The cell was silent.
Same walls. Same chains. Same cold glow of containment lights bathing the floor in sterile blue. For thirty-three days, nothing had changed for Lucien. Nothing except Lucien's change. He was breathing—steady, shallow, precise. He sat exactly as he had the day he was first thrown into this lab/prison: sometimws upright or lay down, unmoving, eyes closed, bound in reinforced steel cuffs and leg restraints infused with quantum static.
But today… was different.
He felt it even before the daily glitch came.
There had been flickers before—tiny irregularities every 6.43 hours in the energy field that encased his cell like a digital cage. The first time it happened, twenty-three days ago now, it had lasted only half a second. The second time, eleven days ago, exactly 0.88 seconds. He remembered it all. Measured it. Calculated it.
And now—today—it blinked twice.
A faint flicker. Like a heartbeat skipped by the world itself.
The sound that normally blanketed the cell's energy dome disappeared for a full three seconds before returning. That was new, even for him.
Lucien opened one eye slowly. No alarms. No armed guards rushing in ready to kill him. No reaction from the facility's AI defense grid. The room remained in its frozen serenity—undisturbed, unaware.
His lips curved, faintly. Barely.
A whisper of movement: his right thumb twitched. Just for a millisecond
He paused.
Nothing happened.
No shock pulse. No defensive surge. The suppression field didn't react.
Lucien exhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate.
Then… another test.
His index finger. A small flick.
Still nothing.
33 days of stillness, silence, and pain. Of watching. Waiting. Listening. Enduring the tests. And now, for the first time since his capture, a ripple in the prison's perfect surface.
Inside his mind, a presence stirred.
A divine, ageless voice filled the space behind his thoughts.
"The world thinks chains can bind a newborn god. But chains are illusions, little one. And yours... are fading."
Lucien didn't respond immediately to the creator. His eyes drifted to the whitr ceiling. No cameras could see through the veil surrounding him—not that it mattered. They still thought he was powerless. Silent. Broken.
He was none of those things. He never was.
His voice came soft, but certain. A breath, a vow.
"Then let them fade into the darkness."
Beneath the Nightguard headquarters, far below the well-lit corridors and secured conference rooms, a storage level long since abandoned had become a hidden war room for division 5.
The floor was cracked and broken. The air was dirty. Rust clung to exposed pipes. The fluorescent lights flickered above as if hesitant to shine too brightly on what was unfolding here.
Division Five had gathered here.
Karu Arakizawa joined them and stood at the center, arms folded, his coat draped over one shoulder like a cloak of command. His presence filled the entire space—not with noise, but with gravity. Around him stood Rylen, Jason, Emiluna, and also Lisa.
Lisa was the only one seated. Her right leg was in a brace, both of her arms still bandaged from the battle with the Level 3 abomination, but her eyes burned with the same fire that had once lit entire battlefields.
Jason paced near the wall, unable to keep still. "This shit is madness. They're seriously going to execute him now?"
Rylen didn't answer. Instead, he projected a digital map onto the cracked cement wall. The schematic of a large underground facility appeared—layers of overlapping security grids, motion sensors, suppression field nodes. One part was blurred out of the map.
Lisa pointed to it. "That section—unknown. It's the core of the prison. That's where they're holding him right?"
Karu's eyes narrowed. "How did you get this information?"
Rylen offered a crooked smile. "I have friends in low places from my past. Not complete, but enough."
Emiluna leaned forward. "So what's the plan? Bust in? Guns blazing?"
Karu shook his head. "No. Not yet. The moment we move openly, we're branded traitors of the country. If we act too soon, we will lose everything that we have—and we don't even know his exact condition."
Jason turned sharply. "Yeah we don't know if he's even still alive."
Rylen's voice cut through. "He's alive."
They turned to him.
He tapped a part of the map. "I've been monitoring certain energy fluctuations in this specific area. Subtle spikes—always centered in one room. It doesn't match anything else in the compound."
Karu added, "Lucien is not like us in the slightest. Whatever power he holds… it's waiting. And I believe—when the time comes—he'll act."
Lisa leaned back. "So we wait? That's your big brain strategy?"
Emiluna's hands clenched. "After all they've done to him? The torture? The isolation? You want us to just sit here and hope he will act himself?"
Rylen looked each of them in the eyes.
"No," he said calmly. "We're not hoping. We're trusting him."
He stepped forward and placed a hand on the map.
"He's been alone for longer then a month now. But if we move too early, we risk everything—including his chance to strike on his own. When he moves… then we burn the system to the ground and helo him to get out of there."
Jason's jaw clenched, but he didn't argue this time. Lisa looked away, but her silence was agreement. Emiluna nodded once.
Karu looked up at the rusted ceiling above.
"Then we prepare," he said. "And when the signal comes… we move and act."
A national broadcast flashed across every major screen in Tokyo and beyond.
Government insignia. Somber music. A prepared statement.
Behind the podium stood Kaido Fujimura, Minister of Justice and National Security. Tall, steel-haired, cold brown-eyes and glasses. Flanked by two elite Nightguard officers of Division 1. The camera zoomed in as he began to speak.
