The roaring laughter of the two titans slowly died away. The sound wave retreated from the hall, but the physical vibrations continued to resonate in the pillars with a slow, heavy thrum. The shiny crystal floor beneath Silarias’s boots pulsed rhythmically, as if the entire space were still reeling from that sonic blow. Deep in his soul, the echo struck like an ominous, leaden bell.
The young warrior, however, refused to yield. The suffocating uncertainty, the sleepless nights, and the pent-up frustration of the past months boiled over in an instant. The barriers he had carefully erected snapped apart with brutal, uncontrolled force.
His fists clenched so tightly that the leather of his gloves audibly groaned. His knuckles turned stark white. Between his trembling fingers, bright sparks of pure, lion-yellow fire began to hiss. The fire spat out small embers that sizzled the moment they touched the cold crystal. His breathing accelerated into a frantic, heavy panting. He took a hard, commanding step forward. His heavy soles clapped against the floor. His gaze was wild, fixing itself with deadly focus directly on the gigantic throne before him.
“How in God’s name did it come to this?!” Silarias roared. The raw emotion cut through his voice, which cracked dangerously and made the walls of the throne room tremble. “What does my curse entail?! What on earth do you mean with all these riddles?! And why the hell don’t I have an anting?! I don’t understand a damn thing anymore! Who am I?! What am I?! Why am I carrying this heavy-as-fuck burden on my shoulders while I don’t even know where the fuck I’m going?!”
His shout echoed against the high ceiling. On the massive throne, the giant form of the lion-like god shifted. Bansaday leaned deep back into the stone woodwork. His golden mane, which radiated an intense, suffocating heat, hissed softly. The air around his gargantuan body flickered and distorted, like the horizon above glowing asphalt in a desert. In his burning eyes, which lit up like two active miniature suns, appeared a look of deep, almost fatherly pride.
“Haha, take it easy, my boy,” the lion laughed. The sound was no mockery, but a rolling thunder that surged deep from his chest and caused the temperature in the room to spike in an instant. “I… I am Bansaday. And you have been lucky, kid. Not just luck, but double luck. Let me explain it to you, my son.”
Bansaday leaned his massive upper body slowly forward. With that movement, his enormous claws slid across the armrests. The crystal directly beneath his sharp nails began to hiss loudly, shimmering from the pure heat escaping his pores.
“You are a direct descendant of me,” the god spoke, his tone now heavier and more commanding. “The most infallible, sole, and last living heir in my bloodline. But that stone you’ve been pressing against your chest since birth? That anting you’ve believed in your whole life, where you thought you drew your power from? No… this, this is no anting. This is a soulbound gem.”
Silarias froze. The heat of his own fire magic extinguished instantly. He involuntarily took a shaky step backward, his mouth half open, his pupils narrowed to tiny slits as the words hit him like a physical blow to the face.
“As I said some time ago: back then, everyone died,” Bansaday continued, his flaming gaze fixed unblinkingly on the trembling boy. “The destruction was total. Nothing remained but ash and molten copper. But you… you survived the experiment. You were snatched from that all-consuming sea of fire as a baby with brutal haste and brought to absolute safety. Delivered into the calm, deep in the shadows, far away from the chaos and the war. But I cannot tell you more about that right now. Time will tell, everything in stages. What you must know now is that, besides being my descendant, you are my active vessel. That is the reason why, through the power of the stone, you sometimes take on a more lion-like appearance, why the claws and the fur break through your skin. But one day, and it is going to happen very soon, you will find out who you truly are.”
Silarias felt an ice-cold shiver run down his spine, followed by an all-consuming internal heat. His entire body began to shake uncontrollably. The answers struck his consciousness like glowing meteorites. The suffocating loneliness that had haunted him his whole life, the gnawing, bitter feeling of being an outsider, a nobody without a history, an orphan of the universe—it fell away from him in a single instant with the weight of a shattering mountain range. Tears burned behind his gold-glowing eyes, leaving clean tracks in the soot and dust on his cheeks.
Without thinking for another second about the awe-inspiring, terrifying status of the deity towering before him, he stormed determinedly toward the immense throne. The crystal beneath his heavy steps crinkled loudly.
“Thank you… thank you,” Silarias managed to say. His voice was hoarse, completely choked by a thick lump in his throat.
Guided by a pure, blind impulse, he threw himself forward. He ignored the scorching heat and wrapped his arms around the gigantic, thick gold-furred claw of the lion-like god. He pressed his face deep into the warm, pulsating energy radiating from between the thick hairs. It smelled of ozone, scorched wood, and home. Bansaday laughed softly, a deep, sonorous purring sound that made the foundation of the hall vibrate gently and immediately calmed the storm in the young warrior’s chest.
When Silarias pulled himself away with a deep breath, he wiped his wet face roughly with the back of his dusty sleeve. He inhaled deeply and turned around with a jerk. His gaze shifted directly to the right throne, where the atmosphere felt ice-cold, suffocating, and leaden. There sat the shadowy, wingless angel. His pitch-black, shiny horns absorbed the light, and the dark, pulsating halo above his head seemed to suck up the surrounding heat like a black hole.
Silarias didn’t hesitate for a second and set course directly for the dark figure with large, determined steps.
The horned angel pressed his lips together, stiff and full of contempt. His dart-like tail whipped nervously and aggressively from left to right, the hard tip striking the side of the throne with a sharp, metallic click. Click. Click. Click.
