CHAPTER 105: ELF [3]

"For first, Lyrium Blackwood..."

The creature’s deep, thunderous voice echoed through the desolate park, rolling like a tremor through the mist.

His eyes, glowing faintly red and blue, locked onto mine with unsettling calm.

"...My name is Hercules."

The name alone made my mind freeze. Hercules.

That name, so familiar, so ancient, rattled around in my skull like a bell that refused to stop ringing.

"Hercules?"

I repeated, half in disbelief, half in awe.

"Wait, the Hercules? The one from Greek mythology?"

The words felt ridiculous the moment they left my mouth.

This creature before me, this towering, horned being with crimson hair and monstrous eyes, looked nothing like the hero carved into marble statues or painted on ancient temples.

He looked more like something pulled out of Norse legend, a titan cloaked in blood and fury, rather than a demigod of valor.

Still, the beast gave a faint nod.

"Yes. According to your world’s records, I am that Hercules. The myths you humans wrote are distorted reflections of truth. The tales changed with every retelling, reshaped to fit your small world’s understanding. The truth... is far less divine."

Before I could ask what that even meant, his tone deepened, patient but sharp.

"When you first arrived here, I saw you. That was, what? Seven months ago?"

He tilted his head slightly, his horns catching the dim light.

"But the me you saw then... wasn’t the current me. That was a version of myself from another timeline. Just as the you who appeared in that vision was not you of now, but an alternate version."

"...."

I blinked, my throat tightening.

"Alternate version...?"

"Yes,"

He said slowly, deliberately.

"It wasn’t meant to be that way. You were never supposed to have another version of yourself. The one you saw was meant to be the original, the Lyrium Blackwood who should have existed. But because of the Upper Realm, everything... fractured. Everything changed."

The moment he mentioned that name, Upper Realm, I felt my stomach twist.

I remembered the voice I had heard some times ago.

The being that called me a mistake.

The entity that claimed to have created and destroyed me.

I clenched my fists.

"The Upper Realm..."

I muttered.

"I know. One of those bastards told me once..."

I looked up, my voice trembling with anger and bitterness.

"He said I was an anomaly, a mistake that shouldn’t exist. A tool they created by accident. And when they realized it, they tried to erase me... to rewrite me out of existence."

The air around us seemed to still. Hercules’ gaze didn’t waver.

"They used something called the Book of Destiny,"

I continued, my tone lowering into a growl.

"They thought they could rewrite my past, my identity, everything. But they couldn’t. Because I’m not bound by their rules. I’m... neutral to timeline changes."

I took a shaky breath, staring down at my trembling hands.

"So that bastard tried something else. He reset the timeline. Completely. Wiped the world clean, started over like some divine child rebuilding his toy city. But..."

I looked up again, meeting Hercules’ burning gaze,

"It didn’t work, not the way he wanted. The world I’m living in right now, it’s a reset timeline. A flawed reconstruction. Even if he tried to make everything exactly the same..."

I stepped closer, my voice rising with grim conviction.

"There will always be a crack."

Hercules didn’t speak for a while.

The silence between us was heavy, filled with unspoken truths and cosmic tension.

"Haa..."

Finally, he exhaled slowly, a sound that felt like the earth itself sighing.

"You’re right,"

He said at last, his deep voice softening, almost like approval.

"Even the gods cannot perfectly mend what has been broken. Once time fractures, the pieces may be forced together again, but the seams remain. You... Lyrium Blackwood... are that crack."

Step—!

He took a step closer, his presence suffocating yet oddly steady.

"You are the error the Upper Realm could not erase. The paradox they failed to contain. You exist outside the pattern... and that terrifies them."

My heart pounded in my chest.

Outside the pattern...?

"So tell me, Hercules..."

I said, voice barely steady,

"if they fear me... then what the hell am I really?"

Hercules’ lips curved into something between a grim smile and a snarl.

"You are not the mistake they claim you to be,"

He said, his voice rumbling with restrained power.

"You are the remnant of the original, what survives after divine hands fail to erase truth. You are proof that fate itself... can bleed."

"And soon..."

Hercules’ voice lowered into something almost mournful, a sound that echoed through the ruined street like the toll of a funeral bell.

His gaze sharpened, the blue-and-red glow of his eyes dimming to a shadowed hue.

"...There’s going to be a war, Lyrium Blackwood."

"...."

The word war struck me like a blade.

My chest tightened.

"War...?"

I repeated under my breath, the taste of fear and disbelief lingering on my tongue.

Then my voice rose, trembling.

"Wait... a war? That being from the Upper Realm... it mentioned the same thing! It said that a war was coming, that I was somehow tied to it!"

For the first time, I saw Hercules’ expression change, he tilted his head slightly, his gaze filled with a strange mixture of pity and disdain.

His deep voice followed, calm yet cutting.

"Yeah,"

He said slowly.

"A war is coming... or so they told you."

He took a step forward, the ground beneath him cracking faintly under his sheer weight.

"But let me tell you something, Lyrium."

His tone sharpened, his words heavy with bitterness.

"The war was never destined to come. It was created. Fabricated. A lie spun by those very beings you call ’gods of the Upper Realm.’ They forged the illusion of a prophecy, an inevitability, to justify their actions. To make you believe that you were the cause."

"...."

I froze.

My breath quickened as his words began to sink in.

"They... created it?"

I whispered.

"Yes."

Hercules’ voice deepened, vibrating with restrained fury.

"They wrote the story themselves. A grand play. A war between realms, good and evil, chaos and order, every line, every name, every sacrifice already planned in their so-called Book of Destiny. And you, Lyrium Blackwood, were their favorite scapegoat."

