ritual, the sense that reality itself was being twisted into shapes that violated the fundamental laws of existence.
Behind them, the shattered runic circle continued its ominous pulsing, each beat synchronized with their heartbeats as if mocking their mortality. From its ruined center, where ancient stone had been melted into glass by forces beyond comprehension, rose a black crown wreathed in flame. It spun slowly in midair like a cursed halo, defying gravity with casual contempt for the laws of physics.