I stood there, staring at the empty hallway where Alastor Creighton had just walked away, leaving behind a silence that weighed heavier than any words he'd spoken. My thoughts churned, a roiling sea of uncertainty and disbelief.
Of course, I knew what he was talking about. The novel had covered it all in painstaking detail. Yet this—this—was a massive deviation. A crack in the story's foundation, one I wasn't sure I could mend or navigate.
Lucifer Windward. The name alone carried enough weight to crush mountains. He was hope personified. The beacon of humanity's future. The Second Hero.
The First Hero, Liam Kagu, was the legend who had saved the world from the Calamity—the Heavenly Demon—in 1888. He'd done the impossible, containing the Heavenly Demon's rampage within the Eastern continent and striking him down. But even in his final moments, with his body failing and three days of life left, Liam Kagu hadn't basked in his victory. Instead, he'd delivered a prophecy.