“Stay where you are, mortal,” the dark figure spoke. His voice was a cold, cutting baritone that sliced through the hall like a frozen blade. He raised a pale, slender hand in defense, while the shadows around the base of his throne crept forward aggressively like black snakes. “Do not touch me. Do not for a second think you’re getting an emotional reunion from me. I am not like that sentimental, furry cat next to me. Piss off back to your own cloud.”
But the icy attempt to keep Silarias at a distance failed completely. The young warrior ignored the cold threat and the advancing shadows entirely. He pushed forward forcefully, stepped through the cold aura with his heavy boots, and stood right in front of the dark throne, so close he could feel the angel’s breath. He looked the fallen angel straight in the hollow, dark eyes. His own gaze was a fiery mix of pleading and indestructible resolve.
“Please, explain the curse to me,” Silarias spoke in a soft, but utterly unbreakable voice. “I have to know. Now.”
The dark figure looked down at the boy’s outstretched, open hand. He was silent for a long time. Then he sighed deeply, a sound like the bleak winter wind howling through a deserted, collapsed cathedral. The pulsating black halo above his head dimmed a fraction. The cold, arrogant features on his face suddenly gave way to an ancient, leaden melancholy that sucked the breath out of the room.
“I… I am Lucifer Morningstar,” he began to speak. His voice suddenly carried the unbearable weight of a fallen eternity, as if the walls of the hall were slowly closing in to crush them. “And my story is not a story of birth, but of the deepest, most agonizing fall. I once resided in a paradise, a son of God himself, shining brighter than any star in the firmament. My wings were woven from pure light, and my voice commanded the choirs of heaven…”
As Lucifer sank deeper into his monologue and his voice began to swell with the bitter memory of his lost glory, something snapped in Silarias. He simply wasn’t having this depressing, theatrical atmosphere anymore.
With a sudden, explosive movement, Silarias stepped another half-meter forward, interrupted the solemn story entirely, and grabbed Lucifer’s pale, cold hand firmly with both of his.
Bansaday’s eyes shot immediately to the duo with a hard jerk. His eyeballs were open so wide the whites glistened with pure shock. WHAT IS THAT IDIOT DOING NOW?! flashed through the lion-god’s head in a gigantic, panicked monologue. His mane stood wildly on end, as if an electric current were rushing through it. HE’S JUST GRABBING THE DEVIL BY HIS CLAWS! IS HE COMPLETELY SUICIDAL?!
Silarias didn’t care; he began to shake the hand of the completely bewildered Lucifer wildly and loudly back and forth, as if he’d run into an old school friend in a village square.
“Listen to me!” Silarias shouted, continuing to shake the fallen angel vigorously so that Lucifer’s horns bobbed along. “You’re inside me, okay?! You’re my curse, but I just accept you as an equal! That’s just how it goes! If it doesn’t go the way it should, then it must go the way it can!” he started quoting Juro, his voice loud and in the most juvenile but genuinely sincere way possible. “So cheer up!”
Lucifer sat completely stiff on his throne. His aristocratic mouth hung open a fraction, and his black halo flickered irregularly like a broken fluorescent light in a dark hallway. The shadows around his feet dissolved into nothingness.
“Wait… mmm… this is my head, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Silarias suddenly let go of Lucifer’s hand and clapped his own hands together hard. KLABAM!
With a loud, magical thud and a cloud of gold and purple smoke, a gigantic, long oak dining table materialized out of thin air in the middle of the throne room. The table was immediately overloaded with steaming silver platters full of roasted game, steaming poultry, gigantic stacks of freshly baked bread, and shiny, juicy fruit that dripped over the edges. Around it appeared six heavy, wooden chairs that landed on the crystal floor with a loud bang.
Silarias marched straight to the table, pulled a chair back, sat down, and immediately grabbed a large, greasy chicken leg. He took a big bite, half-swallowed, and pointed the bone at the dumbfounded angel.
“Come on, Lucifer! Pull up a chair, just come eat with me,” Silarias said with a wide, disarming grin, fat glistening on his chin. “Explain it to me while we eat. I like stories!”
Lucifer stared motionlessly at the gluttonous boy. The dark ruler of the abyss, the ultimate embodiment of pride, rebellion, and cosmic sin, sat on his throne as if paralyzed by a lightning strike. He wanted to refuse. He wanted to crush the boy into cosmic dust with a single thought and cast his soul into the deepest dungeon. But Silarias looked at him between two bites in such a ridiculously cute, kitten-like way, with those big, questioning eyes, that his entire ancient defense wall collapsed with an audible creak.
And then it began to slowly dawn on Lucifer. A chilling, yet utterly absurd realization washed through his royal brain: He really doesn’t care, does he? My whole reputation, my darkness, the wars I’ve unleashed, who I am… this idiot truly doesn’t give a shit. He just sees a guy who’s hungry.
With a deep, audible, and utterly defeated sigh, Lucifer rose from his massive throne. His heavy, black robe dragged across the crystal with a rustling sound as he walked to the table with stiff, mechanical steps. He pulled the heavy wooden chair back and sat down. He looked at the mountain of food, extended a pale hand, and with two long, clean fingers, picked up a small piece of dry bread very cautiously, as if he were afraid it would explode in his face.
Silarias started talking immediately, mouth full, chewing noisily and waving his arms, turning the heavy, divine tension in the hall into a bizarre, almost domestic chaos within a minute.
Bansaday watched the spectacle from his throne for another second. He blinked his enormous eyes, shook his huge lion head with a chuckle so his mane rustled, and then stood up as well. With a loud THUD that made the dining table tremble, the lion-god lowered himself into one of the far-too-small wooden chairs, which creaked dangerously under his weight. Without hesitation, he shoved a massive claw into a whole roasted turkey, ready to raid the table alongside his vessel.