CHAPTER 84: LONG AWAITED

The black doors groaned behind him as they shut, drowning out the wind and his team’s voices.

Inside, the world fell into silence.

Lucy stood still momentarily, letting his eyes adjust to the glow. The air here was heavy, stagnant, damp, and thick with a sour-sweet scent like rotting incense. It choked at the back of his throat, clinging to his lungs like smoke. Every breath tasted old.

Shadows clung to every surface, writhing like half-living things just beyond the reach of flame. The silence pressed down on him, too dense to be natural, as if sound had been exiled from this place. His heartbeat felt intrusive, echoing too loudly in a space that wasn’t meant for the living.

The temple’s vast interior stretched out before him in solemn grandeur. A wide, grey stone hall unfurled beneath his boots, lit only by rows of flickering candles set into iron sconces along the side walls. Their flames danced low, dim, and eerily steady, as if wind and time didn’t dare touch them. Despite their warmth, the room felt cold, unnaturally so.

The stone floor was smooth and clean, too pristine for a ruin. Time hadn’t eroded it; something else had preserved it or claimed it.

Along both sides of the hall were arched doorways, tall and narrow, each sealed shut. Lucy couldn’t tell where they led—each was cloaked in deeper shadow than the rest of the temple, as if they led inward rather than forward. He didn’t stop to test them.

His eyes were drawn to the far end of the chamber.

There, rising like a monument to dread, stood a massive statue.

Nyxaris.

She loomed in solemn silence at the top of a short, wide staircase carved from the same grey stone as the temple. Her form was elegant, terrible, and divine. She bore the body of a woman with many arms—twelve in total—each posed in symbolic gestures that Lucy couldn’t decipher. She held a book cloaked in eternal shadow in two of her hands, its surface shifting like oil in moonlight.

The Obsidian Chronicle.

The thing Caelgorr was here to protect.

And seated at the base of the steps before her...

Caelgorr.

A towering abomination of flesh and fog, a many-limbed nightmare stitched from shadow. His body pulsed with a slow, sick rhythm, phasing between solid and smoke with every breath. Horned and hunched, his curled antlers scraped softly against the stone as he shifted.

Dozens of lidless white eyes blinked open across his form, watching Lucy with cold judgment. Each one gleamed like bone dipped in moonlight—unblinking. Seeing through him.

Lucy’s heartbeat slowed, not quickened. This was no surprise or ambush. This moment had been promised.

Caelgorr didn’t rise.

He didn’t need to.

He loomed at the foot of the statue like a curse made flesh, his monstrous form hunched and pulsing with ancient malice. Fog coiled around his limbs in thick, oily tendrils, twitching with anticipation—like a predator tasting something foreign in its bloodstream.

Lucy didn’t wait.

When his eyes locked on Caelgorr’s jagged silhouette, something primal surged inside him. It was hatred, raw and electric. His mana flared instantly, cycling through his body in a violent spiral—fast, faster, burning toward the brink.

Ever since landing on this cursed island, he’d been fueling Atomic Radiation and the Crucible of Grace—letting them churn inside him like twin engines of war.

Now.

He let them go.

"Eat this," Lucy hissed with a grin, and the temple screamed.

A shockwave detonated from his body in a blinding pulse of white-hot force—pure atomic devastation rippling outward. The stone trembled. The very walls of the temple groaned, ancient and unwilling. Dust rained from the ceiling in hushed whispers. But nothing broke. Not even the candles flickered.

The blast slammed into Caelgorr head-on—before the beast could move, before he could rise. And yet...

He didn’t flinch. Not even a little.

Instead, Caelgorr let out a roar through his split face. His jagged teeth, sharp as the flaps lining both sides, shook.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a phenomenon—a storm of malice rupturing the air in a low, bone-deep bellow that made Lucy’s explosion feel like a child’s sparkler. The walls moaned, the Obsidian Chronicle pulsed in its mistress’s hands, and the cold in the temple sharpened to a blade.

Lucy didn’t back down.

He grinned harder.

He hadn’t aimed to kill. Not yet.

He’d aimed to bind.

And it worked.

