Chapter 18 – The Symphony of Puppets and Fate
(Lumina's Descent)
Day by day, Lumina's steps grew lighter.
She no longer lagged behind Enver in performing purificazione.
In fact, in the past week alone, she had purified more than twenty humans—flawlessly, without hesitation.
Enver merely watched from afar.
He never interrupted, never judged.
But Lumina knew—those eyes were always observing.
And on the fourteenth day, by the lakeside where she had first learned the sacred act, Lumina looked at Enver with unwavering eyes.
"I don't need you anymore. I know how to do it."
Enver didn't speak much.
He simply handed her a blank card—pure white, without a symbol, without a single inscribed spell.
"Fill it with a mantra from your bloodline," he said calmly. "If it succeeds, I will release you completely."
Lumina agreed.
She spent two weeks perfecting the ancestral mantra.
She dipped her fingertip in her own blood and wrote it as though crafting a long-forgotten poem.
The card slowly changed.
From white to deep violet, then to burning crimson, and finally back to white—
but now etched with luminous veins, visible only to the eyes of a Hellseer.
And from that day on, Enver no longer walked beside her.
Freedom.
At first, Lumina welcomed it like someone desperate for air.
She carried out purificazione alone.
No voice of Enver whispering guidance.
No pressure from the Council.
Only silence.
But every time she placed her hand on the chest of a soul to be purified…
something else stirred.
Desire.
A desire that once slept, now began to crawl.
Then pulse.
Then bite into her mind with sharp, whispering fangs:
"Why purify… when you can erase?"
"They don't want salvation. They deserve extinction."
Lumina resisted.
She closed her eyes longer with each purificazione.
She bit her lip, scratched her thigh, wounded herself to keep the hunger at bay.
But the wounds could not hide her turmoil from one soul: Raegar.
Raegar, a disciple of Enver, rarely spoke.
But his eyes were sharp, his sensitivity beyond his years.
One night, following an astral trail that hadn't fully closed, he found Lumina.
She knelt at the foot of a hill.
Below her lay a man—his mouth foaming, his eyes wide open yet seeing nothing.
Raegar watched as Lumina placed her hand on the man's chest.
But it wasn't the sacred light that shone.
It was black fire.
Raegar clutched the training pendant Enver had given him and prayed his vision deceived him.
But then he heard Lumina's voice—not from her lips, but from within his mind:
"Why save them? Why not destroy everything?"
Raegar stepped back.
A twig snapped beneath his foot.
Lumina turned. Their eyes met.
"I didn't kill him," Lumina said.
"I just… purified him completely."
Raegar said nothing. He turned and left.
---
The message reached the Council in three days.
Saelmir, Kavdrin, Ysera, and Dorvas gathered in the Crystal Room.
They summoned Raegar without delay.
"Did you witness a deviation?" asked Kavdrin, his voice like a hammer striking stone.
"I'm not sure," Raegar replied. "But there was something in Lumina's intent…
something that wasn't purificazione."
Ysera, the bearer of mercy, clutched her pendant.
"If it's true, we must intervene.
Because if left unchecked… what grows is no longer purification—but annihilation."
But Dorvas did not agree immediately. He proposed one thing: observe.
Don't interfere—yet.
"If she truly falls," he said, "then Hell will open its gates on its own."
"The Mage Council should begin to act," Saelmir said in a flat tone.
"Anything outside our domain is not our burden. But there is someone we must confront—someone who owes us accountability."
He tapped the crystal table.
He knew Kavdrin and Ysera had already crossed into the mage world.
"Are we going to attack him again?" Ysera asked, her voice trembling.
"Just like before—only to lose our strength all over again?"