Chapter 529: Ancient eyes
He was its living embodint, the very man who had dared to defy the cosmic order and brought down the wrath of the Mother of Heavens upon his entire bloodline.
“It’s finally ti,” he muttered, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of planning, of waiting, of enduring the slow agony of watching his bloodline suffer for his sins.
In the next instant, he vanished from the room entirely, leaving not even a hint of disturbance in the air. The sacred chamber fell silent, the painted eyes seeming to watch the empty space where he had stood.
He reappeared high above the village, suspended in the evening sky like a dark star. From this height, the settlent below looked pathetically small—ten or twelve humble huts scattered across the barren landscape. Each dwelling served as a reminder of how low they had fallen.
The Patriarch raised his hand, and imdiately a red glow began emanating from his entire body. It started as a faint shimr around his fingertips, then spread like fire through his veins, outlining every muscle, every bone, until his entire form blazed with the otherworldly light.
The red radiance pulsed with each beat of his heart, growing brighter and more intense with every passing mont. It was not the golden light of divinity that his wife had displayed—this was sothing older, darker, filled with the accumulated fury of generations.
He pointed his glowing hand toward the village below, his fingers spreading wide as though he ant to grasp the entire settlent in his palm.
For a mont, nothing happened.
The evening air remained still and peaceful. Smoke drifted lazily from cooking fires. A few villagers moved about their evening routines, oblivious to the force hovering above them.
Everything was at peace.
But then, deep beneath the cursed land, sothing stirred.
The ground began to shake.
It started as the faintest vibration, barely noticeable, like the whisper of so massive creature stirring in its sleep. The trembling soon spread outward from the center of the village in perfect circles, each tremor growing stronger than the last.
Birds took flight from the branches, their cries of alarm piercing the evening air. The villagers paused in their activities, looking around with growing concern as cups rattled on tables.
But this was only the beginning.
The Patriarch’s aura flared brighter, and the trembling land responded with increasing intensity. Cracks began to appear in the hard-packed soil, webbing outward in patterns that seed to follow so hidden design.
The openings glowed with the sa red light that surrounded the Patriarch’s form, as though the very earth were being infused with his power.
From deep within these glowing cracks ca a sound that defied description—part rumble, part whisper, part song. The sound grew louder and more complex, harmonizing with itself in ways that mortal ears were never ant to comprehend.
Windows began to rattle in their fras. Doors creaked on their hinges. The very air seed to thicken, charged with energy that made hair stand on end. So of the villagers had fallen to their knees, while so cried and wailed in dread.
The Patriarch’s eyes blazed like a sun as he watched his power take hold. This was not destruction—not yet. This was preparation. This was the awakening of forces that had lain dormant since the day their bloodline had been cursed. Every stone, every grain of sand, every blade of grass in this forsaken place was responding to his call, rembering what it had once been before the heavens had twisted it into a prison.
The glow from the cracks grew brighter, and now strange symbols began to appear along their edges.
The ti for hiding, for enduring, for accepting their fate was finally at an end.
The cracks widened further, the red light intensifying until it beca almost blinding. And then, from the deepest opening at the village’s center, sothing unbelievable erged.
An eye.
It was massive—larger than any of the village huts. The eye’s iris swirled with colors that had no nas, shifting between crimson and gold and depths of black that seed to contain entire galaxies. As the crack continued to widen, more of the creature beca visible—a scaled body that glead like obsidian, marked with the sa runic patterns that appeared on the land itself.
The villagers’ evening routines ca to an abrupt halt as the enormous eye fixed its gaze upon them.
“By the Heavens… what is that thing?” scread a young woman who had been hanging laundry. She dropped her basket and quickly backed toward her hut.
“The ground… the ground is alive!” shouted another as she pointed her fingers at the expanding cracks. “Sothing’s coming up from beneath us!”
“Run! Everyone run!”
The cracks extended in all directions, and the eye’s gaze seed to follow each villager as they moved.
“The village head!” soone called out. “Where is the village head? He would know what to do!”
But the humble dwelling that housed their leader stood as empty and ordinary as ever, giving no sign of the drama unfolding above and below.
At the sa ti, in his modest house on the village’s outskirts, Julian lay in his bed, his entire body trembling as waves of the patriarch’s power crashed over him. The mont the first tremor had shaken the earth, sothing deep within him had awakened—not the mysterious orb that had erged earlier, but his own heightened senses sharpened by the Grand Mage’s aura. (his previous Grand Mage aura)
“What the hell is happening?” he muttered, bracing himself as another powerful vibration shook the house.
Through his window, he could see the ominous light emanating from the cracks in the ground, and when that massive eye opened, Julian’s breath froze in his throat. His revived perception allowed him to sense the sheer magnitude of the presence erging from beneath the village.
“What is happening?” he whispered, his mind racing. “This is power on a different scale. But who… who has this kind of authority?”
He moved to the window, gripping the fra so tightly that his knuckles turned white. The sight of the villagers running in terror, of that enormous eye tracking their movents, filled him with a fear that reached deeper than anything he had experienced in his life.
“The timing can’t be coincidental,” he muttered, thinking back to his encounter with the divine being just hours earlier. “First that woman reveals herself as sothing from the Heavens, then dies… and now this. Sothing’s connecting these events.”
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