Chapter 245: Man had lost his way – 2

Sofia went to the window and peered out carefully, staying back from the edge.

“I think we lost them,” she said finally.

Dane collapsed into a dusty office chair. His whole body shook with exhaustion and fading adrenaline. He felt like he might throw up.

“You okay?” Sofia asked.

“I’m too old for this,” Dane said.

“My heart’s about to give out.”

“But it hasn’t yet.”

Sofia pulled up another chair and sat across from him.

“You are really strong for your age.”

The warehouse settled into uneasy silence as night deepened.

“We can’t do this alone,” Dane said finally.

“We’re two people against the entire Council, against their witch squads, their enforcers, and their network of informants. We’d be dead within a week of going public.”

Sofia stopped pacing and turned to face him.

“So what are you saying? We give up?”

Sofia’s father was killed by unknown causes, and his case was closed before they even did a proper investigation. All because he started asking questions to the government and challenged the witch council. Ever since then, Sofia had been working with Rebels and joined the Origin Resistance.

“No.”

Dane leaned forward, his weathered face serious in the dim light.

“I’m saying we need more power, real power. The kind that can actually challenge the Council.”

“There is no power like that,” Sofia said.

“The Council controls all the channels in the world. They regulate who can channel, how much, and for what purpose. Anyone strong enough to threaten them gets identified young and either recruited or neutralized.”

“Not all power comes from origin energy.”

Sofia frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

Dane was quiet for a moment, as if weighing his words carefully.

When he spoke, his voice was low and reverent.

“Have you ever heard of the Great Immortal Lord?”

“Old myths,” Sofia said dismissively.

“I know that it is about a forbidden being; not many people dared to speak about him.”

“Bedtime stories to scare children.”

“That’s what they want you to think.”

Dane stood, his knees creaking. He walked to the window and looked out at the city lights. “Three hundred years ago, before the Council consolidated its power, there was a man. An immortal. He wielded a power that made origin energy look like candlelight compared to the sun.”

“Aura,” Sofia said.

She’d heard the stories, though she’d never put much stock in them.

“The counterpart to origin energy. But that’s extinct. Men lost it during the Divergence.”

“Lost it, yes. But before that happened, there was one who mastered both the aura and origin energy completely. They called him the Lord of the Origin. He could level mountains. Bend reality. He was unstoppable.”

“If he was so powerful, why isn’t he still around?”

Dane turned to face her.

“Because the witches sealed him. It took all of them working together. They couldn’t kill him, so they imprisoned him. Buried him somewhere so deep, so well-hidden, that he’d never be found.”

Sofia crossed her arms.

“This sounds like a fairy tale, Dane.”

“Most fairy tales have truth at their core. You know that. Your father knew it, too.”

Dane’s eyes were intense.

“Why do you think the Council works so hard to suppress certain kinds of knowledge? Why do they disappear, people who ask questions about pre – Divergence history? Because they’re afraid. Afraid that someone will find the truth. Afraid that someone will find him.”

“And you think the Great Lord is real? That he’s still alive somewhere, sealed away for three centuries?”

“I know he is,” Dane said.

“Because my family had been searching for him since a long time ago. I know the history and what happened at that time, and I know it’s true, and that’s what happened.”

Sofia studied his face. She’d known Dane for two years and worked with him on a dozen resistance operations. He’d never mentioned this before.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because we’re running out of options,” Dane said simply.

“The Council is tightening its grip. More disappearances every month. More surveillance. More witch squads hunting anyone who questions the system. If we want to save this realm from what the Council is doing, we need power they can’t counter. We need the Great Immortal Lord.”

“Even if this is true, even if he exists, how would we find him? You said yourself he’s sealed somewhere unknown.”

Dane smiled grimly.

“Unknown to most. But not to everyone. There are clues. My family believed the sealing site was connected to the Rupture itself. That the two events were linked. And if the Rupture happened in multiple locations simultaneously, as the evidence suggests…”

“Then one of those locations might be where they sealed him,” Sofia finished.

She felt a chill run down her spine.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

“This is why they’re after us. Why we had to meet with Corrin even though we knew it was risky.”

He unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the desk. It was a photograph, printed on cheap paper that had already started to fade. The image showed a woman in her forties with light blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore field clothes and stood in front of what looked like an excavation site, holding a clipboard and smiling at the camera.

“Who is she?” She asked.

“Dr. Martha Buchanan,” he said.

“Archaeologist. Professor at Kharsen Uni. Expert in history and a real curious soul about the way of the world.”

“And?”

“And she’s going to Kreeshan Valley in two days. Corrin confirmed it. She’s leading an expedition to dig up the old sites, looking for evidence about the Rupture.”

“Kreeshan Valley?”

A few years ago, Kreeshan Valley became the epicenter of a catastrophe no one had anticipated. The earthquake that struck there was not just severe — it reshaped the land itself. Entire ridgelines shifted, river paths were altered overnight, and sections of terrain simply collapsed or rose as if the earth had decided to rewrite its own geography.

The scale of destruction forced an unusual global response. Governments that rarely agreed on anything quickly classified it as an unprecedented natural disaster. Scientific bodies called it a geological anomaly; media outlets called it historic. Either way, the consensus was clear — nothing on that scale had been recorded in modern memory.

Even years later, the valley had not entirely settled.

And whatever lay beneath that region still seemed restless.

“Yes, it’s the place we should start looking for, and this woman will lead us there. She is going to work in the valley regarding the lost history, but she doesn’t know what actually lies there.”

“And you think we will find that lord or whatever if we work with her?”

“Maybe. Or one of the other Rupture sites. But Kreeshan Valley is where Buchanan is going. Where she’s looking for answers about the same events. If we can get her to dig deep enough, if we can guide her to the right places…”

“We might find more than just historical evidence,” Sofia said slowly.

“We might find him.”

“We might,” Dane agreed.

“And if we do, if we can break the seal, then we’d have a chance. A real chance to stop the Council. To save people from their experiments, their manipulations, their endless atrocities.”

Sofia walked to the chair and sat down, her mind racing.

It was insane.

The whole idea was completely insane.

But she’d seen enough in her short life to know that the official version of reality was built on lies. If they’d lied about the Rupture, about pre-Divergence history, and about why men lost their aura, what else had they lied about?

“Okay,” she said.

“Say, I believe you. Say the Great Immortal Lord is real and sealed somewhere in Kreeshan Valley. Why would he help us? For all we know, he could be worse than the Council.”

“He fought them,” Dane said.

“That’s all the old records agree on. He opposed what they were doing. Whatever his reasons, whatever his nature, he was their enemy, which makes him potentially our ally.”

“Enemy of my enemy,” Sofia muttered.

“Exactly.”

They sat in silence for a while, both lost in thought.

Outside, the city moved through its nighttime rhythms.

People slept in their beds, unaware of the forces moving in the shadows.

Unaware of how much danger they were really in.

“We still need to find Buchanan first,” Sofia said finally.

“Even if this Great Lord theory is true, we need someone who can actually navigate the Kreeshan sites. Someone who knows what they’re looking for.”

“Agreed,” Dane said.

“Tomorrow, we go to Silverwood Heights. We make contact. We convince her to help us.”

“And if she won’t?”

Dane’s expression hardened.

“Then we find another way.”

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