The magical circles of light dissolved with a soft, warm sigh into the thin night air. The thirteen remaining youths did not crash in a chaotic heap onto the courtyard. Instead, the spatial currents pulled them apart with subtle precision. Before the eye of the storm could strike or panic could break out over the short deadline, every single one of them was individually teleported to a private, personal rest chamber deep within the reinforced, ancient wings of the Bastion.
Inside their private quarters, the teenagers slowly drifted back to reality. The heavy, stone walls absorbed every single noise from the outside world. The pent-up tension of recent weeks, fighting on the absolute precipice of death, the hellish battles against Abaddon, and the face-to-face encounter with the Overlord of the Hellverse slowly melted away into the silent darkness of the rooms.
Beat threw himself flat onto his bed, fully clothed with his heavy combat boots still on. His breathing was deep and rhythmic, his fingers still slightly cramped as though gripping his instruments, right until sleep claimed him entirely. Nicola rested his glasses on the wooden nightstand and stared with exhausted eyes at the stone vaulted ceiling for a few lingering seconds before his eyelids dropped shut. Vulkan collapsed onto the thick mattress with a muffled groan and passed out almost instantly, the blue veins across his skin dimming as his overworked muscles finally received their desperate rest. Miki, Ren, Jane, Lila, Apollo, and Aurelius similarly surrendered to the deep, restorative slumber their young bodies craved.
Only inside two adjoining rooms at the absolute heart of the Bastion did the quiet remain restlessly alive.
Silarias sat on the edge of his stone bed. His knee still throbbed slightly from taking the full impact of his own chin when he missed the portal, but the physical sting paled in comparison to the mental tempest racing through his mind. He stared at the unpolished floor, his fingers tightly intertwined. The heavy wooden door connecting his room to Nyx’s slid open a fraction of an inch without making a sound.
Nyx stepped into the room with silent, bare feet. Her long, dark hair spilled loosely over her shoulders, her gaze soft beneath the silver moonlight pouring through the tall arched windows.
Silarias slowly looked up. A faint, completely genuine smile broke across his exhausted teenage face.
“It was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?” Silarias spoke softly, his voice raspy from absolute exhaustion. “All of it… even eating together out on the field just now. I hope you had a good birthday, despite all the madness and the Hellverse…”
Nyx stopped dead in her tracks halfway across the room and stared at him. Her eyes glistened in the dark, filled with a strange, deep, emotional light. For a brief second, the usually composure-struck royal daughter looked like she was drowning in the moment. Her mouth parted slightly, her eyes softened, and she stood there rendered utterly speechless by pure, unfiltered affection for the boy in front of her.
Just as the silence grew too heavy, she shook her head violently, blinked away the haze, and hurriedly pulled her sharp, proud posture back together.
“Wait!” Nyx blurted out, quickly crossing her arms and snapping her head away. “It was your birthday too! Did you… did you have a good time?!”
Silarias looked at her, warmth washing over him. The weight of the God Realm, the looming opening of the academy, and the lingering threat of the Infernals felt a thousand miles away for one precious second.
“Nyx, no matter what happens… we stay together,” Silarias said calmly, an unshakeable resolve in his voice. “But we really need to sleep now. Solomon wasn’t joking when he said we have to unleash hell in a few hours.”
They crawled onto the wide stone bed together. The Bastion’s furniture was cold, but beneath the heavy blankets, a comfortable, protective warmth settled over them quickly. The minutes drifted past. The breathing of the world outside seemed to freeze, leaving only the soft rustle of fabric in the dark.
“Sil… psst,” Nyx’s whisper cut sharply through the stillness.
Silarias, his eyes wide open as he stared straight at the dark ceiling, turned his head slowly toward her on the pillow.
“You want to go to the Table, don’t you?”
Nyx immediately began to stutter, her eyes searching the dark room in a panic. “Well… I thought… maybe we should… I mean, there is a completely logical, tactical reason to consult the spirits right now and—”
Before she could finish her elaborate excuse, Silarias sat bolt upright out of the sheets like a stung teenager.
“DUDE, SO DO I!!” he yelled at full volume, completely thrilled.
