The Fallen Hero Reincarnates as the Demon King's Son
Chapter 106 - 105 - The First Cut

Chapter 106: Chapter 105 - The First Cut

The word struck the room like a bell in an empty chapel—low, cold, undeniable.

"Stop."

The circle froze.

Melien turned first, her hands still lifted, fingers glowing faintly with runic energy. Her eyes widened—just slightly—before she cloaked the reaction behind a calm smile.

"You’re not one of ours," she said softly, voice smooth as polished stone.

Gareth’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, but he didn’t draw. Not yet. The others simply stared, the ritual glow fading from their fingertips, the suspended blade lowering a hair’s breadth but still poised.

Caliste took another step into the room.

He didn’t rush.

Didn’t raise his voice.

He only moved like gravity had shifted toward him.

"You’re killing them," he said, his tone quiet. "Not converting. Not empowering. Hollowing."

Melien tilted her head. "You’ve seen much."

"I’ve seen enough."

"You misunderstand." She gestured gently toward the initiate, still kneeling. "They come willingly."

"I saw a child call himself a number," Caliste said. "Willingness doesn’t survive indoctrination. Only obedience does."

The silence stretched.

Gareth’s voice cut through it, sharp and low. "You’re not a pilgrim. Not an initiate. Who are you?"

Caliste met his gaze.

"I’m what your prophet forgot."

One of the robed figures shifted uneasily. Another took a step back.

Melien’s smile vanished.

She stepped forward, cloak parting as she walked. Her eyes shimmered faintly—runic etching along the corners of her irises, a mark of deep ritual binding. She wasn’t just a priestess. She was woven into the system.

"You’re a danger to everything we’ve built," she said.

"I’m not here for what you’ve built," Caliste replied.

He pointed to the bound initiate.

"I’m here for what you’ve destroyed."

A beat passed.

Then Melien moved.

Not fast—but with the grace of someone trained in both word and blade. Her hand twisted, runes igniting along her forearm, and the suspended blade shot downward—

Caliste was faster.

He crossed the circle in a blink, palm raised, gauntlets igniting with a soft blue shimmer as they met the edge of the ritual field. The blade clanged against the warding force, halted mid-air.

The room shuddered.

Gareth drew his sword.

The others stepped back.

Melien’s eyes burned. "You’ll undo years of progress."

Caliste leaned forward, his voice still steady. "Good."

He turned to the kneeling initiate and touched the back of their hood.

"Your name," he said softly. "Say it. Remember it."

The initiate twitched.

Their lips parted.

A sound—just a whisper. A syllable.

Then a scream.

The runes flared, rejecting the identity. Melien threw up a hand to rebind the ritual.

Caliste moved first.

His blade flashed—not to kill, but to carve through the circle’s anchoring line. The runes stuttered. The ambient glow died.

Power collapsed like a lung.

The chamber dimmed.

The ritual was broken.

The initiate fell forward, unconscious but alive. Whole.

Caliste stood between them and the cultists.

And now, the silence was absolute.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

Caliste stared at Melien.

"You don’t understand what’s coming," she said, breathless.

He turned to go.

"I do," he said.

Then disappeared into the shadows of the hallway—

—and left behind the first broken link in Alek’s chain.

***

Caliste didn’t run.

He walked—measured, precise—through the bowels of the compound, his cloak trailing silence in his wake. Behind him, the shattered ritual chamber sat in stunned disarray. None had followed.

Yet.

The corridor ahead curved into darkness, torches spaced wide. The stone breathed with old power—residual magic from centuries buried and reawakened only recently. As he moved, he could feel the air shift around him.

The wards had noticed.

Whatever Alek had placed at the core of this place, it had felt the break.

His body hummed with tension. Not fear.

Readiness.

He paused at an intersection—hallways branching into unknowns. Voices echoed distantly from the left. Metal scraping. Panic. They had found the initiate. Realized the binding was gone.

Melien would recover fast.

She would regroup. She’d report to Alek.

This wasn’t over.

Caliste turned right.

The corridor narrowed, ending in a door wrought from burnished bone and rune-bound iron. He had seen doors like this once—in a ruined fortress of the east, where blood rituals had first been outlawed. Doors meant to protect secrets from light.

He touched the handle.

It was warm.

He whispered an old name.

Not his.

The name of a friend he had once lost to a blade like Alek’s—back when the world had called him something else.

The rune accepted it.

The door opened without a sound.

Inside, it was colder.

Shelves of old armor and boxes of unmarked tools lined the walls—things not meant for battle, but for preparation. There were chains soaked in oil, ritual masks, and rows of preserved herbs sealed in wax. And in the center of the room:

A pool.

