Chapter 160 The Silent War Begins
"Master..." the Witch whimpered. The word was a broken, jagged thing, muffled by the grit of the splintered floorboards as she pressed her face deeper into the grey dust.
Lucifer didn't respond at first. He merely stood over her, his presence a suffocating weight that seemed to suck the oxygen from the cramped room, making the very shadows in the corners cower and shrink away. A thin, sharp smirk played on his lips the cold amusement of a predator watching a wounded animal crawl in the dirt. "Master?" he repeated, the title sounding like a vile mockery in his throat. "You call me Master, yet you dare to vomit a mere mortal into my kingdom? You dare to stain my halls with the stagnant stench of the living?"
As his temper flared, the temperature didn't just rise; the air itself began to char and crackle. Smoldering embers ignited spontaneously in the heavy folds of his dark coat, and a low, guttering flame flickered along the broad line of his shoulders, casting a hellish light against the peeling wallpaper. "Am sorry... I didn't mean to, Master..." the Witch cried out, her voice rising into a shrill, desperate rasp that scraped against the silence.
Lucifer’s gaze drifted, his eyes catching a faint, unnatural rhythm. In the corner of the room, perched precariously upon a crooked wooden shelf, sat a glass sphere. It didn't glow; it pulsed, a rhythmic, sickly violet light that felt like a heartbeat out of place in this rot-filled shack. He moved toward it, his boots thudding against the floor with the heavy finality of a gavel. When he lifted the orb, a snarl curled his lip, revealing teeth that seemed too sharp for a human face.
He could feel it vibrating through his skin the oily, rot-heavy residue of Hades. It hummed against his palm, a direct, poisonous link to the deeper pits of the underworld. He turned back to the Witch, his silhouette expanding until his shadow completely swallowed her trembling, huddled form.
"Look at me," he commanded, the power in his voice vibrating the glass jars on the shelves until they rattled. The Witch didn't move, her body racking with shivers so violent her teeth clicked together in a frantic, rhythmic chatter. "I asked you a question. Who is it you truly worship?"
"I worship you, Master," she stammered, the words dissolving into a ragged, pathetic sob that shook her thin frame.
Lucifer leaned down, the proximity of his face bringing a heat that smelled of ozone and ancient fires. His eyes burned like dying stars collapsing, white-hot, and terrifyingly vast. "Have you forgotten?" he whispered, his voice vibrating through the very floorboards she clung to. "I am the Morning Star. I am the Father of Lies. Did you truly think your mind was a web thick enough to catch a king?"
"I dare not lie! I dare not!" she wailed. Her forehead began to thump rhythmically against the wood, a frantic, bloody beat of prayer and absolute terror.
"The truth," Lucifer hissed. The heat radiating from his skin singed the stray hairs on her neck, the air between them blurring with the intensity of his aura.
"I took power from Hades!" The confession finally burst from her, desperate and ugly.
"After Morgana tore my soul open... after she left me a hollow joke for the other Witches to mock... I was nothing! I was a beggar!" She gasped for air, her words tumbling over one another. "Hades offered me a tether. He gave me the strength to stand again, but the price was a favor written in shadow. He told me the debt was due today. He told me to send the boy. I’m sorry, my Lord! I’m sorry!"
Lucifer went silent. The flames on his shoulders died down to a low, blue glow as his mind turned inward. The gears of a celestial war, dormant for eons, began to grind with a heavy, iron groan. What are you digging for, Hades? he wondered. Did his brother truly believe a broken mortal boy was enough to tip the scales of the universe? Or was the ancient prophecy the one written in the blood of the first stars finally beginning to breathe?
A cold, diamond-hard resolve settled in his chest, chilling the room back into a frozen tomb. I will burn the entire world to ash and sift through the cinders before I let that crown slip through my fingers.
He looked down at the Witch. He didn't reach for a blade; she wasn't worth the steel. Instead, he stretched out a long, pale hand, black smoke curling from his fingertips like ink bleeding into clear water. The smoke didn't swirl; it crawled, seeping into the Witch’s ears and eyes like a silent, invasive fog. He didn't kill her. Instead, he reached into the private cupboards of her mind and systematically shattered every jar. He wiped her clean, scrubbing away every memory of this night and every thought of his face, leaving her a hollowed-out vessel with no captain.
"I should end you," Lucifer mused, his voice echoing in the freezing shack like a tolling bell. "But I will leave you for Hades. Let him find his toy broken and useless."
With a sharp, violent crack that sounded like the sky breaking, he vanished.
Lucifer braced for the familiar, scorching embrace of the sulfur pits and the screams of the damned. Instead, his boots landed on soft, damp grass that yielded beneath his weight. The air here was sweet and heavy, thick with the scent of blooming jasmine and rain-soaked earth.
"Hello, brother."
Lucifer stiffened, his wings phantom-aching beneath his heavy coat. He turned slowly to see the Queen of Nature Dorcas standing amidst the emerald vines and hanging moss of her mansion. She looked as ancient and rooted as an oak, her eyes filled with a weary, green light that seemed to see through his physical form.
"Why have you pulled me here?" Lucifer demanded, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "I have no time for the flowery games of the green-world."
Dorcas stepped forward, her bare feet making no sound on the lush grass. "Aren't you even a little pleased to see your sister, Lucifer?"
"Get to the point, Dorcas. Why was I summoned?"
The warmth drained from her face, leaving her features as sharp as flint. She reached out, her fingers grazing the vibrant leaf of a nearby fern; it instantly curled, withering to a brittle brown at her touch. "I need your help. The balance is screaming. I have felt a rot spreading through the human realm souls are being harvested, torn violently from their bodies before their threads have even begun to run thin. Something is stealing the very essence of the living."
Lucifer’s smirk returned, sharp and lethal as a hidden blade. He knew that specific hunger. He knew the one who treated human souls like gold coins to be hoarded in a vault. "Hades," he said, the name sounding like a curse.
"It is worse than greed, brother," Dorcas said, her voice dropping to a jagged whisper that carried on the wind. "If he is gathering these souls, he isn't just looking for power. He is forging a legion. An army built from the stolen light of humanity an army that could tear even you from your throne."