Chapter 199: Twilight of the Old Gods
Chapter 199: Twilight of the Old Gods
David stepped into the rotunda.
Mia's voice came through broken and faint: "David… the life readings are still there… the interference in here… can you hear me?"
David's eyes fixed on the chest of Brady — the man who ruled the Soul Sanctum — where the meteorite fragment was drinking in the energy of the entire volcano.
Brady spread his arms wide, his face flushed with something close to ecstasy. "David. You finally came."
"You killed my generals. My arbiters. My altar guard. My legions. You turned two thousand years of the Soul Sanctum's work to ash."
David walked forward, blade in hand. "You're next."
Brady smiled. "Human beings always call what they can't understand by the name 'death.'"
The meteorite at his chest blazed. The gravity inside the rotunda doubled in an instant.
The stone floor cracked under David's feet. His knees buckled. The tip of the long blade ground into the stone.
Brady drifted down slowly until he stood before the altar. "Look carefully. What you're facing is not some crime boss. Not some gene-spliced freak."
He raised his right hand. Dark crimson energy gathered in his palm. "You're facing a god."
A beam of dark red light swept toward David.
David threw himself sideways. The beam grazed his shoulder and punched straight through an alloy pillar behind him. The energy conduits inside it detonated — sparks and superheated air blasted across the semicircular hall.
Brady turned his wrist. The beam chased David, carving a molten line across the floor.
David sprinted along the edge of a shattered stone platform, his blade dragging a trail of fire behind him. He reached the altar and swung for Brady's side.
The blade never landed. Space warped.
David's strike froze mid-arc.
Brady flicked his fingers. David flew backward. He punched through two stone pillars and slammed into the obsidian wall at the far edge of the rotunda. Debris rained down around him.
Brady floated before the altar. The dark red in his eyes had deepened. "Your power is too primitive."
David pushed himself up from the rubble and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "Everyone says that."
"Did Peter?" Brady's smile widened. "He was a failure. Obsessed with body density. Treated calculation as the decisive factor. He never understood what true evolution actually means."
David charged. Brady raised his hand. Gravity slammed down.
The floor beneath David's feet collapsed inward. Lava fountained through the fissures. David launched himself upward, his telekinesis seizing the broken pillars and hurling them at Brady.
Brady's gaze sharpened. The debris stopped dead in front of him, then shattered to powder under a pulse of dark crimson energy.
David burst through the dust cloud, blade driving straight at Brady's chest.
Brady caught the flat of the blade bare-handed. The skin split. Dark crimson bones, glowing beneath, showed through the gaps. "A fine blade. Stellar-iron. I suppose even humans know how to pick through the garbage."
David drove his boot into Brady's gut. Brady staggered back half a step. The smile left his face.
David yanked the blade free in the same motion and raked it across Brady's hand. Dark crimson blood hit the floor and ate into the stone, leaving a scattering of pits.
Brady looked down at his hand. "You hurt me."
"Just getting started." David came at him again.
The meteorite at Brady's chest blazed white. A ring of force expanded outward from the altar.
David was slammed to the outer edge of the room. His tactical suit tore in a dozen places.
Mia's voice cut through his earpiece, sharp with alarm. "David — he's tapping the volcano's core energy—"
Brady extended his hand. The energy conduits lining the rotunda lit up in sequence.
The lava lake surged. Dozens of large-bore pipelines were pulling geothermal energy at full speed. Ribbons of dark crimson light converged on the altar and poured into the meteorite in Brady's chest.
"Kneel," Brady said. His voice had dropped to something low and absolute.
The gravity increased again. The ground under David's feet splintered. Blood ran freely down his arm from the gash above his wrist.
Brady descended from the altar. With each step forward, the air around David grew heavier.
"You're angry." Brady studied him. "Anger comes from loss. Let me see what you've actually lost."
The world shifted around David. The temple vanished.
Only a rainy night remained. A wrecked car.
Stephen slumped over the steering wheel. Karina, her face soaked in blood. Young David standing at the roadside, hands shredded by broken glass.
The image cut. A prison cell now.
Iron doors. Handcuffs. syringes. Cold white light. A guard's cruel, leisurely smile.
Another cut — the electromagnetic dome over Manhattan. Then Veda, suspended over a flooded chamber, shaking. Then Mia standing at the edge of a cabin doorway, her eyes red.
Brady's voice wove through every image. "You can't save everyone."
"They get hurt because of you. They die because of you."
"The stronger you become, the worse it is for the people around you."
"You are the source of the disaster."
David closed his eyes. The images kept running behind them.
Brady pressed harder. "Stop fighting. Give me your body. You'll become the most powerful weapon I've ever wielded."
"You're wrong." David's voice was quiet.
Brady's brow furrowed.
David opened his eyes. Dark crimson fire burned inside his pupils. The Crimson Tear against his chest had gone fully hot — the fabric of his tactical suit above it had burned away in a blackened, ragged split.
"Those aren't disasters. They're my reasons for coming here to kill you."
The Crimson Tear and the stellar-iron blade shuddered together. The dark crimson veins along the blade's length began to glow. His telekinetic force folded entirely into the edge of the steel.
The air trembled. Fragments of stone lifted off the floor and shook apart into fine dust.
Brady's expression shifted. "What are you doing?"
David didn't answer. He pushed the force deeper.
A vibration field formed along the blade's edge. Hairline fractures spread through the gravity field around him in every direction.
Brady thrust his hand out. A dark crimson beam shot straight at David's forehead.
David brought the blade up and split the beam down the center. Both halves blew into the walls on either side, melting two massive craters into the stone.
The color drained from Brady's face. "That's not possible."
David kept walking. Each step tore through another layer of the gravitational distortion beneath him.
Brady drove both palms downward. The great stone ring above the altar fractured. Dozens of tons of obsidian came crashing down toward David.
David raised the blade and cut. The rocks shattered to powder in midair.
Brady fell back. The meteorite at his chest burned so bright it hurt to look at. He reached down and seized the main energy conduit below the altar. "You think this is enough to win?"
Geothermal energy erupted upward and flooded into him. The dark crimson veins across his body blazed.
Brady's body locked up for a single instant.
David was already moving. The particle-vibration field at the blade's tip tore through the gravity zones in his path. The dark crimson shield buckled and broke. The blade closed on Brady's chest.
Brady barely got his left arm up in time.
The blade took it off at the elbow. Half the arm tumbled into the lava lake.
Brady screamed. The meteorite in his chest was fully exposed now.
David gripped the blade with both hands and drove it straight into the origin meteorite.
Cracks spread from the point of entry, racing outward in every direction. Dark crimson light erupted in all directions — wild, uncontrolled, like lightning that had lost its path — tearing across Brady's chest, his throat, his neck.
Brady's face broke open with terror. "No!"
He raised his remaining hand and grabbed the blade. "No — you don't know what you're destroying!"
David pushed the blade another half inch deeper. The cracks split wider.
Brady's voice tore raw from his throat. "That's not from this world — it's a coordinate marker they left behind!"