Magus Reborn [Stubbing in Three Weeks]

Volume 5 Epilogue 1

Xantheus moved through the heart of Maleficia’s main base with too many emotions pressing against his chest at once.Around him, the whole mountain felt unsettled. Members of the organization were moving in the same direction, fast enough that the usual discipline of the place had started to fray at the edges. Every time they noticed him coming, they stepped aside at once, giving him the path without a word, and Xantheus passed through them without offering so much as a glance in return.

Normally, that sort of loss of composure would have disgusted him.

When Maleficia drew people close enough to serve the great lord directly, they were made to swear by certain creeds, and calmness had always been one of the most important among them. Even when facing enemies. Even when faced with failure. Especially then.

But today was not normal. Today, even that had broken.

There could hardly be a greater day than this one after all.

And if he was being honest, he was no calmer than the rest. He had left his castle the moment Bracker’s letter reached him, barely taking the time to think before moving. For a while he had not believed it. Even on the journey here, part of him had still resisted it. But he knew what had happened a few months ago, and however hideous Bracker might have been, the creature was not subtle enough to invent something like this.

That thought alone was enough to make Xantheus walk faster.

The long passage ahead rang with the distant movement of lower members, their voices, quickened steps blending into a low, constant hum, but he ignored all of it. He only fixed his eyes on the stairs ahead and took them quickly, two at a time, his robe shifting around his legs as he climbed.

A sharp irritation rose in him halfway up.

Under any other circumstances, he would have simply summoned wings and crossed the distance in seconds, but long ago they had all agreed to the rules of this sanctuary, and even now those rules held. No one was to use their abilities freely within the core of the mountain unless the others allowed it. The rule existed to prevent one internal clash from damaging the sanctuary itself.

At the time, Xantheus had agreed to it willingly.

Now, as he climbed, he cursed it. Though, he had no choice but to keep following the rules he himself had once agreed to.

Fortunately, he was still fast enough and no one dared remain in his way for long. The crowd broke apart before him until, at last, he reached the stone doors.

They were already open.

That alone was enough to make his eyes narrow.

It was a rare thing. Under ordinary circumstances, only the highest members of Maleficia were permitted past those doors, but today the distinction had clearly loosened. Lower members were moving through as well, their heads turning constantly as they looked around a passage they had likely never seen before. Their curiosity slowed them, and their hesitation clogged the way more than once, but Xantheus had no patience for any of it. He pushed past them without a word, his mind elsewhere.

For the first time in a long while, the size of this place irritated him.

The passage stretched on and on through the mountain, wider than it needed to be, more elaborate than he had ever cared to notice before. It had never bothered him in the past. Today, every extra step felt wasteful.

Then a voice reached him from behind.

“Xantheus, wait.”

He stopped at once and turned.

Dravros was there, walking toward him. Behind him were several dozen blood drinkers arranged according to rank, and as their leader approached, they all bowed their heads just enough to show respect without lowering themselves too far. Xantheus paid them little mind. His attention remained on Dravros as he said, “I thought you’d already be inside.”

Dravros gave a small shrug. “I was delayed by a few matters.” He gestured ahead, and the two of them resumed walking. After a moment, he spoke again. “Matters related to the Ashari.”

That sharpened Xantheus immediately.

“Did you find anything?” he asked. “Why does Arzan go there so often? Does he have some secret lover hidden among those sun-baked tribals?”

Dravros laughed.

“I wish it were that simple. But no. The tribes are strangely tight-lipped. They’ve said almost nothing worth talking about.” His tone shifted slightly as he went on. “Still, I did find a few things. There may be more in that desert than we assumed. I’m going to keep looking into it.”

Xantheus’s expression hardened. “Until you find out whether he truly has one of those high humans hidden there.”

Dravros frowned slightly at the term, but the reaction passed quickly enough that someone less observant might have missed it. When he spoke, his voice had already settled back into its usual calm.

“We’ll know soon enough. Arzan won’t be able to keep a high human hidden if his kingdom is slowly being eaten away by dead mana. My blood drinkers have already begun spreading damage across multiple regions, and the great lord’s latest blessings have made the work much easier.”

Xantheus gave a small nod, though inwardly he was less certain than what he showed.

A part of him still wondered how much of Dravros’s confidence could truly be trusted. After all, the man’s blood drinkers had already failed once against Arzan, and for all his efforts, he still had not uncovered what Arzan, Elias, and the elf elder had actually been doing together. That failure sat badly in Xantheus’s mind, and no matter how he turned the matter over, he could not shake the unease it left behind.

But in the end, there was little point dwelling on it now.

