The heavy oak doors separated the private wing from the dusty main hall. They splintered inward and groaned on neglected iron hinges.
Lucifer threw his shoulder forward to bypass the decrepit stone corridors at a full sprint. Every frantic footstep thudded across the dark hallway floors.
He had just acquired a massive influx of energy from his first breathing test. His physical agility and stride momentum felt completely different from the thin unarmored legs moving him.
He went down the spiraling stone stairs deep beneath the foundation of his decayed keep.
Lucifer finally stopped before a soot-blackened antechamber.
The ancestral family altar of the Obsidian Citadel sat in the center of the room. It was composed of polished dark crystal.
Fading runes were inscribed on it to align astrological constellations to physical manifestations. A simple rounded fist-sized crystal rested on a bronze pedestal above it.
Ancient noble bloodline history referred to the item as a simple Warrior's Soul Stone.
Lucifer rapidly checked his memories of this exact event. Panic-stricken noble youths desperately utilized whatever magic catalysts their households retained when the Great Integration originally began in his past timeline.
Lucifer had done the exact same thing with this mundane stone on the first night of the original timeline. His previous teenage self triggered it and hoped for a strong guardian entity.
He bitterly recalled what that action had netted him ten years prior. It was a pathetic heavily armored Human solider barely qualified with F-Rank stats.
The summon died only five days later in a muddy western trench. It screamed beneath the hooves of giant demonic boars. This time was guaranteed to be vastly different.
Lucifer took several panting breaths and climbed onto the quartz ceremonial altar. He did not draw a weapon. He didn't bother checking his corners.
The monsters spawning on the surface had not breached the inner keep yet. Lucifer reached outward with his charged fingertips.
He securely placed both palms over the glowing edges of the generic gray stone. It instantly obeyed the universal Soulbound Arcanum that structured global magic laws into functional tasks.
A dim interface superimposed over his vision.
[Interaction Identified: Activating Basic Tier-F 'Warrior's Soul Stone.']
[Notice: Activating Catalyst item immediately. Summons standard unit scaling via probability.]
The weak grayish aura softly emitted off the Soul Stone. Just as it prepared to crack open, a glorious internal voice overrode the standardized magical feedback structure.
[Ding! System Overload Initiated!]
[Divine Talent: 'Apex Multiplier' triggered on specific category 'Summoning Ritual!']
[Multiplying structural law probabilities, item luck parameters, and raw material purity 10,000x!]
The reaction was not simply energetic. It became highly destructive. The dim grayish light shooting vertically out of the ordinary rock immediately compressed internally.
It formed an opaque singularity void sphere directly over the ancestral altar. Blinding celestial golden lightning suddenly arched explosively in all directions.
Lucifer threw his body backward and dove beneath the heavy stone staircase cover.
The atmospheric shockwave completely blew the reinforced altar doors off their hinges. Jagged wooden shrapnel embedded deep into the masonry behind him.
A deafening crack split the air.
The cosmic phenomenon snapped a rough puncture straight through the space and atmosphere above the altar.
Lucifer stared up from his prone position for a brief second. Inside the violent crack torn out of normal existence sat an expanse containing pure stars and dying auroras.
It was a bleeding wound piercing directly into celestial purgatory. Something dense pitched out of the crack in physical reality before the natural local gravity constraints could forcefully patch the dimensional fabric error. It free-fell blindly towards the solid stone base below.
A heavy crash shook the floorboards.
The spatial vortex above loudly sucked backward and vanished like snapped twine. It restored absolute blackness inside the room.
Only the heavy clouds of crushed ozone hanging low on the ground lingered. Lucifer rose carefully on his knees. He slid his hand down to his boot to draw a concealed iron dagger and prepare defensively.
Whatever fell onto the floor from that cosmic realm was not normal armored infantry.
A distinct feminine body lay face down atop the shattered stone floor. She wore battered ceremonial heavy armor cast out of liquid silver.
Long flowing hair matching the silver armor fanned outwards alongside deeply crumpled gray wings. The wings were fused onto spots below her shoulder blades.
Viscous illuminated pools matching liquefied golden sunlight painted the floor beneath the silent figure.
