The thunderous roars of gods and demons battling outside, like distant muffled thunder, continuously reached them through layers of flesh and spatial barriers. Every soaring note of Osiris, King of the Underworld's Requiem, and every shriek of evil god tentacles tearing through space made the heart-like platform of flesh beneath Ian's feet shudder violently. Its beating grew frenzied and rapid, like a giant beast charging in rage.
These violent energy fluctuations from outside, like invisible sledgehammers, relentlessly battered the cellar's structure—and Ian's taut nerves.
He forced down the instinctive chill brought on by those eyes of pure darkness. The light of his wand remained steadily fixed on the boy. This eerie calm formed a hellish contrast with the violent pulsations around them.
The mysterious boy looked utterly harmless.
His knees were drawn to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around them, his head buried deep in the crook of his arms. He did not move, like a forgotten, abandoned rag doll.
His hair was a pale gold, faintly gleaming beneath the golden light of Ian's wand.
Most bizarre of all, the little boy's presence was completely at odds with the pulsing flesh and the pervasive evil energy around him. There was not a trace of assimilation on him—no flesh buds, no mucus. Even the omnipresent beating seemed exceptionally faint and distant within a meter of him, as though he himself were a mute zone that blocked the evil god's power.
Of course.
Even so.
Ian's vigilance did not lessen in the slightest. How could there possibly be a living person in this cellar? And a child, at that? Was it a trap? Another incarnation of the evil god? Or... something else?
An even stronger urge, mixed with doubt and curiosity, drove Ian onward. He cautiously approached the corner, step by