The scent of burnt silver still clung to Lucian's hands.
He didn't sleep that night—not after the possession, not after he forged the shadow-blade, not after he sent the false orders that would scatter Sancturm's elite forces across the wrong borderlands.
Instead, he stared into the coals until dawn broke in the Abyss—if it could be called that. Down here, morning wasn't light. It was a lessening of shadows. A breath instead of a scream.
And it meant one thing:
Time to train.
---
"Today we learn to kill gods," Lucian said, stepping into the obsidian chamber.
Seven warriors stood before him—chosen from the Hollowed, hardened by exile. Each one had lost someone to Sancturm. Each one had survived where others hadn't.
But none of them were ready.
Not yet.
Lucian drew a line in the dust with his blade. "Cross this line if you think you can touch me."
They hesitated.
Then three lunged.
Lucian was already behind them.
He didn't strike. He let time pull him two seconds ahead. He dodged before they moved. Bent low, twisted a wrist, slipped past a blade like smoke through fingers.
He flicked one on the forehead.
The man crumpled.
"Too slow," Lucian said.
The others tried. They failed.
He didn't mock them.
He rebuilt them.
Over hours, then days. Pain was the forge. Fear was the anvil.
By the fifth day, they didn't just follow his commands.
They followed his vision.
---
Kaenra returned, watching from the high balcony carved into blackstone.
"You're not teaching them to fight," she said.
"No," Lucian replied. "I'm teaching them how not to lose."
---
That evening, while the warriors slept in the jagged alcoves of the cavern wall, Lucian returned to the memory loop.
He lay in the circle of runes, placed Lira's pendant on his chest, and whispered the phrase:
> "Let me see her again."
The world turned warm.
There she was.
Lira.
Not the one who betrayed him.
But the one who once brushed dirt off his shoulder after a spar.
The one who whispered, "They don't deserve your loyalty," long before she chose them.
He stared at her.
He reached out.
She smiled.
He stayed there.
But this time, something changed.
She looked past him.
"Lucian?"
He froze.
She had never said that in this loop before.
He snapped out of it, panting, heart hammering like thunder.
The pendant glowed.
His magic was mutating. Adapting. The loop was becoming reactive.
He wasn't just watching memories anymore.
He was talking to ghosts.
---
The next day, he tested it.
He forced a memory forward. Chose a different one—Lira during the Siege of Merelion. The time she stitched his wounds without a word.
And again, she looked at him.
"Why do you keep coming back?"
He broke the loop.
Screamed.
The echo lasted six seconds.
Everyone heard it.
No one dared ask.
---
By week's end, his elite seven had names:
Tyen the Silent (daggers + teleport glyphs)
Morra Flame-Eater (pyromancer exiled for refusing to burn a child)
Brael the Twin-Faced (master of illusion and mimicry)
Kresh of Thorns (a living vine-armor hybrid)
Solvyr Gravesinger (wields death-echoes in bone flutes)
Drenna of Nine Scars (once a royal blade-dancer)
Yualt (the youngest—barely seventeen, with eyes that saw truths others missed)
Lucian stood before them.
"We don't wear sigils. We don't carry banners. Our name is what they whisper when they think we're not listening."
He drew his new sword.
It hummed with time magic.
He sliced through empty air.
And three seconds later, a boulder thirty feet behind him split in two.
He looked over his shoulder.
"That's what memory can do."
---
Later that night, Tyen approached him quietly.
"Sir," he said. "There's something you should see."
Lucian followed him to the edge of a deep spiral tunnel.
Carved in the wall were fresh glyphs—old magic, bleeding blue light.
"The Sancturm tried to send a beacon," Tyen said. "It failed. But… it means they're close."
Lucian touched the glyph.
He smiled.
"Then let's knock on their door before they finish rebuilding it."
---
The plan began.
A small fortress. Poorly guarded. High altitude.
Lucian would not attack with swords.
He would enter through a mind.
He focused. Reached. Found a soldier asleep.
He whispered.
> "Let me in."
He stepped into the man's thoughts.
And the world turned gold