Godstealer-Chapter 34: A WALK INTO MADNESS!!!

Dante stopped. Turned. Looked up at the sky like maybe the stars would give him a reason not to scream.

"Why," he growled through cracked lips, "are you two bothering me this much?"

There was a beat of silence.

Then both voices answered in unison:

"Because you're going back to them."

"Because you're crawling back."

"Because you didn't listen to us before."

"Because we told you so."

"Because drama makes you so much funnier to watch!"

"Also because we're bored."

Dante kept walking.

Lyra bounced beside him, grinning wide like a foxchild on her first sugar rush.

"Dante," she chirped, "is it true you once choked a divine beast with a shoe?"

"No," he muttered.

"What about the one where you escaped the Tower of Thorns by charming the guards with a song about bacon?"

"That was the Trickster."

"No, that one was real," said the Trickster. "I still remember the chorus. Want me to sing it? It slaps."

"No," Dante snapped.

Too late. The Trickster sang.

🎵 "Oh bacon goddess, your sizzle divine,

Burn my sins like porcine wine—" 🎵

"I will jump off a cliff," Dante growled.

"Can't die," said the Sound God cheerfully. "Curse immunity, remember?"

"Then I'll kill one of you."

"Wouldn't be the first time," said the Trickster.

By midday on the second day, Dante's boots were bleeding. Lyra had somehow found a bird and befriended it. The Sound God was beatboxing. The Trickster was running a new game show called "This Is Your Pathetic Life", where he displayed Dante's worst memories as flashbacks with sarcastic commentary.

"Episode One," Trickster narrated,

"The day Dante was ten and thought the baker's daughter liked him, only to realize she was using him to get a free demon ward."

"Cue the crying! Cue the guilt!"

"I will rip you out of my mind," Dante hissed.

"You say that," Trickster replied with a smirk,

"but we both know I'm the only thing keeping you sane."

On the third night, they made camp in a ruin surrounded by dead trees. A broken statue of an old war-god lay shattered near the fire. Lyra sat cross-legged across from Dante, watching him with soft eyes.

"You're different," she said.

"Everyone says that," he muttered.

"No, I mean it. You walk like your bones remember every person you've buried."

Dante looked up.

"I remember too much," he said.

Then, softer:

"I thought walking away would spare me more memories. But the world doesn't forget people like me. It hunts them."

She scooted closer.

"You know they still talk about you. The hybrids. All across the continent. You're a myth now. Some think you're a ghost. Others... think you're a weapon."

Dante stared into the fire.

"And what do you think?"

Lyra's eyes glowed faintly. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"I think you're a warning. And a promise."

Far away — deep in Sound God's frequency net — a storm brewed.

"Dante," said Sound God suddenly,

"I'm picking up thoughts. Strong ones. Synchronized rebellion frequency. Hundreds of hybrids."

"What are they saying?"

"They're saying your name."

A pause.

"They're saying: If he walks, we rise."

Dante didn't respond. He watched the fire crackle, smoke curling into the stars.

Behind his eyes, the Trickster whispered, unusually quiet:

"You were supposed to join them before. Now they think you're leading them."

"I'm not."

"They don't care."

The sky rumbled. The stars blinked like warning lights.

A war stirred beneath the surface of a fractured world.

And Dante, bloody, exhausted, and half-insane, was walking right into the heart of it.

Just like old times.

___

The gates to the Hybrid Association's Sanctum had once been silver, still hidden underground.

Now they were rust-red, carved with claw marks and bullet burns, half-buried in mud and broken banners. A pair of horned guards flanked the entrance—lean, mean, and very surprised.

"...Is that Dante?" one whispered.

"No, can't be. He walked. No one walks here."

"He looks half-dead."

"He always looks half-dead."

"I heard that," Dante muttered, dragging his feet forward like every step was a new betrayal.

Behind him, Lyra skipped forward, grinning like a gremlin.

"Hi!" she waved at the guards. "He's here to see the scary people."

The guards blinked.

"...He brought a child?"

"I'm 22, thank you," Lyra huffed.

"Emotionally, you're a squirrel with a sugar addiction," Dante said.

They entered the Sanctum.

The halls were jagged stone and humming crystals—part cathedral, part bunker, part battlefield. Old hybrid relics hovered in alcoves. Faint magic lingered in the air, bitter and sharp.

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"Welcome back to the den of disappointed rebels," the Trickster said in his mind, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Try not to get murdered for ghosting their uprising last time."

"They probably won't kill you," said the Sound God,

"just exile you, strip your name, curse your bloodline, send your ashes to the Moon—"

"Shut. Up," Dante growled aloud.

A passing hybrid janitor flinched and ran.

The Council Hall was darker than Dante remembered.

Six chairs. Five occupied.

Each face turned to him with fire in their eyes.

Kharem, a beast-hybrid with tusks like ivory scimitars, leaned forward.

"Well. If it isn't the saint of hesitation. Did you walk here to apologize or die on your knees?"

"Oof," Trickster whispered.

"He missed you."

Dante raised his hand calmly.

"Neither," he said. "I came to talk."

Vellia, the serpentkin, hissed. "Talk won't save our children. You had your chance, Reaper."

Dante's brow twitched. The title stung like acid.

"I made a choice to walk away," he said, "because I didn't believe war was the answer."

"And now?" asked Gorran, the wolf-blood tactician.

"...Now I think I was wrong."

A silence like a blade followed.

Then Vellia chuckled. "Well, stars above. Mark this day: Dante Hollow admitted he was wrong. Someone bottle this."

"Ooooh," sang Trickster in Dante's mind.

"This is delicious. You want me to start a slow clap?"

"Don't you dare."

As Dante laid out what he'd seen—the gods turning, the law hanging by threads, Igris planning war—the Council listened.

Some leaned closer. Others, like Vellia, crossed their arms.

When he mentioned the rising whispers from hybrid enclaves across the world, sparked by his victory in the divine arena, a map projected into the air—bright spots pulsing across continents.

"They're ready," Gorran muttered. "More than we thought."

Lyra stood nearby, nibbling dried meat like a tourist, until she suddenly raised her hand.

"Um, quick question," she chirped, "if you guys are rebels and this place is supposed to be secret, why does it have a GIANT glowing roof rune that says 'Sanctum of the Hybrids'? That's just... kinda obvious."

The Council blinked.

Kharem glared at Vellia.

"...You said it was subtle."

"It's written in dead Celestian! No one reads that anymore!"

"Except me," said the Sound God proudly.

"You're a vibrating balloon," Dante muttered.

"I'm a VIBRATING GENIUS."