Caelgorr’s body, once flickering between fog and form, now stood solid. The atomic purge had forced him out of his phasing state. The beast’s limbs twitched and flexed—real now, touchable, breakable. Black flesh stretched tight over impossible anatomy, no longer shrouded in illusion.

Then the fog stirred.

It slithered across the floor, thick and hungry, pouring in from the walls like blood returning to a severed limb. The doors behind Lucy groaned open with a deep, resonant cry.

The Cohort entered, besides Fenric and Carlos.

Each surged forward with blades drawn and spells lit, without hesitation in their eyes.

And at their center was Lucy—mana roaring, body glowing, heart beating like war drums.

They charged.

Straight into the nightmare.

Meanwhile... on a planet far, far away.

A neutral realm of the gods.

The administrative heart of the War Game Festival.

Darfin sat rigid in a chair far too small for his anger, seething in front of a cluttered desk. Across from him lounged a short, ancient elf—bald, bespectacled, and unimpressed.

The old elf’s ears were comically long, drooping past his shoulders like tired ribbons. His name was Hagred, and at the moment, he was calmly flipping through a stack of parchment with maddening leisure.

Darfin’s voice shattered the silence.

"What do you mean you’re docking us a hundred planets, Hagred?!" he roared, veins bulging across his forehead like roots beneath strained bark.

Hagred didn’t look up right away. When he did, it was with the lazy resignation of someone who had been yelled at by gods and toddlers alike.

"Hmm," he hummed, adjusting his circular glasses. "It clearly states—clearly, mind you—in the War Game charter that any warrior absent on January second results in a deduction of one hundred planets from their goddess’s holdings."

He lifted the parchment, wagging it like scripture.

"It’s January third, Darfin. The Games start in a few hours."

Darfin shot to his feet and slammed both palms on the desk. The entire room rattled.

"So what? Who wrote those rules anyway? You? Since when do mortals decide which gods lose planets?"

Hagred sighed long and leaned back in his creaky chair, lacing his fingers across his stomach.

"No mortal decides these things," he said plainly. "The gods agreed on the rules eons ago and left it to us to enforce them. Are you suggesting we defy your goddess’s own system?"

Darfin growled, grinding his teeth, and sank slowly back into his chair.

"I’m going to kill that fucking human."

Hagred perked up at that, his voice feather-light and curious.

"Oh? Should I be concerned? I mean, humans are creatures of great myth... Those who once brought chaos and ruin to every race. And yet, Seraphine chose one, drafted him herself, and let him into the Games."

Darfin folded his arms, his voice like poison.

"There’s nothing to fear, he’ll die in these games. He’s nothing but a mistake in skin."

The old elf chuckled and pulled off his glasses, wiping them on the hem of his perfectly pressed shirt.

"I take it you’re not fond of the boy."

Darfin didn’t answer. Just sat there, arms crossed, fuming.

With a soft clack, Hagred opened the blinds beside him. Blinding sunlight poured into the office. Darfin hissed and turned away, shielding his eyes like a vampire.

Outside, the world looked nothing like a war zone. A dirt road stretched through the city’s center, lined with colorful stalls and festival tents. Balloons bobbed in the wind. Carnival games chimed and clattered. Rides spun lazily in the distance. Clowns dressed as children scampered through the crowd, laughing, juggling, and howling joyfully.

All five races—elves, dragonkin, beastkin, ogres, and giants—mingled harmoniously.

Hagred smiled faintly.

"Look outside, Darfin. Try not to pout, and enjoy the festival. This is the last one, after all."

Darfin scoffed.

"Enjoy the festival?" he spat. "A pathetic insect just cost my goddess a hundred planets. Do you know how many wars I’ve fought to earn those? How much blood I spilled?"

He stood, eyes still burning.

"I’m good. Thanks."

He stormed out, slamming the door behind him so hard that a few papers flapped off the desk.

Hagred watched the door for a beat, then gave a long, weary sigh.

"That boy never has any fun."

He straightened the scattered stack of parchment, flipping through it until he found the page he wanted: a roster of this festival’s contestants.

He stopped at one image.

A pale-skinned boy with long black hair, glassy eyes, and a small, haunted smile.

Lucian Gray.

The human.

Hagred smirked.

"Yes... I think this will be the most interesting War Games yet."