Chapter 2766: Story 2767: The Name Before Time

The child levitated above the shattered floor.

Black veins spread across his pale skin, branching from his chest toward his throat. The red heart beneath his ribs pulsed violently, answering a second heartbeat somewhere beyond the golden door.

Ronan stepped toward him.

“Brother?”

The child’s head turned slowly.

His eyes were no longer red. Six burning stars glimmered inside them.

“Father,” he whispered. “I remember you.”

The ancient Father staggered backward.

“No,” he breathed. “That memory was taken from you.”

The child smiled, but the expression belonged to something much older.

“You took my loneliness and called it peace. You took my heart and called it creation.”

The floor split beneath him.

A column of darkness erupted from his open mouth, twisting upward like a living serpent. The corridor groaned as the walls began shedding their ancient carvings. Every symbol transformed into a screaming face before dissolving into black dust.

Lyra raised her bow.

“Ronan, get away from him!”

She released an arrow toward the darkness. Before it could reach the child, it stopped in midair. The wooden shaft aged, crumbled, and vanished.

Lyra stared at her empty bow.

Something had just devoured time itself.

Cael seized Darian and dragged him behind a fallen pillar. Elias wrapped Aren in black chains, shielding them both as the ceiling began collapsing.

“Whatever comes out of that boy,” Cael shouted, “do not let it touch your blood!”

Ronan barely heard him.

He was staring into the darkness emerging from his brother.

A face appeared inside it.

His face.

Not the silver-haired Firstborn’s, nor the scarred face of the ancient Father. This face was younger, with Ronan’s features stripped of warmth and mercy. Golden eyes opened beneath a crown of living bone.

The figure spoke without moving its lips.

“Have you remembered me yet?”

Ronan’s sword trembled in his hand.

“Who are you?”

The golden eyes narrowed.

“You carry my memories. Your brothers carry my power. That child carries what remains of my heart.”

The figure leaned closer.

“And you still ask who I am?”

A memory exploded inside Ronan.

He saw a world without stars, a throne floating above endless darkness, and a child kneeling before a colossal figure whose face had never existed.

Then came a name.

A name so ancient that reality itself seemed to recoil from it.

Ronan screamed.

The golden mark on his chest ignited, and every shattered crown rose from the ground, orbiting him like fragments of a dead sun.

His mother’s voice echoed from beyond the door.

“RONAN! DO NOT SPEAK THE NAME!”

But the child laughed.

“You see now, brother? Mother did not hide the monster from us.”

He reached toward Ronan.

“She hid us from what we were made to become.”

The darkness swallowed the ancient Father first. His armor dissolved, his six burning eyes disappearing one by one. Before he vanished completely, he looked at Ronan with something resembling pity.

“Forgive me,” he whispered.

Then he was gone.

Ronan’s feet lifted from the ground.

Lyra seized his wrist with both hands.

“Ronan! Look at me!”

For one moment, he recognized her.

Then the golden eyes opened fully inside his own.

The voice beyond creation whispered, “Remember.”

Ronan’s mouth opened.

And somewhere beneath the world, something answered his forgotten name.