From his throne of fractured light, Velyrion—the Eternal Oracle—felt his existence slipping through his grasp.
For eons, he had gazed upon the fate of every living being… until now.
The future had become a wall of darkness.
His gift—his pride, his prison—had gone blind.
His ancient eyes, clear as infinite mirrors, searched for answers within the void of the Celestial Realm. The darkness answered with silence—and within that silence, something unknown to a god revealed itself:
Fear.
"Who dares defy the Oracle?" His voice thundered, shattering layers of reality. Its echoes spilled across realms like a storm without clouds.
No vision answered.
The truth waited below.
A fracture spread through his essence. It was not time that devoured him… but oblivion. The faith that sustained him—the energy mortals generate when they believe, when they fear, when they pray—was fading like smoke torn away by the wind.
A god does not die of age.
A god dies when it is no longer remembered.
Velyrion felt his power bleeding out, drop by drop. If he descended into the mortal world, he would lose what little remained. The Law was absolute:
"He who sets foot upon the earth… shall cease to be divine."
A god in the human world is nothing more than a body.Limited. Vulnerable. Killable.
But the anomaly had to be erased.
The Oracle tore through the veil between realms and swept across humanity with a predator's gaze—probing every shadow, every bloodline, every soul…
Until he found him.
Lusian Douglas.
A mortal duke. A name absent from the Book of Destiny—an existence that clung to the future like an error refusing to be erased.
Velyrion cast black prophecies from the heavens: omens of ruin, divine accusations, sentences meant to turn him into a pariah. Temples echoed his words. Courtiers whispered his condemnation. High priests proclaimed his downfall.
With his power draining like shattered crystal and his eternity cracking apart, Velyrion understood the inevitable:
He had to descend.
A fury, tainted with a fear no god should ever know, ignited within his gaze.
The god would face the anomaly with his own hands.
But someone was waiting.
Kheris—the fallen god.
His ancient, dark eyes had witnessed this future long before the Oracle ever perceived it. The trap had already been set at the boundary between the real and the divine.
Velyrion's descent would not be a hunt.
It would be a sentence.
On earth, far from the heavens that had already condemned him, the marked man still did not know that a god had spoken his name.
As Lusian entered the capital of Carpathia, lies and slander spread behind him like a poisoned shadow.