Hundreds of deep bodily wounds lined the cracked heavy armor gaps.
Lucifer dropped his dagger. He recognized the physiology instantly from the apocalyptic wars of his past life. It was a Fallen Valkyrie. She had been physically torn straight down across boundaries spanning vast dimensional realities.
The physically ruined celestial body flinched sideways as she recognized footsteps echoing near the floor masonry. Her wings frantically jittered and curled inwards.
She braced tightly and prepared for brutal enslavement. She was a creature cast out of heaven.
"You, lower being," her lips croaked outwards roughly. The ancient dialect completely bypassed his physical ears.
She communicated internally via mental magical resonance. Her facial characteristics remained severely marred by excessive blood. "What master cast me into this hell to command me?"
She faded abruptly downwards. She coughed out bright sunburst blood onto the stone.
Lucifer did not hesitate. He did not assert dominance. He did not access the Soulbound Arcanum to force a binding contract upon her weakened state.
He simply dropped to his knees and slid across the blood-slicked stone. He immediately ripped the thick linen fabric of his tunic into long usable strips.
"Save your strength," Lucifer commanded. His voice was tight, focused, and completely devoid of the usual arrogance she clearly expected.
He pressed a wad of folded linen directly against the deepest bleeding fissure beneath her silver breastplate.
He applied heavy pressure. The golden ichor burned his palms like hot wax, but he did not flinch.
The Valkyrie's eyes snapped open. They were swirling pools of crushed starlight and deep void. She stared at him utterly paralyzed by his actions rather than her injuries.
"You do not bind me?" Her mental voice wavered and was laced with shock. "You do not strike the iron while the soul is weak?"
"I do not need a slave," Lucifer said sharply. He moved his hands to a secondary arterial bleed near her shattered left wing joint.
He wrapped the linen tightly to bind the broken bone against her back and prevent further internal severing. "I need a warrior who can stand on her own two feet. Right now you are bleeding out on my basement floor. That makes you a patient."
He reached into his leather belt pouch and retrieved a standard Low-Grade Health Potion he had stashed earlier that morning. The system chimed before he pulled the cork.
[Ding! Apex Multiplier activated on Consumable!]
The muddy red liquid inside the glass vial instantly flashed into a blinding crimson elixir. Lucifer did not bother reading the new stats. He popped the cork and tipped the glowing liquid past her cracked silver lips.
"Drink. It is going to burn, but it will fuse the celestial tissue."
Elara swallowed instinctively. The multiplied potion hit her ruined system. The golden bleeding stopped instantly. The shattered gray feathers on her wings began to forcefully knit themselves back together.
Dead broken quills shed across the stone floor. Her breathing smoothed into deep powerful intakes of air instead of a deathly wheeze.
She pushed herself up onto her forearms. The silver armor still bore the catastrophic dents of her celestial fall, but the flesh beneath was entirely restored. She looked at her hands and then up at Lucifer .
Lucifer sat back on his heels and wiped her golden blood on his trousers. He met her gaze squarely.
"I am Lucifer Obsidian," he stated plainly. "And the world above us is currently ending."
The Valkyrie slowly rose to her feet. She stood a full head taller than him. She looked imposing, lethal, and radiated an aura of suppressed violence.
She looked down at the boy who had bypassed the universal laws of subjugation to simply act as a medic.
"I am Elara," she said aloud this time. Her physical voice was melodic yet edged with the terrifying sharpness of a drawn blade. "Cast out of the High Heavens. Betrayed by the Star-Weavers."
"Good," Lucifer stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees. "I hold a grudge against the heavens too. We have that in common."
Elara stared at him. A feeling of trust settled into her chest. She had fallen through the void expecting an eternity of torture.
She instead found a mortal offering her bandages instead of chains. His eyes looked older than time.
"What are your orders, Lucifer Obsidian?" she asked. Her hand naturally rested where a sword hilt should be.
Lucifer turned toward the stairs. He listened to the muffled guttural roars beginning to echo down from the courtyard above. The Great Integration was delivering its first wave of horrors to his doorstep.
"We go up," Lucifer said with cold eyes. "We secure the perimeter. And we kill everything that isn't us."