Lady Ariana stood. She was not tall, but when she rose, the air in the garden shifted. The wind flared. The boy cooed softly in her arms.
"Blasphemer!" he howled. "You mock the herald of Arivan! Without His grace, your son would be dust in the earth, a stillborn disappointment. And now you deny Him? Arivan is the seedgiver. The architect of futures. The child is his vessel."
That was when Lady Ariana laughed. He spoke too boldly. Too freely.
"You presume too much," Said Lady Ariana, "to speak so boldly in these halls." "It seems to me like you don't know your place, priest." He forgot he stood before the Lady of Ortenia, Jewel of the West, wife to Sued Ozar Aren—and he, the priest, was nothing but a shadow of old words.
The priest choked.
One moment, he stood calmly. Next, he clawed at his throat, lifted by unseen hands, his feet kicking above the marble floor, robes flailing like wings of a dying bird.
A purple light began to glow at his chest, and with a burst, it shattered whatever spell had seized him.
He landed hard and gasped for air. Face twisted in fury. The priest's skin shimmered with unnatural hues, his fingers twitching in odd angles.
Gabriel trembled. The world had become sharp and strange.
Lady Ariana stepped forward. "You dare insult my House with demon's breath?" Ariana's eyes were twin storms. "You come cloaked in godhood but stink of sulfur. Begone, you and your filth from the void."
With a flick of her wrist, the priest became weightless again—then a thunderbolt of force launched him across the gardens. He crashed through flowers, across the pond, and against the castle wall. He hit the castle wall with a boom that silenced the birds. The maids screamed. The guards surged forward. Blades unsheathed.
"You tried to prey upon our desperation," she hissed. "But you shall not have him."
Knights appeared from thin air, circling the child. While the priest rose from the rubble. But now… he changed.
Bones lengthened. Flesh peeled. Something within him twisted outward. The man who had entered was no more. What remained was horned and scaled and grinning with a thousand small teeth. Eyes glowed. His breath reeked of ancient crypts and lies told before time began.
"The pact is sealed!" it roared in a voice that dripped like oil. "When the time comes, he will meet his fate. You made a promise, and no man—or woman—may break a vow sworn before a god. He is ours!"
Knights moved to form a wall between Lady Ariana and the beast, but even steel could not mask the creeping dread that settled like frost.
"No," said Lady Ariana.
"Wench! What have you done?" The creature cried.
She stepped forward, unshaken.
"He is shielded by the light of Arion, star-born and ever-burning. Herald of the Endless Sky. You and your master shall never have him."
"You called on Him?" The priest-beast shrieked in anger. "You fool. You cursed your line for generations."
The abomination reeled. And then the skies answered.
Clouds bled into one another. Light fled. The sun itself seemed to turn its face. From above, something vast and formless took shape. It had no eyes, no name, no limit. Men who looked upon it dropped dead before they could scream.
Gabriel stared at the thing above the world — it barely had a face. Mist clung to it like rotted silk. He prayed, though he knew no prayers. He shivered, though he was wrapped in warmth. And just when fear threatened to break him—
His father appeared.
No sigils announced him. No drums heralded his step.
Lord Sued walked into the storm with swordless hands and tired eyes. He looked not at the sky, nor at the demon-thing. He looked only at his wife and the child she carried.
Then he turned towards the beast and spoke.
"You who devoured worship to grow fat on faith… you, who trampled the Heavens and clothed thyself in stolen divinity…""Today, your name shall be scoured from the river of fate."
From the void before him, black mist slithered forth, coalescing into a being whose presence defiled space itself. Void and hollow — staring with silent, blasphemous fury.
Lord Sued stood unmoving. Golden light flickering in his eyes like the final breath of an ancient sun.
Lord Sued's voice deepened, not merely heard, but felt — a decree ringing across the realm. "In my father's name," he said, each word slow and carved from iron, "and his father before… I Sued Ozar Aren sever your name from the heavens and cast you, and all those who follow you, into the abyss beyond reincarnation!"
And all was still.
The clouds retreated.
The beast screamed—and vanished.
Where once there had been power, only silence remained.
And a shattered wall, broken roses, and a baby who would one day be called many things.
But for now, he was just Arion.