Chapter 521: The Sacrifice
POV: Konstantine
The air, saturated with a smell of sulfur and burnt blood, still vibrated with the residues of demonic and arcane mana that had clashed for hours. I was slumped on the ground, my broken body sunk into gray and burning dust. All my strength had vanished, and every fiber of my being screamed a pain so deep it became abstract.
A few meters from me, Loriel was not in a better state. She was lying on the ground, her voluptuous silhouette highlighted by the tears in her dress. The precious fabric was now nothing but a pile of blackened rags that revealed the curve of her hips and the whiteness of her skin now soiled by ash. Her long azure hair spread around her, their strands intertwined with dust and debris. She was still breathing, but her breath was short and labored, each inspiration costing her a visible effort.
Fortunately, fate had spared us a total confrontation against the entirety of the angelic or demonic legions. If the celestial or infernal armies had unleashed themselves in their entirety on this battlefield, we would not have survived one more minute. The mere thought of these hordes descending on our positions made me shiver despite the ambient heat.
Suddenly, space tore in front of us. A dark rift opened in the fabric of reality. Aeshma, the Demon Princess, appeared in a whirlwind of vaporous shadows, her jet-black hair floating around her like snakes of smoke. She was carrying Lucifer in her arms, the body of the fallen seeming more fragile than ever. His limbs hung inert, his skin of a cadaverous pallor, and his closed eyes revealed deep dark circles that betrayed a life that was escaping.
"There isn’t much time left," she said, her voice devoid of its usual arrogance, replaced by a desperate urgency. "We have to hurry."
I opened my eyes with difficulty. My dilated pupils fixed on the demon princess, trying to pierce the steel mask she was trying to maintain on her features. In her deep red gaze, I read a determination I had never known in her. It was the look of someone who had already crossed the threshold of sacrifice, someone who had weighed the pros and cons and chosen the only possible outcome, as painful as it might be.
"I see that you have resolved yourself..." I articulated, my throat burning as if I had swallowed embers. Each word was a trial, my vocal cords ravaged by the magical effluvia I had inhaled during the battle. "Do you really understand what it implies?"
Aeshma did not flinch. She tightened her grip on Lucifer, whose body was becoming increasingly livid, losing its vital heat at an alarming speed. Her fingers sank into the cold flesh of the fallen as if seeking to keep him attached to the world of the living by the sole force of her will.
"We don’t have time to think twice!" she shouted, her cry resonating painfully against the walls of the distant mountains. "Do you think I don’t measure the weight of what I’m about to do? In the best case, Antichrist will kill me."
Loriel got up staggering.
"Have you met Sulyvhan?" she asked, her voice choked by emotion. "What did he say?"
The silence that followed was the cruelest possible answer. In Aeshma’s gaze, dark as the abysses of Tenebris, Loriel understood instantly. The seconds stretched, heavy and unbearable, while the demon princess averted her eyes, unable to face the hope that still lit up in the mage’s gaze. Alexander Sulyvhan, the first human to have tamed the aura, had died after giving his essence.
However, I knew what I had to do. Despite the exhaustion that numbed my limbs and blurred my thoughts, I intended to use a tiny part of my mystical intention and that of Sulyvhan to leave an indelible mark in this world, a beacon to guide Lucifer in the darkness of the future. My mind, though faltering, was already beginning to trace the contours of the necessary incantation.
As I was about to respond to Loriel to soothe her distress, a low rumble, coming from the highest strata of reality, made the entire continent tremble. The surrounding mountains vibrated, their cracked summits releasing avalanches of stones and snow. It was not a natural thunder. It was the cry of a divine will falling upon the world of mortals, an anger so ancient and so pure that it made the gods themselves pale.
Aeshma widened her eyes, a pure terror decomposing her magnificent features. Her pupils dilated to the extreme, and for the first time since I knew her, I saw fear take hold of her without her being able to hide it.
"Shit!!! Sorcerer, hurry up!" she cried out, her voice breaking on the last words.
I did not wait for the rest. I breathed in deeply, my lungs filling with air tainted by combat residues, forcing my Aura to circulate one last time in my atrophied veins. The flow was weak, almost imperceptible, but it was there, a glimmer of hope at the bottom of a well of darkness. My hands rose with painful slowness, my fingers intertwining with lightning speed to form multiple complex mudras.
At that moment, the reality around me began to distort. The colors diluted, the contours faded, and the world deformed like a painting on water. My eyes turned to pure white, evacuating all trace of humanity. No more iris, no more pupils, no more gazes. Just a blinding luminosity that seemed to contain the infinite.
< Mystic Arts: Vision of the Future >.
Time segmented. The seconds stretched into hours, the minutes into centuries. I saw glimpses of realities to come, fragments of stories that had not yet been written. I saw the reincarnation of the Lion constellation, a young man with red hair and an iron will, Kris Donoghan, awakening in a world that had survived the catastrophe. I saw his first steps in a universe that would not recognize him, his struggles, his triumphs, his failures. The world would not go out today.
To ensure the survival of what I had built, I had to add a variable, an anomaly that the Constellations could not predict. I had to cheat, manipulate the rules of the game, introduce an element of chaos.
It was then that a second mudra formed under my fingers. My hands were now trembling, exhausted by the superhuman effort they were providing. But I could not stop. I had to go to the end.
At the same time, the sky above us tore like a worn canvas. A colossal Eye, of absolute blackness surrounded by an iris of impious flames, pierced the heavens. The eye was so large that it covered almost the entire horizon, its flames licking the clouds like fingers of fire. Its vertical pupil, a slit of shadow at the heart of this celestial hell, fixed on us with an unfathomable contempt.
"Do you think I don’t know your little game?"