“SHH!” Nyx hissed frantically, her eyes going wide. She slammed her hand over his mouth and yanked him back down onto the mattress by his shirt collar with a wild jerk. “Be quiet… come on.”
They sat opposite each other on the bed in a cross-legged position. The playfulness evaporated, replaced instantly by absolute, spiritual focus. Their fingers locked together seamlessly, palm against palm. Silarias closed his eyes and drew a deep, controlled breath.
Suddenly, a bright, golden-yellow light erupted straight from his eyes. The light flared violently for a single second, like a solar flare surging through his soul, before snapping off completely. A heartbeat later, a brilliant, silver-blue beam shot from Nyx’s eyes, vanishing just as fast into the shadows. An instant after that, a blinding double beam unleashed from both of them at once, violently exiting their physical bodies. Their teenage shells collapsed limp and motionless onto the bed as their consciousness shot through the ether at absolute speed.
BOOM.
In a fraction of a millisecond, they were seated at the gigantic, ancient marble Table. The realm surrounding them was an infinite, floating void without a top or bottom.
Yet the atmosphere at the Table was entirely different from any previous session. It was ice-cold. Everyone was already seated. Odr, Freya, and Frey sat on the left side, their divine, towering forms shrouded in a strange, oppressive, almost depressing silence. Directly across from them sat Lucifer and Bansaday.
Silarias stared at them with wide, questioning eyes, trying to pull his teenage posture back together. “Uh… normally you guys aren’t here at this hour…? Why are you all just sitting here waiting?”
Lucifer looked up slowly. His pitch-black, bottomless eyes met those of Odr and Bansaday. Lucifer gave a subtle, ominous nod toward the rest of the circle.
“Anyone have something to say before I start?” Lucifer began, his voice sounding like sharp gravel dragging across a tombstone. “Because I have a deal…”
Silarias and Nyx scanned the ring of ancient entities. Balamore and the gods remained silent. They stared stiffly and tensely at the cold, shimmering marble surface.
Frey bowed his head low, staring down at his trembling hands resting on the table with an embarrassed expression. “We… well… rules, you know how it is…” Frey stammered softly, unable to meet Silarias’ eyes.
Nyx locked onto him with a razor-sharp gaze. “What is wrong with you guys?” She turned her head toward Silarias. “Why is everyone acting so absurdly strange?”
Bansaday, the colossal lion warrior radiating a deep golden aura, leaned forward slowly. His fiery mane billowed without any wind, his heavy, deep voice vibrating through the very core of the marble table.
“Call me Bansadarius…” the lion warrior grumbled with a low, majestic rumble. “I… young Vessel… you have to work for this. Nothing is ever handed to you on a silver platter.”
Silarias slammed both hands onto the marble with a violent smack, his teenage patience completely wiped out. “Hold on! I don’t understand a single thing anymore! I demand an explanation! A proper, clear explanation of what is going on here!”
“Irrelevant,” Lucifer cut him off ice-cold, his voice slicing through the floating void. “The deal… We give you all the information and pull the brakes completely off your powers. Which means the curse will grow far more intense… and the raw power of the Vessel can overwhelm and destroy you. But over time, it will become clear. So what do you say, Liberator?”
Nyx looked at Silarias, her face tight with concern and unasked questions. “Sil… I never actually asked you… What is your curse, really? What does that legacy actually entail?”
Silarias kept his eyes locked on Lucifer. Lucifer leaned back slowly into his black throne and began to laugh softly, a dark, echoing sound that carved through the space and made the marble shiver.
“You really know nothing, do you?” Lucifer spoke with a cruel, majestic glint in his eyes. “The Curse of the Liberator is no simple affliction of sickness, physical pain, or an early death. It is an existential chain that wraps around your very soul. The Curse forces the user into a position where he must… everywhere, at all times, and without exception… liberate people. Freedom is the curse. Desperately wanting to grant absolute freedom to everything and everyone around you, while never, ever being allowed to possess it yourself. You will always be forced, motivated to your absolute core, to gather people around you and rise up against every form of established authority, every order, or the laws of nature themselves. Ergo… Ragnarok will be started by you. In the most legendary, soul-crushing, and bloody manner creation will ever witness.”
