Chapter 43: The Forgotten Promise {Part 2}

Ahead of him, Murks poured out from behind Miyu’s own body, spilling into the fog in waves.

Lucian’s blade came up again, cutting into every one that came close enough to reach.

The dark mana saturating the air around them was too dense, though, feeding the Murks’ strength with every passing second, making each one faster, hungrier than the last.

This can’t keep going. If I stay locked in this fight much longer, my mana’s going to run dry before theirs does.

He forced himself to think past the immediate threat, tracking the swarm back to its actual source. Every Murk tearing free of the mist seemed to be spilling out from directly behind Miyu’s body, as though something rooted there kept feeding them, kept feeding the dark mana thickening the air itself.

His feet carried him forward before he’d fully decided to move, dodging past attacks rather than meeting them head-on, chasing whatever sat at the center of all this.

The staircase of light had already carried him up onto the black stone itself. From there, he caught sight of it: a black Grimoire, tethered by chain to Miyu’s bound body, the same chain running down into the Omen’s massive frame below.

It looked nearly identical to the Alter Ego Grimoire he’d seen Zoria wielding in that earlier memory.

Given exactly where it sat, chained between Miyu and the source of everything spilling out around them, it wasn’t hard to guess what Zoria had actually placed there for.

It had to be the true engine behind all of it, the thing converting Miyu’s own body into a wellspring of dark mana for the Murks, and the same current driving the Omen itself.

If he wanted the Murks and whatever remained of Zoria to stop pouring out of this place, he’d need to sever that connection between the Grimoire and Miyu’s body first.

He moved fast, closing the last of the distance in a single leap, blade already swinging down toward the chain.

CLING!

The strike landed hard, tearing a visible gash into the upper length of chain, and from that wound, the same dark red fluid wept out again.

The Murks attacking him flickered and dissolved into the surrounding fog at once, one after another, vanishing.

Lucian, catching the effect immediately, pressed the advantage, driving his strikes harder, faster, determined to finish the job and sever the chain completely.

What he hadn’t accounted for was the cost. With every blow he landed, Miyu’s body, still bound close to the chain, seemed to wither a little further, growing thinner, more hollow, with each strike. Her hair had already begun falling loose in slow, drifting strands.

The sight of it stopped him cold, his blade freezing mid-swing.

A low, amused laugh drifted up from somewhere below.

"Why’d you stop, boy? Isn’t this what you wanted, making me disappear? Go on, finish the job. Cut the chain, and you’ll get exactly what you came here for, me, gone, along with that white-haired girl."

Zoria’s voice carried a thread of satisfaction, watching doubt creep across Lucian’s face. Whatever this chain’s connection to Miyu actually meant, it clearly wasn’t as simple as Lucian had assumed.

♪ You bastard, Zoria. How did you get your hands on both the Omen and Miyu’s body? How could I not have known she was here this entire time? ♪

Something in Alayna’s voice made it clear she’d genuinely had no idea Zoria had managed to seize both the Omen and Miyu’s own body. Everything she’d understood about him, going into this fight, had been built around the idea that he still only commanded whatever Murks remained loyal to his Grimoire.

Zoria confirmed as much himself, admitting that the last time he and Alayna had actually clashed, he’d had nothing but those scattered Murks to work with.

But that, he added, had been before the Chronos Domain changed.

♪ Changed? You mean because of those cracks that started tearing through it recently? ♪

Alayna’s question landed on the one thing that had actually shifted about this domain lately, the growing web of fractures spreading through it, destabilizing everything, cracks that risked bleeding out into the real world itself if left unchecked.

"I owe a debt of gratitude, actually, to whoever managed to split that Kirana crystal. Thanks to them, I found a hollow fracture hiding Miyu’s body away in here."

"I doubt you ever expected this. Your dear friend, the one you thought was long gone, has been right here the whole time."

Alayna’s glare sharpened at that, something cold and dangerous settling behind her eyes.

Confusion tangled tighter in Lucian’s own mind, though. If Zoria had only found Miyu’s body when the crystal first cracked, that meant this fracture in the domain should have existed for a long time already. But the Miyu he’d first met, in that strange white room, that meeting had felt recent, hadn’t it? Something about the timeline didn’t add up.

And yet he couldn’t dismiss what Zoria was claiming outright, either, not with an actual body lying right in front of him, real, tangible, nothing about it staged or false.

Then a sensation he’d already come to recognize crept up behind him again.

SPLASH!

Blood-red fluid lashed out at his back once more, the sounds of Alayna and Zoria’s fight still raging somewhere below them.