Whether he trusted Dravros fully or not, there was no one else left in Maleficia he could place greater faith in. And more than that, Xantheus’s mind was already shifting toward what mattered next. Arzan, for all the trouble he had caused, was still only a Magus. In front of what was about to happen here, he was almost beneath notice.

So Xantheus let the thought go.

The two of them continued down the passage, their steps echoing against the stone while, every now and then, they leaned slightly toward one another to exchange a few quieter words. Then at last the tunnel opened.

They stepped out into the great cavern.

Sunlight poured down from high above, bright enough to flood the entire chamber in a pale glow, but one beam in particular fell cleanly into the center of it all—right onto the body of the great lord. Malefic lay there just as Xantheus remembered from the last time he had stood in this place. It was vast, terrible—majestic even in stillness. At a glance, nothing about the body seemed to have changed.

But that, he knew, was what today was meant to alter. Or at least, that’s what he hoped.

As Xantheus stood there watching, more and more of the lower members filtered into the cavern behind him, climbing onto the ledges that ringed the space and taking their places there. Some of them stared openly, their eyes wide as they looked down at the body of the great lord.

While others had already dropped to their knees, even at the risk of slipping from the ledges entirely.

Xantheus couldn’t really blame them for that. Most of these people had only seen the majesty of the great lord once in their lives, on the day they were first chosen to serve. After that, they had been kept far from this place, barred from entering the inner cavern again. But today they had been allowed back, not merely to kneel and worship from afar, but to witness something that might alter their lives as completely as the day they first bent the knee. Only a select few were ever permitted to draw close to the great lord at all, and that was only to watch over it.

Xantheus took a slow breath and stepped toward Malefic’s body, lowering himself immediately in proper reverence.

Then a rough, grating voice cut through the cavern.

“Late.”

Xantheus turned.

Bracker stood there with its arms folded, its enormous axe resting behind it. The creature looked even bigger than usual beneath the sunlight, its marble-white skin almost gleaming under the beam that reached into the cavern. It let out a huff and said, “You two are late.”

Dravros answered before Xantheus did.

“We were delayed,” he said. “It’s not as though we’re the last ones here. I still don’t see Victor.”

Xantheus gave a small nod. “Yes. That bastard recluse is not even here for this.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Sometimes I truly question his devotion to our great lord.”

The moment the words left him, laughter rose from their left.

Xantheus turned and saw Victor there already, smiling as though he had been listening for a while.

“It seems my absence troubles the two of you more than I thought,” Victor said.

Then he began walking toward them.

As he drew nearer, Xantheus found himself wondering if Victor had looked this ruined the last time they met. He remembered him as tall and thin, a man with an almost scholarly air and a pair of glasses that looked too ordinary for someone like him. But now his flesh had gone red and wet-looking, as though it were slowly melting off his frame. Along one of his arms, the decay had gone far enough that Xantheus could see bone through the ruined flesh.

It was a disgusting sight, but Xantheus kept that thought to himself.

He knew better than to say something like that around Victor. It was not fear that kept him quiet—Xantheus did not like thinking of himself as someone who feared anyone—but caution still had its place. Victor was a peak Sixth-Circle Mage, a man the kingdoms no longer even remembered properly because he had vanished from public knowledge two hundred years ago and buried himself in research under the service of the great lord.

Even so, Xantheus had not expected him to appear here today.

Victor almost never left his dwelling. Truthfully, Xantheus was not even certain where that dwelling currently was. The man changed it too often, shifting from one hidden place to another with an almost obsessive need to remain unreachable. In that, as in most things, Victor was strange.

But he was strong.

And after the deaths of Selena and Regina, he was also one of the last true followers of the great lord left among them.

While Xantheus was thinking that, Dravros stepped forward and faced Victor properly.

“Was it you who sent the letter saying the great lord would wake today?” he asked. Then, glancing briefly toward Bracker, he added, “We all know Bracker can’t write.”

Victor gave an easy nod.

“Who else would have sent it?” he said. “You know better than anyone here that my connection to the lord is the strongest. It spoke to me, and I called everyone as the prophecy demanded.”

Xantheus’s eyes narrowed slightly. “But it’s still sleeping.”

At that, attention shifted again toward the vast body of the great lord lying beneath the shaft of light. It had not moved for months. The last time it had stirred, Xantheus himself had not been present, though he had heard enough afterward to know it was not something easily forgotten.

Victor drew their focus back to him before the silence could stretch too long.

“It should happen soon enough now that you are all here,” he said. “I suggest we take our places before that happens.” A small smile touched his ruined face. “Unless one of you would prefer to be crushed under the lord’s claws when it wakes.”

He paused, then added, “Though I suppose that is not the worst way to die if you have already lost the will to live.”

Xantheus let out a low snort. “I’ll be damned if I die before seeing the world drowned in the lord’s vision.”