Silarias stared down at his hands on the table. Lucifer’s dark, imposing words penetrated deep into the innermost layers of his teenage soul. He felt the staggering weight of his fate, but right in the middle of that heavy silence, his eyebrows suddenly furrowed. An impulsive thought flashed through his mind, and he couldn’t hold his tongue.
“Wait a minute…” Silarias interrupted abruptly, locking eyes with Lucifer. “Aren’t you supposed to be evil? I read in ancient books that you were the merciless executioner of one of the fiercest, cruelest prisons in the entire Hellverse!”
Lucifer stiffened. The cruel smirk vanished from his face instantly, replaced by a raw, ancient pain.
“Hold on!” Lucifer snapped back fiercely, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion. “My father cast me out! I will not be framed like this anymore! No… he sent his own son away from the most beautiful place in all the realms, forcing me to serve as an executioner without any access to Eden… my birthplace! The place where I grew up as a child, back when I still had wings…”
The silence that fell was absolute. Silarias and Nyx froze in their seats. The weight of the revelation hit like a bomb. They stared at the fallen angel, seeing the deep wound behind his dark image, feeling the genuine grief cutting through his voice.
“We… we didn’t know, Lucifer,” Silarias stammered softly, while Nyx bowed her head with an embarrassed look, making a quiet gesture of apology. “We’re sorry.”
Lucifer drew a deep breath, straightened his back, and let his dark, stoic aura close around him once more.
Silarias looked slowly at Nyx. The heaviness of the conversation still hung in the air, but the core of the curse was finally settling in.
“Wait… isn’t that literally exact same thing I’m doing right now?” Silarias whispered. “So your infamous curse… is just my personality?”
Nyx looked at him. A wide, breathtaking, completely genuine smile broke across her face, her eyes shining with deep pride. “Then you have a beautiful curse, haha.”
Both teenagers stood up from the Table simultaneously. The heavy chairs scraped backward over the marble with a harsh, grating screech.
“So… how do we get that info and that power again?” Silarias asked, his stance rigid and fearless.
At that exact millisecond, reality shattered. The colossal, ancient marble Table flipped away entirely. The thousand-year-old stone fractured into millions of floating shards, vaporizing within a fraction of a second into pure, dark stardust that vanished into the void.
There they stood. Face to face.
Bansadarius, Lucifer, Odr, Frey, and Freya stood in a tight, imposing semicircle. The ancient legends, gods, and dark entities slowly bowed their heads. They showed a grotesque, profound, and historical respect for the words and unyielding will of the two youths before them, dropping low to their knees.
Yet in the very same heartbeat, they snapped back up. Their auras exploded in a massive visual escalation. They flipped within a single millisecond into an aggressive, ruthless battle-ready stance. The air around them burst into flames, swirling with waves of golden, deep purple, and blood-red energy.
Silarias turned halfway toward Nyx and reached out his hand with a sharp motion. Nyx gripped his palm tightly.
Upon that single point of physical contact, a blinding escalation of magical energy detonated. Their simple sleeping clothes transformed instantly under the pressure of the spirits. Silarias’ attire morphed into a combat-ready black tunic woven with glowing golden runes and fiery, orange Bansaday accents flowing like living fire across his shoulders. Nyx’s garments shifted into a royal, deep-blue shadow armor that glowed brightly under the force of an imaginary moon.
The void around them distorted into a grotesque, endless battlefield stretching as far as the eye could see. The hard ground beneath their boots turned into a mirror-smooth, jet-black ocean of liquid energy. Titanic waterfalls of pure, brilliantly radiant water did not cascade downward; instead, they erupted upward from the mirror floor with a deafening, thunderous roar, shooting miles high straight into the dark sky above.
And hovering high on the horizon, towering over the entire magical battlefield, hung two massive, blood-red moons that cast a sinister, fiery glare across the arena.
Silarias and Nyx drew their weapons, looked at each other one last time with a confident smirk, and stood shoulder to shoulder against the gods and legends, ready for the ultimate confrontation.