Chapter 44: The Cursed Boy

Lucian recognized it instantly, the same voice that had roared "NO INTRUDERS ALLOWED" the moment it first struck him down, the attack that had driven Lumina from the domain entirely. This had to be the Omen’s own true voice, unfiltered, speaking for itself at last.

Alayna moved fast regardless, spear already leveled at the creature.

Lucian raised a hand, telling her to stand down. Whatever threat the Omen might have carried before, he could no longer feel any of it radiating off the thing now.

’The last of Lysandra’s bloodline really is as wise as they say.’

’A shame, though. So young, and already cursed like this.’

The Omen’s massive head shook slowly, its black-and-white spear still braced in one hand, gaze settling on Lucian with something almost like sympathy.

Then its attention shifted to Alayna, studying her with open scrutiny, something clearly different about her registering even to a creature that had never met her properly before.

’You’ve changed a great deal since I last saw you, Miyu’s friend. Have you grown used to living as a spirit in this world yet?’

Alayna’s spear dropped the instant the words left it, whatever fight had been building in her draining out in an instant.

Lucian’s confusion sharpened.

He’d already suspected something had changed about Alayna since the version of her he’d seen in that earlier memory, but this, confirmation that she’d somehow become a spirit entirely, explained nothing about how a living, breathing human being had ended up this way at all.

And that wasn’t even the question weighing heaviest on him. Why had this Omen called him cursed? How did it know anything about his ties to House Lysandra at all? According to everything Lumina had told him, an Omen was supposed to be nothing more than a manifestation shaped entirely by its own Conductor’s will.

He and this creature, this Miyu, had never once crossed paths in the waking world. So how could it possibly already know who he was?

Before he could voice any of it, something wide and radiant flared into being directly behind his shoulder, light spilling out around it.

The Omen’s finger rose, pointing past him.

A white door stood there now, formed from the same thread of light his sword had summoned earlier.

’Perhaps your smaller questions will find their answers on the other side of that door.’

Lucian’s gaze drifted to Miyu’s body, still cradled in Alayna’s arms.

If there was any chance an answer waited beyond that door, any chance it held some way to bring her back, he had to take it.

The Omen’s massive frame rose slowly, weakened but pushing forward anyway, closing the distance toward the white door. As it approached, its body began shrinking to match the door’s own scale, until what stood before them was barely larger than Lucian himself.

Behind them, the fractures splitting through the domain widened further.

The Omen urged them both to step through without delay.

Lucian drew a slow breath.

Whatever waited past that door, he had to be ready for it. If there was any answer to be found, any way to save Miyu, it had to be somewhere on the other side.

The white door swung open.

No sound greeted them. No pressure, threatening or otherwise, nothing at all beyond what felt like standing at the edge of pure emptiness.

Even Alayna couldn’t make out what actually lay beyond it, despite the door standing wide open in front of her.

The Omen stepped through first.

Lucian and Alayna traded one last glance. Something steady had settled into Lucian’s expression, and he followed the Omen’s path without hesitation.

Alayna, Miyu’s body still held close against her chest, fell into step right behind him.

Blinding light poured into their eyes the instant they crossed the threshold, bright enough that even Lucian, sightless as he was, had to raise a hand to shield his face from it.

Fog curled away from their footsteps as they walked, parting slowly with every step forward.

The Omen came to a sudden stop ahead of them. Lucian and Alayna froze in place a beat behind it.

Then, from somewhere beyond the drifting mist, the sound of screaming and violent combat reached them.

Alayna’s spear snapped up on instinct, but the Omen raised a hand, urging her to stay calm, as though whatever they were hearing wasn’t quite what either of them assumed.

The fog finally lifted entirely, revealing the whole of what lay ahead.

Beyond it, golden light spilled down from a sky full of moon and stars, illuminating the scene laid out beneath it.

What emerged was a sight Alayna recognized instantly, one that struck her hard enough that both hands flew to cover her mouth, disbelief written across every line of her face.

’This is Loupulan, during the height of the battle between Miyu, Zoria, and the Green Land forces.’

They stood now at the very heart of Loupulan itself, the city reduced to rubble around them.

Nothing about it resembled the version of Loupulan Lucian had glimpsed before. The entire city had been flattened, leveled to bare ground, leaving nothing standing but that strange, oddly shaped tower rising alone from the wreckage.

This destruction hadn’t come from Miyu’s fight alone, either.

Six figures hovered in the sky above the ruined city, locked in open combat against Miyu, fighting alongside her Omen. Kai, Rhaiven, and Zoria were nowhere fully visible in the scene, as though all three had chosen to stay hidden from whatever was unfolding here.

Only Yunxi and two of her guards stood visible, positioned behind the six figures, facing off against them directly.

’The six of them are called Void Seekers. Every one of them ranks among the world’s High Supremes.’

According to the Omen’s own explanation of the term, High Supreme referred to the ten strongest individuals alive in the world, still technically Supreme Core in classification, but wielding strength that dwarfed any ordinary Supreme by a wide margin.

If Kai’s own rise to Supreme had already marked him as one in a hundred million, the number of people who’d ever climbed all the way to High Supreme was smaller still, few enough to count on one hand across recorded history.

Even the Omen couldn’t fully identify all six figures fighting above them.

It called them Void Seekers for good reason, it explained, because their singular purpose was hunting down whatever remnants still survived from the Void era.

The Void era. Again. The same era Lumina had described to him before. Apparently other powerful figures out there knew about it too, and were actively hunting whatever remained of it.

Watching them converge on the Kirana crystal now, with a fragment of that same crystal fused into Lucian’s own sword, made it clear this wasn’t a threat he could afford to underestimate.

Alayna’s eyes caught on one figure in particular, a woman dressed similarly to Yunxi, her face hidden behind a mask.

Of the six, the Omen said it could confirm only one thing for certain: at least one of them ruled over territory in the Green Lands.

♪ That woman is Empress Amber. How dare they corner Miyu like this. ♪

Amber was the name of one of the largest territories across the entire Green Land continent, its borders alone accounting for sixty percent of the region.

If someone who ruled a territory that size had come herself, it meant the Kirana crystal’s true value had reached ears far beyond what anyone had assumed.

The Omen shook its head at that assumption, though. From what it remembered of fighting the Void Seekers directly, each of them carried a different agenda entirely.

Some wanted nothing more than to reclaim every scattered fragment of the Genesis crystal. Others sought only knowledge, whatever remained buried from the Void era itself.

The stronger a person grew, the Omen added, the larger their own ego tended to grow alongside it, each one chasing their own idea of the summit.

Miyu, in the scene playing out ahead of them, had clearly begun to buckle under the weight of fighting six opponents of that caliber at once.

The Void Seekers eventually managed to pin her down, demanding she reveal exactly where she’d found the Kirana crystal.

’But Miyu and I refused them. Protecting that crystal was our duty.’

Their duty? Whose duty had it been to assign them that in the first place?