CHAPTER 116: CITADEL ZERO 1

Got it. Here’s the next Chapter, written long, cinematic, grounded, and flowing naturally in simple human-like style.

The Sanctum Nova cut through the night sky like a shadow of steel. Its engines hummed low, smooth, almost alive as it drifted across the wilderness. Down below, the land was nothing but cracked plains and jagged ridges, a scar of earth long abandoned. No cities. No farms. No life. Only silence.

When the ship slowed, the air bent with its weight. Dust spiraled into the dark like a storm had been called down. With a low rumble, the Sanctum lowered, its talons locking into the ground until the tremors faded.

The ramp hissed open.

Lucian stepped out first. His cloak dragged behind him, black against black, the faint light of the moons cutting along the steel of his boots. He didn’t hurry. He never did. Each step was steady, measured, the kind that said he knew the world would wait for him.

Behind him, Evelyn followed. Her armor carried thin scratches from the fight earlier, her hair tied back quick, her eyes sharp but unsettled. She had seen the Thorne estate fall. She had seen Garrick’s body. She had seen Eron break. And she had seen Lucian walk away when he could have ended it.

Her voice cut into the still night.

"Why didn’t you kill him?"

Lucian didn’t stop walking. He only let his eyes move, faint gold lines pulsing in his irises as if his mind was still drawing blueprints no one else could see. He raised his hand once, brushed the air, then dropped it again.

Evelyn pressed forward, her boots crunching against the barren stone.

"You had him. Right there. He was finished. You could’ve ended his line, right there, with one strike."

Finally, Lucian slowed. He didn’t turn, not fully—just enough that she caught the cold profile of his face. His voice came low, calm, without a shred of hesitation.

"Death’s a release."

Her brow furrowed. "And you think letting him live is worse?"

Lucian’s gaze turned forward again. His eyes flicked to the horizon where the ridges broke into a canyon cut deep as a wound. In the distance, faint flickers of light pulsed—gates. Dozens of them, glowing with faint veins of red and blue, scattered like broken lanterns across the plains.

He spoke as he walked toward them.

"He watched his son die. He’ll watch his house crumble. Every scream that leaves his throat will eat him alive more than any blade I could give him."

Evelyn slowed behind him, her lips parting, but no words came. She hated to admit it, but he was right. She’d seen Eron’s eyes—mad, broken, drowning in grief. He was already a ghost, just left behind to suffer.

The gates ahead shimmered brighter as they approached. Each one pulsed with unstable energy, swirling light leaking into the sky. Some were wide enough to swallow houses. Others barely wide enough for a hand to fit through. And yet they all breathed, shifting in and out, unstable cracks between worlds.

Evelyn’s hand rested on the hilt of her blade out of habit. "This place..." she muttered. "It’s like a graveyard for rifts."

Lucian came to a stop in the middle of it all. The barren land stretched in every direction, silent, unclaimed, cursed. He let his eyes sweep across it, and for the first time since they landed, a faint smile tugged at his lips.

"This is good," he said.

Evelyn glanced around. "Good? It’s dead land. Nothing lives here."

"That’s why."

Lucian crouched. Slowly, he lowered his hand until his palm pressed against the cracked stone. The earth felt cold, brittle, almost hollow. He closed his eyes.

The ground trembled.

Not from the ship. Not from the gates. From him.

Thin golden veins of light crawled outward from his hand, like cracks spreading through glass. They stretched across the ground in every direction, winding into patterns, looping, weaving.

"Construction," Lucian murmured, voice almost too quiet to hear. "Bring it."

The plains shook.

Stone shifted. Dust burst upward. The veins of light thickened, shaping into lines, then into edges, then into walls. Slowly—like something enormous breathing awake—the land began to change.

Evelyn stumbled back a step, her eyes widening as towers began to rise. Dark spires of steel and blackstone grew from nothing, twisting into the air like trees born too fast. Bridges snapped into place, walls locked together, platforms stacked high above them.

The gates scattered across the plains didn’t vanish. Instead, Lucian’s lines folded around them, binding them into the design. Pillars of obsidian wrapped them, chains of energy locking their unstable cores in place. What once looked like chaos was becoming order, each rift now a part of something bigger.

Evelyn could only watch. The fortress rose higher, stretching wider, more massive with every heartbeat. Windows opened where there had been none. Balconies unfolded. Great halls shaped themselves out of raw earth and energy.

And through it all, Lucian didn’t move. His hand stayed pressed to the ground, eyes closed, his breathing steady. The Living Forge was at work, but it wasn’t just the forge—it was his mind. His imagination bled into the earth, every line of thought becoming structure, every flicker of design becoming stone and steel.

Minutes passed. Then hours. The night rolled, and the barren plains became something else entirely.

A citadel.

A fortress that looked less like it was built and more like it had been carved straight from the bones of the world. Black towers stabbed at the sky, glowing faint with runes carved deep into their ribs. Bridges arched between them like veins of gold and crimson. The gates themselves pulsed inside giant cages, chained to fuel the fortress, their unstable power bent into weapons and shields.

When Lucian finally opened his eyes, the glow in them dimmed. He pulled his hand from the ground and stood.

The fortress loomed behind him, massive, breathing, alive. His creation.

Evelyn exhaled, not even realizing she had been holding her breath. "This is..." she whispered. "This is insane."

Lucian brushed the dust from his hand and looked at her. His voice was calm, even casual, as if he hadn’t just rewritten the land with a thought.

"This will do."

She shook her head slowly, still staring up at the walls that touched the stars. "You just... made a city."

Lucian’s lips curved faintly, almost a smirk.

"Yes. I made a city."

And as the words left him, the fortress lit. Lines of fire traced the walls, runes pulsing alive. The gates hummed, their unstable energy pulled tighter into order, feeding the citadel with endless power.

From the distance, the barren land was no longer barren. It was a beacon. A scar turned into a crown.

Evelyn finally tore her eyes from the fortress and looked back at him. "What now?"

Lucian turned his gaze to the horizon, his eyes calm, sharp, as if he already saw what came next.

"Now," he said, "You all stay here and carry out the plan."

He lifted his hand slightly, his fingers curling into a fist as the citadel’s towers blazed brighter behind him.

"...we’ll be ready."

The night swallowed his words, but the fortress didn’t fade. It stood. Immense. Unshaken. Alive.

And in the silence that followed, Evelyn understood—this was no longer just a battlefield.

This was Lucian’s ground now.