♪ What are you waiting for? Cut the chain, now. If you don’t finish this, that thing is going to tear its way completely out of the Chronos Domain. ♪

Lucian could barely process what Alayna was actually asking of him. From everything he’d seen in that memory, she and Miyu had been close, closer than close. If he actually severed this chain, Miyu would vanish right along with Zoria.

Could Alayna really be asking him to let that happen?

♪ Listen to me. If she were still alive, she wouldn’t want any of this to continue either. Do you have any idea how many people that monster will kill if it drags that Omen out of here with it? ♪

There was weight to what she was saying. Zoria, loose in the world again, with that kind of power behind him, wasn’t something anyone could afford to risk.

"Don’t listen to that faithless woman. Can you really stomach killing an innocent person too?"

Lucian teetered on the edge of the decision, no clear answer presenting itself, no way to know for certain whether following Alayna’s judgment was actually the right call, or just the easier one.

But he remembered Lumina, remembered how determined she’d been to see Zoria stopped for good, and that alone told him enough about how dangerous letting him go really was.

The question was whether his own hand could actually carry out what needed doing.

In the middle of that doubt, his white sword shuddered violently in his grip.

It wasn’t just the tremor he felt. Something else settled over him alongside it, an unfamiliar calm, quiet and complete.

This stillness. It feels like that white room.

The thought of that room dragged something else loose in his memory: hadn’t that been exactly where he’d first met Miyu?

Was there some deeper connection between her and that door? Could this white sword carry its own path back into that same room, the way Zoria’s reaction to it earlier seemed to suggest?

Something about Sonata clearly mattered here, mattered in ways Lucian was only beginning to understand, and if he’d already managed to pull Alayna out through a red door once, there was no reason he couldn’t reach for a white one too.

CLANG!!

He didn’t hesitate this time. He drove his blade down through the chain in one clean strike, and this time felt different entirely, Sacred Mana surging out from the blade itself as it connected.

The chain shattered outright under the force of it. The Alter Ego Grimoire dropped free, its bond to Miyu’s body severed in an instant.

Zoria, still locked in combat with Alayna, had no way to stop it. He tried desperately to reforge the connection using the chain’s remaining fluid, but it refused to take hold. The chain stayed broken.

The Omen’s hands flew to its own head, and Zoria’s scream tore out of it, raw with agony, the link between him and the creature severed for good. Whatever hold he’d had over it was gone.

Dark mana poured out from the Omen’s frame in thick waves, and from within the ruined chain, something shaped vaguely like Zoria himself began pulling free.

A massive spear of white light, blazing yellow, cut through the air and struck the rising shape of his soul dead center.

♪ INNERTIA: PURIFICATION ♪

What remained of Zoria scattered like ash caught in a gust of wind, gone entirely, leaving nothing behind but the Omen’s massive frame, slumped and still.

The black stone beneath Lucian’s feet shuddered violently, and the sound of the ceiling fracturing overhead grew louder still.

Alayna called for him to get down, fast, before whatever was tearing through the domain pulled him in with it. Lucian moved without hesitation, scooping Miyu’s failing body into his arms as he ran, her weight growing lighter, more fragile, with every step.

He hit the ground below at a dead sprint.

Alayna was there instantly, pulling Miyu’s body into her own arms the moment Lucian reached her.

There was no pulse beating beneath her skin.

No current of mana moving through her at all.

And no warmth left anywhere in her.

Alayna already understood, somewhere beneath the effort of holding herself together, exactly what had happened. She fought to accept it, fought to hold back the tears gathering at the edges of her composure.

Lucian couldn’t stop there, though. Too many anomalies had piled up around him for this to feel finished, too many threads that all seemed to trace back to something connected to himself specifically.

Something told him there was still more he could do here, that everything unfolding across this domain wasn’t separate from him at all.

That feeling reached into Sonata again, the blade shuddering, and this time the Kirana crystal flared alongside it, blazing bright yellow.

On instinct, Lucian drove the sword back down into the ground.

A thread of pure white light rose up from beneath the blade, unfurling with startling beauty.

♪ How did you bring the white door back? ♪

Genuine shock colored Alayna’s voice at the sight of it. Then, behind them, an old woman’s voice cut through the quiet.

’That is you?.. No wonder you managed to wake that sword. You really are Lysandra’s cursed child.’

A chill ran the length of Lucian’s spine at the sound of it.

But there was no hostility riding underneath that voice at all.

He turned to face the source of it.

"You don’t need to be afraid. I’m no longer under that monster’s control."

The voice belonged to the Omen itself, the very creature they’d just finished fighting.