Ancestral Lineage - Chapter 478
Capítulo 478: A Laugh
The ritual circle reached its climax with a sound that was not a sound at all.
Reality peeled.
Space behind Lamair folded inward like a wound reopening, and the air tore apart in a slow, deliberate arc. Darkness spilled out, not the absence of light, but a substance that devoured meaning. A towering portal unfurled behind him, its edges jagged and asymmetrical, as though the Underworld itself had bitten through the veil rather than been invited.
Beyond it lay no landscape anyone could truly describe.
Endless black plains layered atop one another, rivers that did not flow but descended, skeletal spires rising and collapsing simultaneously. The sky was an abyss pressed full of weight, and somewhere deep within it all was a presence so vast and ancient that to acknowledge it was to feel one’s pulse hesitate.
Thanatos was not visible.
He didn’t need to be.
The pressure alone told the truth.
The hall reacted instantly.
Several of the younger members staggered back, instinctively bracing as their souls screamed danger. Others felt cold claws rake against their thoughts. The soul-lanterns flickered wildly, shadows stretching in impossible directions as if trying to flee their owners. Even the ritual sigils dimmed slightly, no longer confident they were meant to exist so close to that place.
This was not an afterlife.
This was a machine of endings.
Lamair did not move.
The artifacts responded instead. The purple sigils across his armor flared brighter, the axes humming as the chain between them tightened slightly, resonating with the portal like two predators acknowledging one another. His horns glowed faintly, drinking in the death-aspected essence bleeding out into the hall.
He inhaled.
Then…
Ethan’s right eye ignited.
Gold.
Not radiant. Not holy.
Absolute.
For a fraction of a second, the Eye of Truth flared fully open, and the universe noticed.
The pressure that followed was immediate and merciless.
It wasn’t killing intent. It wasn’t rage.
It was authority.
The temperature in the hall plunged and spiked at the same time. The runes carved into the walls stopped pulsing entirely, frozen as though afraid to move without permission. Several people dropped to one knee without realizing they had done so, hearts hammering in their chests.
The portal to the Underworld flickered.
Its edges warped. The darkness within rippled, recoiled, no, hesitated. Even the distant, unfathomable presence beyond it shifted ever so slightly, like a colossal entity opening one eye in irritation.
Trevor sucked in a sharp breath.
Lamair’s fingers tightened.
Ethan took one slow step forward.
The golden light in his eye vanished just as quickly as it appeared, but the pressure didn’t fade. It condensed, refined, coiled tightly around him like a restrained star. Every soul in the hall understood one thing instantly and instinctively:
If he chose to release it, the ritual, no, the Underworld itself, would not remain untouched.
Ethan stopped a few steps behind Lamair.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he spoke, voice calm, low, and wrapped in something dangerously close to irritation.
“Stop.”
Lamair turned slightly, just enough to look back over his shoulder. His expression remained composed, but his eyes sharpened.
“Ethan,” he said evenly. “The ritual is complete. The gate is open.”
“I know,” Ethan replied.
The portal trembled faintly behind Lamair, reacting again, not to his presence, but to Ethan’s refusal to back down from it.
Ethan exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled.
“And you’re not going.”
A ripple went through the hall.
Trevor straightened sharply.
Several of the wives exchanged tense looks.
Even the artifacts on Lamair’s body dimmed a fraction, uncertain.
Lamair turned fully this time.
“This is my final journey,” he said, voice steady but firm. “You knew this. We all knew this.”
Ethan met his gaze.
Golden eyes, now normal, too normal, locked onto purple.
“I knew you’d try,” Ethan said. “I didn’t say I agreed.”
The pressure thickened.
“This place…” Ethan gestured slightly toward the portal, not even bothering to look at it. “It isn’t just dangerous. It’s hostile to identity. It doesn’t test strength; it erases what fails. That presence back there?” His jaw tightened. “It’s already measuring you as a function, not a person.”
Lamair’s lips curved faintly. “That’s the point.”
“No,” Ethan snapped, the annoyance finally bleeding through. Not loud. Not explosive. Just sharp. “That’s the excuse.”
The portal flickered harder now, its edges fraying for a brief moment as if reality itself was second-guessing whether opening hadift to the Underworld had been a good idea.
Ethan took another step forward.
“You don’t walk into Hell alone when you still have people standing behind you,” he said quietly. “That’s not legacy. That’s negligence.”
For the first time, Lamair hesitated.
The Underworld waited.
And its patience, unlike mortal patience, was infinite.
…
The laugh crawled out of the portal like a living thing.
It wasn’t loud at first.
It was deep.
A vibration that didn’t strike the ears so much as it sank directly into bone and memory. The sound rippled outward in layered waves, distorting the air, bending shadows, making the walls of the hall groan as if remembering every death they’d ever sheltered from.
Then it grew.
A vast, echoing amusement rolled out of the Underworld, heavy with inevitability and cruel curiosity. The floor shuddered. Chandeliers cracked. Several of the Kael’Dri family gasped as their instincts screamed, their souls recoiling as though a claw had brushed past them.
Even Lamair stiffened.
Not fear.
Recognition.
This was Thanatos’ amusement. Not mockery. Not anger.
Interest.
Trevor’s knees buckled for half a breath before he forced himself upright, teeth clenched. Others weren’t so fortunate. A few staggered back, hearts racing, vision swimming as the weight of that laugh pressed down on them like a hand testing fragile glass.
“Well, well, well…”
The voice came layered, plural, echoing from everywhere and nowhere beyond the gate.
“A golden heir barking at the grave itself.”
The portal swelled, darkness boiling like an ocean under storm winds.
Lamair’s artifacts flared violently, reacting on instinct alone. His horns glowed brighter, his axes rattling against their chain, every part of him bracing for confrontation.
But before he could move…
Ethan stepped fully in front of everyone.
The motion was calm. Casual.
And utterly final.
His aura exploded outward.
Not in a blast.
In a bloom.
Golden-silver light poured from him like molten starlight, expanding in a broad, protective dome that swallowed the hall. The crushing pressure from the Underworld slammed into it and stopped.
Dead.
The air snapped back into place as reality sided with Ethan.
Runes reignited. Cracks sealed. The terror that had wrapped around everyone’s hearts loosened just enough for breath to return. The laugh faltered slightly, its rhythm disrupted for the first time.
Ethan’s hair lifted in the radiant storm of his presence. His right eye shimmered, no longer purely gold, silver veins laced through it now, like moonlight threaded through a sun.
This was not a warning aura.
This was a line drawn.
“Enough,” Ethan said.
One word.
The laugh scraped against the barrier again, probing, amused but wary now.
“Oh?” Thanatos’ voice rumbled. “You would shield mortals from inevitability? From me?”
Ethan didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t need to.
“You are laughing in my hall,” he replied evenly. “Behind my brother. In front of my family.”
The golden-silver aura intensified, pressing back toward the portal. The void recoiled a fraction, its edges warping as if subjected to gravity that should not exist.
“You don’t get to do that.”
Silence fell, thick, charged, dangerous.
Then the voice spoke again, slower now.
“…You have grown troublesome, heir of contradictions.”
Ethan smiled.
Not warmly.
Not cruelly.
Like someone who had already accepted what came next.
“Funny,” he said. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Behind him, Lamair stared.
Not at the portal.
At Ethan.
For the first time since the ritual began, Lamair understood something with absolute clarity.
Whatever lay beyond that gate…
Ethan was no longer merely a participant in the cosmic order.
He was becoming something it would have to negotiate with.
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