The First Heart (2)
The council remained kneeling as the echo of Lucifer's last words faded into the cold air. Silence reigned, broken only by the crackle of obsidian flame licking at the torches on the high walls.
Lucifer's fingers twitched once — a quiet, barely visible signal.
Ivan stepped forward.
"Rise," Ivan said. His voice carried the authority of one who had seen ages of empires fall.
The council obeyed. Slowly. Warily.
Lucifer returned to his throne. Not slumped, but perched, almost regal — not as a ruler resting in security, but as a serpent coiled in stillness, ready to strike. His eyes remained focused on something no one else could see: a past that refused to die.
Morris. The name still echoed inside him.
Morris had been a boy once. A boy with soft dreams and scraped hands, with a mother who sang him lullabies beneath a golden canopy. He had laughed. Wept. Loved. And he had trusted.
Until his mother choked on poisoned wine and his father remarried a woman whose eyes never blinked. A woman who touched the crown long before she wore it.
The palace had whispered that the boy would be king.
Until the boy was betrayed.
Until the boy was murdered.
And in his death, something ancient, broken, divine — crawled into his hollow corpse.
Lucifer was not born.
He returned.
And Morris — that soft, bleeding fragment of what once was — remained like a scar inside him.
A split.
Two souls housed in one vessel.
Lucifer stood. The air pressed in tighter around the room.
"You asked me if I had found the Chosen," he said aloud, not looking at anyone in particular. "I have."
More whispers.
"You asked if she would free me from the curse," he said, turning now, slow and deliberate. "She will."
He let that hang.
"But she doesn't know it yet."
His lips curled into a mockery of a smile.
"And that is exactly how I want it."
Ivan stepped to the center of the room once more, pulling out a second scroll — this one older, marked with a seal in the shape of a burning heart wrapped in chains.
He unrolled it carefully, revealing a hand-inked map of the ancient mountain ranges — borders long forgotten by the mortal world.
"The Mountain of Howling Smoke," Ivan intoned, "rests in the forgotten veins of the east. It was formed at the end of the Celestial War, when the stars fell from grace and scorched the lands. The first beasts of flame and ash were born there."
He pointed to a dark spire on the map.
"It is surrounded by the Phantom Moors, the Barren Hells, and the Screaming Forest. It has no visible entrance — only a gate forged in magic, one that recognizes no power but the Heart itself."
Another official, younger, shivering, spoke up.
"My Lord... even if the humans we choose reach the mountain, they won't survive. There are curses in that place that twist the soul. There are whispers that never stop, that peel the mind apart."
Lucifer didn't blink.
He said simply, "Then they will suffer."
Ivan nodded solemnly.
"The mountain is a test," Lucifer continued, stepping down to run his fingers along the edge of the ancient map. "Only the ones I need will endure it."
He traced the inked paths with an idle hand, then turned back to the room.
"You will bring me five."
The hall darkened as Lucifer raised one hand. From the black stone, a magic circle burst into life — red glyphs spinning like a great mechanical clock. The very floor groaned with power.
From its center rose five dark crystals — each shaped like a beating heart. They pulsed in time with Lucifer's own, a soft rhythm that filled the air with a sound like breath and thunder.
"These," he said, "are vessels."
He looked around the room.
"You will present to me five candidates — creatures, shades, or spirits — capable of passing as mortal humans. I will fuse each with one of these vessels. They will enter the human realm, infiltrate its kingdoms, and bring me the ones I seek."
He smiled then — a slow, terrible thing.
"I want those with fire in their blood. Warriors. Murderers. Survivors. The kind of humans who think they can cheat death."
The court remained breathless.
"But remember—" he added, gaze sweeping across them like a scythe. "If any of you try to play me—"
He extended his hand.
One of the red crystals shattered violently in a blast of silent light, raining dust across the chamber.
The officials flinched. Ivan didn't.
"You won't get the satisfaction of death," Lucifer whispered. "You will simply cease."
After the council was dismissed, the hall emptied slowly. The air still thrummed with power and threat.
Lucifer remained alone in the shadows of his throne.
Ivan stood beside him.
"I assume you know what they'll try," Ivan said softly.
Lucifer didn't move. "They'll try to use the vessels to find the Chosen. To bring her to the gods. Or worse... destroy her."
He leaned back into his throne.
"They don't understand. She's not just a key to my curse. She's a thread binding the entire tapestry."
Ivan narrowed his eyes.
"You plan to use her."
Lucifer gave a half-smile. "Don't we all use the ones we love?"
Ivan said nothing for a moment.
Then, calmly: "You love her?"
A beat of silence.
Lucifer closed his eyes.
"No," he whispered. "But Morris does."