"Citizens of the entire country. Today, we face an unprecedented crisis. The events of last month left us shaken, uncertain—and seeking answers."
He glanced down at his notes, then continued.
"Following extensive analysis, interrogation, and high-level threat assessments, the subject known as Lucien or ´DemoBoy´, formerly associated with the Nightguard Corps Division 5, has been officially classified as a Category Zero Anomaly. His continued existence poses an existential threat to national and global security."
Gasps echoed from the press.
Kaido's voice did not falter.
"Due to classified national threats and irreparable risk to public safety, Subject Lucien will be executed within seven days."
The room exploded.
Reporters shouted questions. Protesters gathered outside the broadcast building. Social media ignited within seconds.
#FreeLucien began trending immediately after the announcement. Within an hour, so did #ExecuteDemonBoy.
The world was split.
On the streets of Shibuya, large screens showed Kaido's words on loop. In the crowd, a teenage girl stopped in her tracks. Ayumu. Her eyes widened in disbelief and also relief.
She whispered, ''Washe our savior or our threat… I still don ´ t trust Lucien."
Around her, people murmured. Some nodded. Some shouted back. Some wept. Others cheered.
Division commanders received the news via encrypted channels.
Karu's expression didn't change. Rylen crushed a coffee mug in his own hand.
And deep beneath it all, Lucien—still silent, still unseen—opened his eyes again.
The sterile silence was a lie.
He lay back against the cold floor of his cell, breathing shallow but steady. His eyes remained closed, as if he was meditating, but inside, a slow rage woke up inside of him.
His mind replayed the words of the Creator of Gods, whispered like a dark promise:
"Now, little god. Let them hear what silence truly hides."
Lucien smiled—this time, a deeper, darker curve of the lips. The chains that bound him had always been illusions, designed to suppress him even tho he could break them easily by now. But today, those illusions began to unravel.
He flexed his fingers deliberately.
One of the mythsteel cuffs encasing his right wrist emitted a faint crack—a small fracture that snaked across its surface like a spiderweb.
A slow, amused and dark chuckle escaped him. He could almost hear the invisible threads of the suppression field weakening, the energy leaking away like sand slipping through fingers.
Good.
His eyes snapped open in an instant, glowing a faint but unmistakable shade of violet—deep, cosmic, a hue no one had seen since the day he first awakened the God of Vengeance within himself.
The purple glow pulsed everywhere, synchronized with the weakening chains.
He raised his left hand and watched as the fracture in the cuff widened imperceptibly. The metal began to break and crack from within, as if consumed by some ethereal fire.
Lucien felt the rage beneath his skin—raw, potent, dangerous.
The guards watching the monitors several floors above had no idea what was coming for them.
He was no longer the broken prisoner they thought he was at the beginning.
He was a vessel of a god, waiting to rise and shine.
And soon, the world would burn because of him.
Far above, in the heart of the Nightguard's most secure research and containment facility, the control room was in panic.
Monitors blinked erratically. Red warning lights flashed all over the screens. Sirens screamed through the halls of the research and containment facility.
Saito's who was the commander of the faciltiy. His voice was clipped, sharp, filled with disbelief.
"Energy field around Subject 01 is destabilizing—repeat, destabilizing. He's… he's absorbing the suppression energy."
Technicians scrambled for their lives, fingers flying across consoles to recalibrate, re-engage force fields, and isolate the breach.
But it was too late for that.
In Lucien's cell, the glowing purple hue had deepened into a aura that filled the small space with radiant purple light. The special cuffs shattered with an ear-splitting clang, falling to the floor in molten fragments.
Lucien stood up slowly, every movement deliberate. The dark violet glow of his eyes burned like twin stars as his chains fell away, powerless.
His body radiated divine and god-like energy, a swirling tempest of cosmic power wrapped in the form of a young man who had endured a month of torment—and was ready to exact his vengeance upon them.
A faint smirk crossed his lips.
"Begin."
At that exact moment, the entire facility plunged into complete darkness.
The lights flickered once, twice—and then the power failed misserably.
Emergency generators kicked in, but the facility was thrown into chaos.
Karu, Rylen, Jason, Emiluna, and Lisa were already on their way.
Karu's Titan-0 Apex armor was ready, his eyes sharp, scanning for threats. Rylen's tactical interface projected the map of the facility, now marked with multiple security failures.
"Now," Karu said, voice steady but fierce. "We're going in there."
Jason loaded his weapons. Emiluna's eyes gleamed with determination, and Lisa's brace was quickly removed with the help of Rylen.
The five moved through the darkened corridors, alert for any sign of trouble.
They reached the outer perimeter of Lucien's cell block.
Suddenly, the suppression field's energy signature collapsed entirely.
Karu motioned for silence.
A pulse of violet light exploded through the corridor ahead, and then Lucien finally appeared. But he was different.
His body radiated raw energy. His eyes were the color of deep space, burning with an intensity that forced them all to take a step back.
But there was no anger in his gaze.
Only resolution.
The facility shook with the surge of his power as alarms blared and monsters began to stir in their containment cells.
Division Five was finally united—ready to reclaim their friend, their brother, and to fight whatever came next.