Sparta flexed his fingers, tension coiling through every muscle like a serpent preparing to strike. Around him, spectators stood frozen in shock—they'd just witnessed a fourteen-year-old boy drive his fist clean through his Master's ribcage, hurl the corpse skyward, then flash the crowd a cheerful thumbs-up as if he'd won a schoolyard game. The disconnect between the act and the gesture was chilling.
A white-haired figure broke from the paralyzed masses. Sword gleaming in hand. Smiling. Walking toward what should have been certain death with the confidence of someone who'd faced far worse.
This stranger had observed everything: the brutal execution, the casual disposal, the boy's complete indifference to taking a life. He'd seen the blood pooling on the ground, the broken body twitching its last, the disturbing disconnect between violence and innocence that marked Sparta as something other than human.
Yet he approached anyway, as if death held no dominion over him. As if he welcomed the challenge.
Darkness swallowed the scene whole, absolute and suffocating.
Veil rotated in the void, his pulse quickening—not with dread, but with exhilaration that set his nerves alight. "An isolation spell?" His grin stretched wide, predatory, revealing teeth that seemed too sharp in the darkness. "Excellent. I can gut this child for Phil, and no one will witness it. No one will hear him scream."
"You misunderstand the situation," a voice sliced through the black, calm and absolute, carrying the weight of inevitable truth.
Veil spun, his hand instinctively reaching for his blade. From the shadows stepped a man dressed in dark fabric threaded with purple, an obsidian sword mounted on his back. Black hair framed an angular jaw marked by a thin scar that spoke of past battles. He moved like a hunting cat—fluid, patient, deadly. Every step calculated. Every breath measured. His presence filled the void with an authority that made even the darkness seem to lean away.
The stranger's attention swept between them, assessing their worth with eyes that had witnessed the rise and fall of empires. "Blood Corps," he stated, fixing Veil with an unnerving stare that seemed to pierce through flesh and bone, reading the violence written in his very soul. His focus shifted, and something changed in his expression—recognition mixed with something darker. "And divine power." The words came softer now as he studied Sparta, reading secrets written in the boy's very essence, seeing the god-touched nature that explained so much.
"I require one of you," the man announced, his words heavy with the weight of prophecy and necessity. "A war is coming—one that will reshape existence itself. Refuse, and it will devour worlds, consuming everything you've ever known or loved. Accept, and you might survive what's ahead. Might even become something greater."
Sparta advanced, his scarlet garments stark against the void's emptiness, each step deliberate and challenging. His crimson gaze locked with violet eyes, electric with promised violence and barely contained power. "Think you're strong enough?" The challenge hung in the air, sharp as a blade, daring the stranger to prove his worth.
The stranger's laugh held no humor, only the certainty of someone who'd already won. Who'd seen this moment play out a thousand times in visions and dreams.
Sparta's vision dimmed without warning. Gravity abandoned him, leaving his stomach in freefall. His stomach lurched as darkness rushed in from all sides, swallowing consciousness whole before he could even raise a hand in defense.
Veil dropped next, hitting the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, his ribs protesting the impact.
"Good." Lion examined the unconscious forms at his feet, satisfaction flickering across his features like candlelight. "Sparta needs to reach Arthur's realm—physically present for what's ahead. The prophecies won't fulfill themselves, and I've waited too long to let fate slip through my fingers now."
He shed his mortal vessel like a snake discarding old skin, assuming his divine aspect with practiced ease. The transformation coursed through him like wildfire through dry grass—painful, exhilarating, inevitable. His bones lengthened, his essence expanded, reality itself bending to accommodate his true form. The other gods might overlook this brief violation of their compact. Might. He couldn't afford to care. Azure energy blazed around him and Sparta—raw, primordial force that hummed with ancient authority older than mountains, older than the first words spoken in creation. Light fractured the darkness into a thousand glittering shards, each one reflecting infinite possibilities.
They disappeared, leaving only the echo of power reverberating through the void.
Stillness claimed the space, heavy and expectant, as if the darkness itself held its breath.
"Wait." Lion's voice bounced off nothing, off the absence itself, carrying a note of irritation at his own oversight. "The other one."
Blue radiance exploded again, violent and sudden, tearing through the fabric of the void. Lion reappeared beside Veil's motionless body, grabbed a fistful of white hair, and hauled him upright with the casual disregard one might show a broken tool. He noted the crimson robes, the Blood Corps markings—symbols of allegiance to Phil, written in violence and sealed with obedience. The boy was young, perhaps sixteen at most. Too young for the corruption that stained his soul, too young for the blood that painted his hands.
A liability. A loose end. A problem with a simple solution that Lion had employed countless times before.
Lion's hand closed around Veil's throat, fingers finding the precise pressure points with the expertise of someone who'd ended lives for millennia. One swift motion, practiced and efficient, mechanical in its brutality. The neck snapped with a wet crack that echoed in the emptiness, final and absolute.
The azure glow enveloped Lion once more, wrapping him in divine light. He vanished, leaving behind silence and a corpse that would never be found, never be mourned, never be remembered.
Then Veil's eyes opened.
Not brown anymore. Crimson. Burning with something that had never been human, never been mortal, never been anything the world was meant to contain. Something ancient and patient and utterly alien.
His broken neck straightened with sounds no living body should produce. Bones grinding against each other like millstones. Cartilage reforming, knitting together with wet pops that echoed obscenely in the silence. The head rolled back into alignment, vertebrae clicking into place one by one like a puzzle solving itself in reverse, defying every law of nature and death.
Veil—or whatever now inhabited his flesh—sat upright in the absolute dark. The movement was wrong. Too smooth. Too controlled for someone who'd just died, whose heart should have stopped pumping, whose blood should have begun to cool and settle.
"How long I've waited," the entity said through Veil's mouth, its voice layered with centuries of patience and hunger that had gnawed at the edges of reality. "How very, very long." The words carried weight, each syllable heavy with the burden of ages spent in darkness, in exile, in endless anticipation.
It stood, testing limbs that should have been cooling and stiff. Flexed fingers that should have lost all sensation, all warmth, all capacity for movement. Smiled with lips that should have been cold and blue, stretched in an expression of triumph that Veil's face had never worn in life. Everything worked. Everything obeyed. The vessel was damaged but functional—more than functional.