Sixteen.
That's how old Lidow was the first time he heard the walls speak his name.
Not in dreams. Not in riddles. But in raw whispers that curled along the volcanic stone of the lower Citadel, slithering through the cracks like breath from forgotten mouths.
"Lidow…"
He froze in the corridor, shadow-blade in hand, breath held tight in his chest. The training sword flickered with both holy shimmer and infernal glow — as always. Light and dark in one hand. A contradiction wrapped in a teenager's fist.
"Who's there?" he called.
No answer. Just the slow dripping of molten rock and the low hum of the Obsidian Heart at the Citadel's core.
He hated this part of the castle.
He came here often.
Shadow watched from above.
From a split window across the throne hall, cloaked in silence, the King of Hell observed his son. Watched how he moved when he thought no one was watching. Watched how he lingered where echoes lived. Shadow said nothing.
But he felt it too.
Something stirring.
Not from Heaven. Not from the ruins of the Nine. But from somewhere else — older, colder.
A silence that remembered everything.
Lidow returned to the upper levels before midnight. Valaria waited near the soul-forged gates. Her eyes soft, her fingers clenched. She saw the tremor in his steps. The way his right hand never left the hilt of his blade.
"Again?" she asked.
He nodded. "The voices. They're stronger now."
Valaria stepped forward, touched his face gently. "You need rest."
"I need answers."
"You'll have them. In time."
He pulled away. "Time is the one thing I don't have, Mother."
That night, Lidow sat beneath the Hanging Lantern Tree in the garden courtyard — the one place in the Citadel not made of obsidian and steel. The tree bloomed with silver leaves and soft golden orbs, floating like fireflies.
He closed his eyes.
And then… it was no longer night.
The dream pulled him down hard. The courtyard dissolved.
He stood in an endless field of white ash. No sky. No time.
A figure rose from the dust.
Clad in tattered black robes. Crown of thorns. A face Lidow couldn't see — only feel. Pain, rage, eternity.
"Do you know who you are?" the figure asked.
"I'm Lidow," he said. "Son of Shadow. Son of Valaria."
"Not enough."
The figure raised a skeletal hand. "You are more. And soon… you will be the key."
"To what?" Lidow asked.
"To what comes after your father."
He woke gasping. Sweat-soaked. Light flickering from his palms.
Shadow was waiting outside the room.
He'd felt the power surge.
"Dream?" he asked.
Lidow didn't answer.
Shadow nodded. "It begins soon, doesn't it?"
Lidow looked up, eyes flickering with both holy gold and hellfire red.
"Something's coming," he said. "Something worse than Heaven."
Shadow's gaze darkened. "Then we prepare."
Lidow tightened his fists. "Let me fight."
Shadow paused. "Not yet."
Lidow stared. "You always say that."
And Shadow, voice low like thunder before a storm, replied:
"Because when you fight… the world will change."