Chapter 187: The True Enemy Awakens

The Hollow Spire shook violently, cracks webbing through the stone walls as the obsidian seal lay in shattered ruins. The air was thick, suffocating, filled with something ancient and wrong.

The figure standing in the center of the destruction exhaled, as if breathing for the first time in centuries.

It wasn't a First Lord.

It wasn't a god.

It was something else.

Something that had been here before them all.

Damien felt his pulse slow, his fingers tightening around the blackened blade. His steel-gray eyes locked onto the figure.

And when their gazes met—

He saw nothing human in those eyes.

The Presence That Should Not Exist

The figure's voice was calm. Smooth. Almost amused.

"You took your time."

Silence.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

Because this wasn't just a prisoner who had been freed.

It was a king of an era before history itself.