CHAPTER 165: THE AGE OF GODS (1).

Nero’s eyes snapped open.

He lay there in the quiet desolation, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. For a few minutes, he simply existed, unable to determine if this was reality or if he was still trapped in that dark abyss he had fallen into.

The silence was oppressive and heavy. Like the weight of the bones of the dead god kept pressing down on him.

Slowly, sensation began to return.

Pain flooded his body in waves, starting from his broken arm and radiating outward. Then came the numbness, a creeping coldness that spread through his limbs like frost. The contrast between the two was almost worse than pure agony would have been.

He was back. Very much back in his body.

Beads of sweat rolled down his face, mixing with the blood that had dried on his skin. His trembling hand reached across his chest to grasp his broken arm, fingers wrapping around the damaged limb as if holding it and his mind together through sheer will alone.

The pain was terrible, but not quite unbearable.

He’d experienced worse. Quite recently, in fact.

Nero focused on his breathing, forcing air in and out of his lungs in measured intervals, the sound of his wheezing slowly driving him mad.

Agonizingly, he managed to calm himself, the trembling subsiding to a manageable level, and the panic that had threatened to consume him recededing to a dull thumping in the back of his mind.

When he finally felt stable enough to think, he began to reason through what had just happened.

Those visions...

All of it had felt so real. Terrifyingly, cruelly real.

Nero’s gaze drifted around the interior of the skull, searching for the runes that had covered every surface. His eyes swept across the pale bone walls, expecting to see that soft blue glow, or perhaps the crimson light they had transformed into.

But there was nothing.

The walls were completely bare.

Every single rune had vanished, leaving behind smooth bone that showed no sign they had ever existed. It was as if someone had wiped them clean, erased them from reality itself.

"Oracle," Nero croaked, his voice raw. "What the hell is going on?"

The response came immediately.

{The Mark of Mephistopheles the Heretic bears has absorbed these runes which have been stored in the Relic, Book of Mephistopheles}.

Nero’s face paled further, if such a thing was even possible. He raised a brow, his breathing still labored as he spoke.

"So those runes aren’t in my body?"

{The runes are now stored within Book of Mephistopheles, which is stored within the Mark of Mephistopheles, which is engraved into your body}.

Nero’s expression soured immediately. He mumbled a curse under his breath, barely audible even in the silence of the skull.

’So they are in my damn body, aren’t they?!’

The distinction the Oracle was making felt meaningless. Whether the runes were directly integrated into his flesh or stored in some demonic book that happened to be bound to his flesh, the end result was the same. He was carrying around knowledge that had nearly destroyed his mind just from looking at it.

That thought filled him with a terror he couldn’t quite articulate.

Nero had always worried that the changes happening to his body were merely surface level. Scales, claws, growths on his back—all of those were physical manifestations he could see and understand, and perhaps even control.

But having corruption seep into the depths of him, into whatever passed for his soul, that was something else entirely.

That was the kind of change you couldn’t come back from.

He lay there for a long moment, staring up at the curved ceiling of the skull, and felt something inside him shift. A decision being made, whether he wanted to make it or not.

He’d had enough.

Enough secrets, enough half-answers, enough stumbling blindly through a world that was out to devour him and made no sense at the same time. If he was going to survive, if he was going to have any chance at all, he needed to understand what was happening to him.

Nero took a deep breath and spoke aloud, not even certain the Oracle would respond to such broad questions.

"Tell me about the Mark of Mephistopheles. And the Age of Gods."

He held his breath, fully expecting the Oracle to tell him such knowledge was above his current grade.

Silence stretched for a moment.

Then the Oracle’s presence filled his mind, and knowledge began to flow, much to his shock,

{The Age of Gods began with a single defaulter a hundred thousand years into the past called the Gilded Iron King, or commonly known as the God of Excess. Seeking to expand the range of his Divine territory, he ate into that of Murmim, the God of Channels. That small act was the catalyst for the greatest series of wars the earth has ever known, creating the foundations for the current expanse of corruption the Heretic lives within}.

Nero’s eyes widened.

"It wasn’t that long ago then..."

{Yes. On the cosmological scale, the Age of Gods is one of the more recent great earthly events}.

Nero remained speechless, his mind struggling to process the implications. A hundred thousand years sounded impossibly ancient from a human perspective, but if the Oracle considered it "recent," what did that say about the true age of the world?

What had existed before the Age of Gods? And why had it ended?

The Oracle continued without prompting, as if sensing the questions forming in his mind.

{During the Age of Gods, the Grigori, both sealed and otherwise, birthed hundreds of thousands of children, the Nephilim. Together with their children, they all partook in their individual crusades, which primarily revolved around consuming the entire earth to take it under their arm and rule. It came as a sudden, blanket desire shared by all the Grigori. It is still unknown why this happened, but it was the fuel that drove the Age of Gods to the very end until all the Grigori were either dead or sealed}.

Nero felt something cold settle in his chest.