After Lucius—who had never drunk a carbonated beverage before—left, hiccuping in a most undignified way after the fizz got to him, only the two young wizards who had just pulled the prank remained in the temple.
"So now there's finally no one else here." Allen looked at the raised platform. "This altar doesn't feel like a fake to me... There's some kind of power that doesn't belong to wizards, but it doesn't belong to you or Herpo either."
"Because it's real." Luna drew a circle around them with her hand. "Aside from this room, I made everything else. I wrapped it around this place."
"If you needed it, you didn't have to go to all this trouble or be so considerate... And besides, it looks like not many people died this time, which is nice." Allen found himself a reason, then nodded as if confirming it. "Criminals with magic really aren't like Muggles; they're not that easy to gather in such numbers, and handling it yourself would be troublesome..." Only then did worry show on his face. "But what was the purpose of this sacrifice?"
Luna's gaze softened as she lifted a hand and pointed at the statue of Vecna that had been blown to pieces during the battle earlier.
Allen asked in surprise, "Vecna? Come to think of it, isn't he already dead? How can he still accept sacrifices?"
"It isn't easy to make a god truly disappear. Only when everything in the world has forgotten Him will He truly perish." Luna's voice sounded positively eerie in this dark, bloody temple. "But it could indeed be considered dead. Its consciousness and memories were transformed by the Astral Plane into rocks and islands, and in that form, they're forced to drift through the Astral Plane as if in hibernation."
Through