Chapter 20: 20 Departure

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20: Departure 20: Departure Lilith knew why she was dying.

She had understood it years ago, when her power began to fade along with Zaroth’s.

At first, she had thought it was a curse.

Then, watching her children grow, watching the golden aura emanating from Kairan grow stronger every day, she understood.

It was Kairan.

It had always been Kairan.

Her own son was draining her.

Unintentionally: he absorbed the energy of everything around him, and what surrounded him most, from the womb, had been his parents.

Lilith was dying because she had given birth to something too great for the world.

In those silences beside her bed, in those moments stolen from her illness, she had found something worth more than her own life.

She had found her son.

Not the prince, the chosen one, not even the monster the kingdom feared, but the lonely child, who came to sit beside her because it was the one place in the world where he didn’t have to pretend.

“If my life is the price for your existence,” Lilith thought, watching him silently on the rare occasions when he fell asleep beside her, “then it is a price I pay gladly.

Become what you must become, my son, and when the whole world calls you god, remember only this: that a demoness loved you enough to die for you, and never held it against you.” For now, there was only a mother, a son, and the eternal roar of Dareth’s Crest calling, far away, through the rain.

There was, finally, a night of quiet.

It was the night before Kairan heard the Crest’s final call.

The night before everything began.

And on that night, for the last time, the Dark Tower slept in peace.

Zaroth sat on his dying throne, and for the first time in eight years he felt his power fading not with anguish, but with a strange serenity.

He had accepted that his son had surpassed him, because that was how it had to be.

Every empire crumbled, every king yielded when the time was right.

And if he had to yield to someone, he was happy it was to someone like Kairan.

Lilith slept, for once without pain, and dreamed of the time when she was an invincible warrior and didn’t yet know that loving someone could hurt her more than a thousand battles.

Misael, in his chambers, sharpened his anger like a blade, unaware that he, too, was an instrument in the hands of others.

Kairan, on the highest terrace, gazed at the clouds.

He didn’t know, that night, what awaited him, nor did he know of the visions, the blades, the truth about the Celestial Kingdom.

He knew only one thing: that beyond those gray clouds lay an answer, and that, sooner or later, he would go and find it.

The wind from the Abyss ruffled his black hair, the rain soaked his face, still intact, unscarred.

In the distance, miles of darkness, Dareth’s Crest thundered.

For the first time, Kairan truly heard that sound, and for the first time, he thought he understood it.

It wasn’t the struggle of two trapped souls, it wasn’t just the sound of an ancient war.

It was a call, they were calling him.

Kairan closed his eyes, let the rain wash over him, and when he opened them again, something in his gaze had changed.

A decision made, a threshold crossed, before he’d even taken a step.

“All right,” he whispered to the sky, to the roars, to the fate that awaited him.

“I’ll come.” The next day he would leave.

But first he would indulge in a restful sleep, the same one the three unsuspecting worlds still basked in.

For them, too, however, the next day was near.

The sky above the demonic realm was an immense, perpetually gray cloud.

There was no sun, no warm light: only a constant twilight, a humid gloom that settled over everything like an ancient veil.

The rain fell incessantly, beating against the palace’s tall windows with an almost obsessive rhythm, transforming the black marble corridors into shining rivers.

Each drop produced a dull, metallic sound, which mingled with the distant, primal rumble of the Dareth Crest.

Kairan was alone in his room.

Misael’s door was closed, and his brother slept, unaware.

Sitting on the edge of his cot, the young prince stared at the rain that poured against the windows like a river of liquid silver.

His body, small but already extraordinarily defined, was tense and ready.

Years of discipline had sculpted every muscle.

His long black hair fell over his face, barely shielding his bright blue eyes.

He felt the time had come, it was time to go to Dareth Ridge.

He couldn’t explain why that night, but the call, that distant rumble he’d heard since he was born, had suddenly grown louder, more insistent, as if the mountain were calling his name.

Kairan took a deep breath.

There was no fear in his eyes, no hesitation, only calm and determination, and he stood up, with Fluid, precise movements.

“It’s time,” he said, in a whisper that defied the storm.

He couldn’t use a portal; if he did, Emperor Zaroth would sense it instantly and try to stop him.

A fight, at that moment, would have been useless and harmful.

So the prince chose the longest and hardest route: walking across the entire kingdom.

Three days of travel awaited him, through mists, rocks, and ancient dangers.

Kairan feared nothing, and with all the determination he had in his body, he emerged from the Dark Tower, stealthy as a shadow.

He wore a dark tunic cinched at the waist with two leather belts, and over it, a heavy cloak with the hood pulled down over his face.

He moved silently, quickly, but without the desperate urgency of someone fleeing: every gesture was calculated, every step measured.

The outer gate, imposing, inlaid with bloody rose, slowly opened with a dull groan.

None of the demons guarding it noticed him: the darkness, the incessant downpour, and the distant rumble of the explosions protected him.

His small form vanished beyond the threshold, swallowed up by the shadows of the earth.