Chapter 30: Babayaga

Footsteps rose again behind Lucian, a small procession moving in from the entrance, and even knowing this was only memory, he felt the pressure shift the instant that new presence began closing the distance.

He turned, following the same direction Lumina had already fixed her attention on, and found more figures approaching, still distant but closing fast. It wasn’t only the two of them who noticed. Even the crowd still hurling abuse at Miyu fell silent as the newcomers entered.

A man in black stepped through the doorway first, dressed in the distinct fashion of the Green Lands. Something about the cut of his coat, the unusual shape of his hat, marked him instantly as someone of real standing back home.

"The one approaching us is one of Silver Needle’s leaders," Lumina said quietly.

"His name is Kai. A Supreme, ninth tier."

Lucian nearly choked at that. A Supreme, standing right in front of him, one of the rare few who carried a purple Awakening.

A ninth-tier Supreme Core sat among the highest realms known to exist, reserved entirely for those born with purple, and the gap in raw strength between someone like that and an ordinary Awakener wasn’t something worth comparing at all.

And yet the man in front of him looked barely past thirty.

If this memory alone could press this kind of weight onto him, though, the man’s strength back then had to have been every bit as real as it felt now. Reaching a ninth-tier Supreme Core in two hundred years would already count as remarkable for most, let alone looking like this while doing it.

"Don’t let the young face fool you, Lucian. He’s old enough to be someone’s grandfather several times over, he just doesn’t look it anymore."

According to Lumina, age meant little once someone reached that tier. The body itself could be coaxed back toward youth, skin and muscle regenerating far past what should have been possible.

So this is what Supreme-level cultivation looks like. Even his breathing sounds younger than it should. Not just the surface, but whatever’s underneath too. Lucian turned the thought over, marveling at how far that kind of regeneration could actually reach.

But the pressure trailing in from the entrance hadn’t finished arriving.

Another presence pressed against him, close behind the first, and sure enough, not far past the doorway stood a second man, wrapped in a torn black cloak with the hood drawn up, a mask concealing whatever lay beneath it.

This one didn’t just carry weight. Something darker clung to him, a heaviness that seemed to seep outward and settle over everyone nearby, and even within the memory, Lucian could feel the crowd’s unease thickening the moment that figure crossed the threshold.

"This feeling, it’s like dark mana. Is he a Necromancer?" Lucian asked, half to himself, still facing the masked stranger.

Lumina’s breath caught, faint but unmistakable.

"You can sense dark mana coming off him, Lucian?"

"Yeah? Can’t you?"

She didn’t answer that directly, too caught up in her own surprise that Lucian had picked up on it at all, unprompted, before the man had shown even a hint of his power.

"Aren’t Grimoires carrying Necromancer abilities supposed to be outlawed? How is something like that still out here in the world?"

As Lucian understood it, being a Necromancer had nothing to do with being born into a black Awakening.

Someone could carry perfectly ordinary mana their entire life and still end up wielding that kind of power, because plenty of Grimoires existed capable of converting ordinary mana into something darker entirely.

"That’s the rule, technically," Lumina said. "But tell me, Lucian, do you really think people give up something that useful just because the world tells them to?"

She had a point. Empires, noble houses, the kind of power that shouted the loudest about forbidden things in public rarely meant a word of it in private.

More often than not, they kept their own forbidden strength quietly tucked away, untouched by whatever rules they preached to everyone else.

Something else nagged at Lucian beneath all of it, though, a nagging sense that he’d heard of someone like this masked figure before, somewhere, from someone.

I feel like I’ve heard about someone like him before. But from who? He turned the thought over and over, certain the memory sat just out of reach.

Before he could chase it any further, a third figure emerged from the entrance behind the other two, a woman this time, her steps lighter, her hair a warm auburn, dressed in black trimmed with red.

Everything about her bearing marked her as someone of consequence from the Green Lands as well, and the honor guard trailing behind her only confirmed it, whatever family she belonged to clearly carried serious authority of their own.

She didn’t radiate a Supreme’s presence, not the way Kai did, but Lucian could still feel a quiet, deliberate weight in how she carried herself. If he had to guess her age, she couldn’t have been far from his own.

Lumina’s gaze had already fixed on her, the same intensity Lucian remembered from when she’d first spotted that carriage from the street below.

It clicked into place then. This was who’d been riding inside it all along. Lucian only noticed how long Lumina had been staring once the silence between them stretched too far to ignore.

"Do you know her, Lumina?"

Before she could answer, quick footsteps cut across the gathering, closing in on the newcomers.

Archbishop Zoria arrived rubbing his hands together, a wide smile spreading across whatever could be seen of his face beneath the cloth.

"Thank you for making the journey. Lord Kai, Lord Rhaiven, Lady Yunxi, welcome."

Everything about how Zoria moved made it clear he’d been expecting these guests, and expecting them for a reason. Rather than leading them toward seats among the other guests, he steered them straight toward Miyu, still standing silent at the altar.

"Here she is, my lords, my lady. The devil-blooded girl. We’ve captured her and proven, beyond any doubt, that she carries a black Awakening."

Kai crossed to her first, tilting her chin up with one hand, studying her with open curiosity, as though trying to reconcile what he saw with what he’d been told. Even now, even after everything done to her, Miyu held herself with a stillness that seemed to genuinely puzzle him.

"I didn’t know devil-blooded girls came with this much patience. Are you certain about this, Zoria? She looks perfectly human to me."

Kai turned her face this way and that, checking her eyes, her features, her hair, the whole shape of her, with the careful attention of someone examining a piece he wasn’t quite sure was genuine.

"My lord, don’t let yourself be fooled the way we nearly were. Beyond the black Awakening, she’s remarkably skilled at making people pity her, at making them care."

While Zoria spoke, Yunxi had already drifted past all of it, her attention locked instead on the Kirana crystal, her fingers closing around the staff the moment she reached it, as though she’d finally found exactly what she’d come for.

"You’re certain this is the genuine Kirana crystal, Zoria?"

Zoria spun to face her at once, all smiles.

"Of course, Lady Yunxi. We’d never dream of lying to your people."

Yunxi reached to take the staff outright, only for Zoria’s hand to close around her wrist before she could.

"Ah, my lady, we’ve held up our end of this. I trust none of you have forgotten the help we’re owed, against Babayaga."

"Don’t make me out to be someone who forgets her debts, Zoria. Of course we’ll help you."

Her answer pulled a satisfied smile out of him. So this was the shape of it, everything he’d built, the crushing taxes, the strengthened Paladin ranks, the careful cultivation of ties with the Green Lands, all of it had been laid down in preparation for war against Babayaga.

Babayaga was no minor name. A ruler renowned for both raw strength and sharp judgment, presiding over a far more advanced empire along the southern coast, near the seas bordering Eosia.

Miyu, silent until now, snapped her head up the moment she heard Zoria’s plan spoken aloud.

"Have you lost your mind, Zoria? All of you, every Cardinal who’s let this happen, why would you drag the Order of Selenea into a war against Babayaga? Do you have any idea what he and his forces are capable of? He’s never given us a single reason for conflict."

"Are all of you prepared to defy Goddess Selena’s own decree?"

The crowd gasped as one at the plan laid bare in front of them. But Zoria simply waved her objection aside.

"That’s an old decree, passed down through Cardinals who no longer have any say in this. Once I become Oracle, Goddess Selena will have no objection to seeing her teachings spread beyond these borders. And you, a devil-blooded thing, what right do you have to lecture me on anything at all?"