With that, he stepped away from Malefic’s massive body and took his place near the edge of the chamber. From there, he occasionally let his gaze drift toward the lower members still filing in, watching them climb the ledges and settle themselves into position, some reverent, some trembling, some simply too overwhelmed to hide it well.

And then they waited, and waited.

No matter how many of them filled the cavern, no matter how much expectation thickened the air, no matter how many hours dragged past, the great lord remained still.

Eventually, Xantheus turned toward Victor.

He had grown tired of the waiting, and part of him was already preparing to ask whether the man had lied or misread whatever sign he thought he had received. But when he looked at him, he paused. Victor had closed his eyes. His hands were trembling faintly at his sides, and his lips were moving with words too quiet and twisted to make out. Dravros and Bracker had also started watching him now, their attention sharpening.

Before any of them could ask what he was doing, Victor’s eyes snapped open.

A smile spread across his face. Then he dropped to one knee and said, “It’s happening. Finally.”

Xantheus barely had time to shape a reply.

The chamber shook the next second.

When he turned, he saw one of the great lord’s wings twitch first, then drag across the stone floor in a heavy, scraping sweep that sent dust and shattered rock outward. Xantheus’s eyes widened. Too many feelings hit him at once to separate properly, but his body moved before his thoughts did, and he followed Victor to one knee. Dravros and Bracker did the same.

Above them, the lower members erupted into chants.

“Long live the great lord Malefic!”

“Glory to the dead!”

The cries rolled through the cavern again and again, striking the stone and returning louder, until it felt as though the whole mountain was chanting with them. Beneath it, more of the great lord’s body began to stir. One claw flexed and bit into the ground. Muscles shifted beneath ancient flesh. The tail dragged with a sound like boulders grinding together. Dust rained from above as the air itself seemed to tighten around the sheer weight of that awakening presence.

Xantheus kept his eyes fixed on it all.

Even now, even while he watched it with his own eyes, a part of him still could not fully believe it was real.

Then one of its eyes opened, then another.

The instant Xantheus met that gaze, he froze.

Those eyes did not feel alive in any ordinary way. They were hollow, vast, and empty like the void itself, and yet behind that emptiness Xantheus felt something so immense that it made his own thoughts seem small and crude by comparison. There was knowledge there. Endless knowledge. Not the kind gathered from books or stolen from old ruins, but something deeper, older, as if the great lord had been born already knowing truths no mortal mind was meant to hold. The knowledge of life. The knowledge of death. And beyond both, the certainty that death was what this world deserved.

Malefic’s whole body trembled harder as it began to rise.

At once, the cheers around the cavern grew louder. Lower members screamed praises until their voices cracked, and even Xantheus could feel the fervor in the air turning feverish. But he barely heard any of it. His eyes remained fixed on the great lord as it lifted itself higher and higher, ancient limbs unfolding with terrible slowness, until at last those piercing eyes settled fully on the four of them.

Xantheus felt his breath catch.

It was as if an invisible claw had wrapped around his heart. In that moment, he knew with complete certainty that if the great lord wished for it, he would be dead before he could even think to resist. And strangely, part of him didn’t mind. Just looking into those eyes made surrender feel right As if the only proper thing to do was to bow his head and accept whatever the great endbringer chose to grant him, even if that gift was death.

But another part of him held firm.

Malefic had not called them here just to kill them. That much became clear when the great lord slowly opened its mouth.

One word came out.

“Fatebreaker.”

Xantheus blinked at once, not understanding.

Before he could even begin to shape the question, Victor stepped forward and asked, “What of him, my lord?”

Malefic’s answer came without hesitation.

“Kill him.”

The words dropped into the cavern with more weight than any roar.

“I would not have awakened yet,” the great lord continued, “but I need you all to kill him. If he lives, then nothing I was born for will come to pass. None of it.”

Xantheus felt his throat go dry.

Who was the Fatebreaker?

He had never heard the name before. Not in prophecy, not in whispers, not in any of the hidden records he had studied. Only Victor looked as though he understood something of it, but this was not the moment to ask. Xantheus could do nothing except keep his attention on the great lord as it spoke again.

“When you kill him, the one who severed the threads of fate, I will awaken fully. And then the end of the world will begin.”

After saying that, Malefic’s eyes slowly closed.

Its body lowered again, settling back onto the cavern floor with dreadful heaviness, and the movement faded from it little by little until its breathing slowed and it sank back into slumber.

But around Xantheus, the cheers only grew louder.

The whole cavern shook with them.

Maleficia had just been given a new purpose. A new command. And Xantheus could feel it already—whatever uncertainty had existed in the hearts of the members before was gone now. In its place was direction.

The Fatebreaker had to die.

***

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