He paused for a moment, the faint glow of his horns flickering as though reacting to the emotion in his words.

"They told you the war was coming because of you, didn’t they?"

He said, almost softly now.

"That you were the trigger. The mistake that would lead to the end of worlds."

I clenched my fists, nails digging into my palms.

"Yes... they said I was the anomaly. That my existence would destroy the balance."

A low growl escaped Hercules’ throat.

"Lies,"

He spat.

"All of it. The war was never born of you. It was their creation. Their experiment. They wanted to see what would happen if they rewrote reality itself, if they could tear apart the flow of causality and rebuild it to their image."

He began to pace slowly, his eyes burning brighter with each step.

"You lived in another world once,"

He continued.

"A world completely separate from theirs. A world with its own history, its own time, its own truth. They could’ve left you there, could’ve kept their distance, but no..."

He stopped walking, his voice rising in anger that shook the very air.

"They played god. They interfered. They reset the timeline. They thought they could fix their mistake, reshape the flow of existence, erase the paradox that is you."

The word reset stung in my chest like a blade of ice.

My thoughts spun wildly, flashing between memories and fragments of broken worlds.

"But when they did,"

Hercules said, his tone dropping into something grim,

"They created something even worse. A new variable. One they couldn’t predict. One even I didn’t foresee."

He raised his hand, and for a second, the air shimmered with strange patterns, runes older than time itself.

"That variable..."

He said, his gaze locking with mine,

"...Was Sleiphnir."

The name rang in my head like thunder.

"Sleiphnir?"

I repeated, the name almost foreign on my tongue.

Hercules nodded slowly.

"A creation that should not exist. The result of their interference, a fusion of chaos and order, of god and void. When they reset the timeline, reality glitched. It filled the missing piece with something new. And that something... became the cult’s core. The very existence that hunts you."

My heartbeat roared in my ears.

"So... Sleiphnir was born because of me?"

I asked, my voice breaking.

"No."

Hercules shook his head firmly.

"Sleiphnir was born because of them. Because they tried to erase you. You weren’t the cause, you were the proof that fate can’t be rewritten. They feared that proof. So they tried again, and again, until they broke reality itself."

The wind howled between us, carrying dust and echoes of forgotten screams from the ruins.

Hercules’ eyes softened, but his tone remained heavy.

"Lyrium Blackwood,"

He said,

"You were never their mistake. You were their correction. The balance they tried to destroy... took form through you. And now, both realms, the one you live in and the one above, are spiraling toward that false war they created."

He stepped closer, the light from his eyes reflecting off mine.

"The war they spoke of will not decide who wins. It will decide who remembers."

Silence was there.

.

.

.

.

"Right. But... who is this Sleiphnir?"

I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

The name echoed in my head like a half-forgotten myth.

"This Sleiphnir person kinda reminds me of Odin’s horse from Norse myth."

Hercules’ lips curled into something between a smirk and a sigh, the kind that carried centuries of exhaustion.

"You’re not entirely wrong,"

He said, folding his arms.

"Sleiphnir was the first being to ever harness what your world calls the Elemental Force. The original wielder, the one who shaped it before mortals even knew how to speak the language of mana. He was not a man, not quite a god... but an existence between both. A mistake that the world itself accepted."

He looked away, his eyes reflecting the ruined skyline.

"In one realm, he’s remembered as Odin’s eight-legged steed, a creature that can run across dimensions, carrying the Allfather through the nine worlds. In another, he’s the first divinity of motion, the pioneer of elemental convergence. The first to split fire from light, water from life. Sleiphnir was the reason your world even has the concept of elements."

"..."

I blinked slowly, struggling to grasp his words.

"Okay, okay..."

I muttered, rubbing my temples.

"You said Sleiphnir was created as a variable when the upper realm beings reset the timeline. But if he was the first to ever gain the Elemental Force, how could that be? How could something created later become the origin of something so ancient?"

Hercules’ expression darkened instantly.

His jaw tightened as if I’d just asked the one question he didn’t want to answer.

He stayed silent for a long moment before finally exhaling through his nose.

"Because time,"

He said quietly, "

No longer moved forward after they reset it. It folded."

"...Folded?"

He turned to me, his crimson hair flickering faintly with residual energy.

"They didn’t just alter history, Lyrium. They rewrote its root. The Book of Destiny doesn’t change events, it changes the cause behind them. When they created Sleiphnir as a variable, they didn’t summon him after the world existed. They rewrote him into the beginning. The moment the first spark of existence was born, Sleiphnir’s shadow was already there, watching, breathing, influencing the foundation of elements."

I froze. The realization hit me like lightning.

"So... he became the origin not because he was meant to be, but because the reset forced him into the past?"

Hercules nodded slowly.

"Exactly. He is a paradox, just like you. A being that was never meant to exist, but now anchors every timeline by his mere presence. He is the reason elements flow. The reason mana lives. But also..."

His gaze turned sharp, almost sorrowful.

"...The reason why every realm is now unstable."

"What do you mean?"

"Because when Sleiphnir was rewritten into existence, he inherited every reset. Every collapse. Every death. Every beginning. He carries the memory of every version of this world. And those memories are devouring him, piece by piece. The cult that worships him? They think they’re serving a god of creation."

Hercules’ tone dropped into a growl.

"But what they’re really feeding... is the embodiment of corruption born from countless failed realities."

The air turned cold around me.

Dust and ash floated weightlessly, as though even gravity was listening.

"Sleiphnir was supposed to be the stabilizer,"

Hercules said softly.

"Now he’s the catalyst. The first of gods, and the last of monsters."