The Sun God and Prince

The thunderous clash of gods and demons outside, like distant muffled thunder, continued to reach them through layers of flesh and the barriers of space. Every soaring note of Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld's Hymn of Dead Souls, or every shriek of an evil god's tentacles tearing through space, made the heart-like platform of flesh beneath Ian's feet shudder violently. Its pulsing grew frenzied and rapid, like some colossal beast running wildly in rage.

The relentless, violent energy surges from outside struck the cellar's structure like invisible sledgehammers—and battered Ian's taut nerves as well.

He forced down the instinctive chill stirred by those eyes of pure darkness. The light from his wand remained steadily trained on the boy. This eerie calm formed a hellish contrast with the violent throbbing all 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, gleaming faintly beneath the golden light of the wand.

Most bizarrely, the little boy seemed utterly out of place amid the pulsing flesh and pervasive evil energy. There was not the slightest trace of assimilation on him—no fleshy sprouts, no slime. Even the omnipresent throbbing seemed exceedingly faint and distant within a meter of him, as if he himself were a silent zone that shut out 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?

A stronger urge, mingled with doubt and curiosity, drove Ian onward.