The night before Squad Five's departure to the capital was marked by an ominous stillness. The fortress, usually alive with the hum of preparation, felt suffocatingly quiet. In the dimly lit war room, Bran stood over a table covered in maps and reports, his expression unreadable. The squad gathered around him, their faces a mixture of curiosity and unease.
From the shadows of the hall emerged a figure unfamiliar to the squad. His presence alone shifted the energy in the room, a mixture of calculated calm and quiet menace.
He was tall and slender, draped in a black coat etched with silver patterns that shimmered faintly like stars. Round glasses perched elegantly on the bridge of his nose, reflecting the lantern's cold light. His midnight-blue hair fell loosely over his sharp, angular face, and his piercing indigo eyes seemed to cut through reality itself.
He spoke, his voice smooth and deliberate, each word laced with an unsettling calm that demanded attention. "The pantheon is becoming more aggressive, not because we threaten them-but because we are beginning to understand them."
Modred narrowed his crimson eyes. "Who are you?"
The man adjusted his glasses, the faintest smirk tugging at his lips. "My name," he began, "is Lucan Atreus. I've been reassigned from Squad Two to join this….. esteemed company." He glanced around, his lips curling into a faint, sardonic smile. "Consider me your strategist. Or, if you prefer, your guide through the labyrinth the Pantheon has woven."
Bran's furrowed, and his voice was a low growl. "A scholar? I don't need riddles!"
Lucan turned his gaze to Bran, his expression unchanging but somehow sharper. "And yet, Captain, you are here, not on the frontlines. Because brute force has failed you."
The room fell silent, the weight of Lucan's words hanging like a blade.
Bran straightened, his jaw tightening. "Watch your tone, Lucan. I don't care how many books you've read. One more word and I'll slit your throat."
Lucan adjusted his glasses, his movements as smooth as his voice. "Commendable, Captain. But the only thing that matters is victory."
He stepped closer to the table, placing a small black notebook onto its surface. The room seemed to darken slightly, the torchlight dimming as though reluctant to illuminate the book.
"This," Lucan said, gesturing to the notebook, "it contains my years of research and dedication, to unravel the mystery behind the pantheon. Their so-called divinity is nothing but a fragile construct. They call themselves gods without a clear justification-they are parasites. And the Aetherial core or the Nexus is the foundation of their power."
Modred, who had been silent until now, stepped forward. His crimson eyes narrowed as he studied Lucan. "You speak with certainty. How do you all this?"
Lucan turned his piercing gaze to Modred, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "It may be just a theory, but we have fought the pantheon for over a century, there must be a way they have been able to constantly overpower us."
He reached into his coat and retrieved a crystalline orb, its surface swirling with dark, ethereal light. As he held it aloft, the air in the room grew heavier, and the maps on the table seemed to ripple, rearranging themselves into a fractured crystalline sphere suspended in a swirling void of chaos, its surface pulsing with a dark, rhythmic glow. From it stretched colossal, sentient chains of iridescent black metal, thrumming with ancient runes as they writhed through the fabric of reality. Around the core, time and space twisted into a vortex of light and shadow, bending all natural laws into raw chaos-light folding into darkness, shapes twisting into forms that defied comprehension, its sound was a low, resonant hum, an omnipresent frequency that carried both power and dread.
We all glanced at the object with awe. The air seemed to ripple as Lucan spoke, his tone hypnotic.
"The Nexus is not a creation of the gods, but the foundation of their existence and also ours. It is a singularity-a point where reality bends, where time, space, and power converge. This is a void of truth, a wound in existence from which the pantheon gains its power."
The room seemed to darken, as if the sphere were absorbing the very light around it.
"It's a system, a construct," he continued. "As you all have noticed the chains, they connect to each soul of the gods like anchors in a storm. Each chain thrummed with runes that rewrote their existence moment by moment, sustaining their false divinity while tethering their will to the core's unstable power."
Bran frowned. "You're saying the gods can be…. Shut down?"
"Not shut down," Lucan corrected, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Overwritten. Their entire existence is built on some kid of code. Since the chaotic energy of the Nexus is encoded with the primal laws of existence, the gods didn't wield the core or control it; they are extensions of it, their immortality a fragile illusion to an ancient corrupted algorithm-a system that could be severed, rewritten, or erased, leaving nothing but voids in its wake."
The room fell silent again, the tension palpable. For a moment, even Bran seemed at lost for words.
Lucan finally stepped back, the crystalline orb vanishing to into the folds of his coat. "Make no mistake," his said, his voice calm but carrying an undeniable edge. "This war is not over yet, it just began."
With that he turned he turned and walked toward, the shadows, his footsteps fading into the silence. The squad watched him go, a mixture of awe and unease in their eyes.
For the first time, Modred felt a chill that had nothing to do with the storm. Lucan wasn't just a strategist. He was a void of knowledge.