Shallow. Stone-carved. Empty now, but the stains along the edges told him all he needed. It had once held blood.

Fresh. Ritual. Repeated.

There were symbols around its rim—each aligned to different virtues: Submission. Silence. Sacrifice.

But one had been crossed out.

Resistance.

Carved over violently.

He stood at the pool’s edge and placed a hand on the scarred symbol. The stone was still damp.

"They tried to erase the one thing they feared," he muttered.

He turned.

A quiet footstep behind him.

He pivoted—blade half-drawn—only to meet the eyes of someone unexpected.

A young woman. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Unarmed. No robe, but the binding mark on her wrist glowed faintly. A full initiate.

But her eyes were clear.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"Someone you were never meant to meet."

She looked at the pool. Then at the gauntlets on his arms.

"You’re the one they warned us about."

"I doubt they were honest about me."

She didn’t move. Didn’t flee.

Instead, she stepped to the side.

"There’s a tunnel behind the scroll racks. It leads into the inner sanctum."

He narrowed his gaze. "Why tell me?"

Her expression faltered.

Then she whispered, "Because I remembered my brother’s name last night. And I wasn’t supposed to."

Caliste’s jaw tightened.

"What’s your name?"

"Tallis."

He nodded.

"Keep it."

Then he turned and vanished through the tunnel she’d revealed.

The descent was slow—cramped stairs and low ceilings, likely forgotten by even the lieutenants. As he moved, his thoughts turned inward.

He’d seen what Alek had done.

Felt the rituals in his bones.

But this—this was deeper than ambition.

Alek wasn’t just building a following.

He was carving a replacement for the world that had rejected him.

And piece by piece, Caliste would burn it down.

When he reached the tunnel’s end, he paused beneath a wide stone hatch. Beyond it lay the sanctum. The throne. The core.

He didn’t open it.

Not yet.

He rested his hand against it.

And whispered again—not a curse.

But a promise.

"Your time ends when I say."

***

The hatch above Caliste’s head was carved from volcanic stone, laced with thin lines of silver that glowed faintly—not from magic, but memory. Magic that had seeped into the very grain over time, marked by repeated rituals, sealed commands, and lingering oaths.

It wasn’t warded—not in the traditional sense. It was something older. Attuned.

He pressed his palm flat against the stone.

It felt like touching the past.

Not just his past—though fragments did flicker across his mind. A distant memory: hands soaked in blood, a tower burning, a boy with silver eyes whispering betrayal.

But this hatch... it wasn’t just a door.

It was a threshold.

Above it lay more than Alek’s seat of power. It was the place where the ritual’s resonance converged. Where every whisper, every oath, every scar bled into one truth:

This was where Alek had rewritten the world around him.

And Caliste was the only one left who remembered what it looked like before.

He crouched near the base of the hatch and ran his fingers along the glyphs.

They weren’t just for containment.

They were anchors.

If he destroyed them now, the room above would collapse inward. The entire sanctum would fold. But it wouldn’t kill Alek.

No.

It would warn him.

Caliste exhaled through his nose.

He couldn’t go up yet.

Not until he was certain.

He drew a sigil of muffling along the inner wall, masking the breath of his presence. Then he sat, back to the stone, letting the silence settle over him.

Minutes passed.

Then hours.

And during that time, he listened.

Not just for footsteps.

For voice.

The sanctum above was not quiet.

He could hear them—distant, distorted, but present.

Alek was speaking.

His voice carried like oil poured over velvet. Measured. Soft. Commanding in its ease.

"...You will forget the name you were given. You will take the one I grant. In exchange, I give you purpose, and with purpose, peace..."

There was a pause.

Another voice—shaky, younger.

"...I... I accept."

Then the chorus.

"Unity. Silence. Flame."

Caliste’s hands curled into fists.

There it was.

Not just obedience.

Rebirth by erasure.

He had heard those words before—in a tomb, whispered by a dying god who had feared the rise of human will. And Alek had taken them, reshaped them, made them his.

The ritual above was a rewriting of identity. A sacrament that tore out the spine of self and replaced it with allegiance.

The thought made his stomach tighten—not in fear, but fury.

He stood slowly and placed both palms on the hatch.

He could feel the warmth of the sanctum bleeding down.

They were nearly finished.

And when this rite was done, another would begin.

There would be no better time.

But still—he waited.

Not out of caution.

Out of respect.

Because what came next would not be an assassination.

It would be a reckoning.

He would not strike from the shadows.

He would walk through the door.

And Alek would see him.

Not the boy from the Academy.

Not the broken reject.

But the man who had returned.

The one with the flame Alek had buried—and failed to extinguish.

And when the time came...

He would not whisper.

He would speak the truth out loud.

And everything would burn.

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