Chapter 329 - Through The Lens Of Truth (2)

I was sitting in my office causally skimming sources through my crystal with practiced boredom, I almost ignored the incoming message.

Almost.

"Some kids have challenged the Forgeheart Crucible."

I scoffed aloud.

Another pack of spoiled nobles playing at some unknown trial. I was already dismissing it—already forming the polite refusal I’d send back—when my eyes drifted lower.

One line.

One name.

Luca Valentine.

I stood up so fast my chair skidded back into the wall.

My breath hitched, heart slamming against my ribs as memory surged forward unbidden—the church, the blood, the boy who didn’t tremble.

Once, I was just another field reporter—Farrel Ronfield, one of hundreds chasing scraps of scandal and half-true rumors for a byline that barely paid the rent. Nobody seemed to remember me. Now I sit in a private office with a reinforced communication crystal, a title engraved on the door, and a reputation built on a single name I never seem to escape.

Luca Valentine.

I remember the first time I saw him.

Not from a distance.

Not through hearsay.

I was there.

An abandoned church on the edge of nowhere, its walls soaked in rot and old prayers. I had followed whispers of cult activity—nothing unusual, nothing worth more than a short column. Then the screams started. By the time I reached the nave, the air was thick with blood and copper, and bodies were strewn across broken pews like discarded offerings.

And at the center of it all stood a boy.

Young. Calm. Crimson-eyed.

He did not look victorious. He did not look shaken. He looked... finished. As if what he had done was inevitable rather than brutal. Dozens of cultists lay dead around him—cut down with terrifying efficiency. Not rage. Not frenzy.

Intent.

I remember my hands shaking as I wrote that article. I remember how the presses ran through the night. How the headline spread faster than any rumor I had ever chased.

"Demon or Hero? A Single Boy Slaughters a Cult Alone."

That piece made my career.

Promotion. Recognition. Invitations I never thought I’d receive.

And yet, every time I heard his name again, the same thought returned to me, uninvited and unwelcome:

Wherever this boy goes, something earth shattering follows.

"...No," I muttered.

I read it again.

Then again.

The Forgeheart Crucible.

I researched it through old archives, and I found some clues.

A dwarven trial so brutal it had been sealed away for generations. A place where bodies broke and wills shattered. A place no sane person challenged.

And Luca Valentine was involved.

My hands moved on instinct.

I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate.

I stormed into my editor’s office, barely waiting for permission before speaking. I told him I needed to cover this. Personally. He reminded me—politely at first—that I wasn’t a field reporter anymore. That I had people for that now.

I told him he didn’t understand.

In the end, maybe it was my reputation. Maybe it was the fear in my voice. Or maybe he remembered the numbers that article had pulled.

He waved me off.

I was gone within the hour.

The journey into dwarven territory was unlike anything I’d covered before. Security checkpoints. Rune-warded passes. Entire convoys of reporters and nobles traveling together, all pretending they weren’t there out of fear as much as curiosity.

When I entered Forgeheart Arena, my first surprise wasn’t the size.

It was the organization.

A dedicated stand for reporters—perfect sightlines, reinforced barriers, stabilized lenses. The dwarves weren’t hiding this.

They wanted the world to see.

They wanted it known that the Forgeheart Crucible had returned.

And then I saw him.

Not on the arena floor.

But in the challengers’ stand.

Violet hair. Familiar posture. Familiar presence.

Luca Valentine.

He wasn’t the one fighting yet—but I couldn’t look away. I barely noticed the others around him. My focus narrowed, instinct sharpening the way it always did when history was about to be written.

Some nobles and reporters seem to have forgotten about him, as I said proudly "He is Luca Valentine."

Of course I can’t let anyone forget about him.

And then everything spiraled.

Selena Weiss—daughter of the Tower Master—was involved. The Tower Master herself arrived, her presence alone enough to tilt the political balance of the world. Tension with the dwarves escalated. And Luca—

Again—again—he was at the center of it.

Not shouting. Not threatening.

Mitigating.

Defusing.

Redirecting something that could have turned into catastrophe.

The days that followed were unbearable.

Waiting.

Watching.

Knowing.

By the final day, my hands were already trembling as I activated my crystal. I knew this was the moment. I knew—deep in my gut—that whatever happened next would not be contained by stone walls or dwarven borders.

I remember thinking—

Please let it be figurative this time.

And then—

The world exploded.

The ground screamed.

Stone shattered like glass, and the arena collapsed inward as if struck by a god’s fist. A deafening roar swallowed every sound I had ever known, and a wall of dust rose so thick it blotted out the sky itself.

I didn’t realize I was screaming until my throat burned.

"Aahhhhhhh—!"

I hadn’t meant earthshaking literally.

But Luca Valentine, once again, proved the world wrong.

And as the dust swallowed everything in sight, one thought echoed in my mind with terrifying clarity:

I was right to come.

The first thing I felt was pain.

Not sharp—dull, all-encompassing, like my body had been picked up and shaken until every bone forgot where it belonged. I was sprawled across the floor of the reporters’ stand, ears ringing, vision smeared into light and shadow. Dust choked the air, coating my tongue, my lungs, my thoughts. For a terrifying second, I thought I’d gone deaf.

Then the artifact kicked in.

A low hum vibrated against my chest, warm and steady, pushing outward like an invisible shell. The impact pressure that should have crushed my ribs bled away, redirected into the rune-etched plate hidden beneath my coat. My office-issued survival artifact—something I’d mocked when they handed it to me—had just saved my life.

"Damn it..." I rasped, coughing as I rolled onto one knee.

Around me, other reporters were groaning, some shielded by similar devices, others dragged behind reinforced barriers by dwarven attendants. Camera crystals lay scattered like broken insects, their lenses cracked or dark. The arena itself was gone—or so it seemed—reduced to chaos, smoke, and falling debris.

I forced myself upright.

And then I looked up.

My breath left me in a single, silent exhale.

Suspended high above the ruined arena, bound within a lattice of glowing dwarven runes, was her.

The Tower Master.

The greatest mage of our era. A figure spoken of in academies and courts with equal parts reverence and fear. Captured. Restrained. Silent.

My hands began to shake—not with fear, but with urgency.

Above her stood a single dwarf, wreathed in power so dense it bent the air around him. And facing him—no, challenging him—were the seven dwarven elders themselves, their combined presence reshaping the battlefield as ancient mechanisms awakened beneath their will.

Seven against one.

And still—it wasn’t enough.

I activated my remaining camera crystal with a practiced flick, mana stabilizing the lens as I zoomed in. My instincts screamed that this was history unfolding in real time, and I would not miss a second of it.

The elders fought like legends—constructs forming midair, colossal dwarven mechanisms slamming down with thunderous precision, rune-forged weapons striking with the weight of centuries.

The dwarf at the center of it all barely budged.

Durgan Blackvein, he called himself.

The name meant nothing to me—yet.

I swallowed hard.

I should research him. Gods, I need to research him.

And then—

Something changed.

Amid the blinding light, the overwhelming clashes, the world-ending strikes that demanded everyone’s attention, something slipped through almost unnoticed. A single arc of motion. A strike so understated it was nearly invisible against the backdrop of catastrophe.

But my lens caught it.

A thin line opened across Durgan Blackvein’s cheek.

Blood followed.

For a heartbeat, the world froze.

I sucked in a sharp breath, my heart slamming against my ribs as recognition hit me like lightning.

Down there—standing amid ruins, barely upright, blood streaking his face, posture unsteady yet unbroken—

Luca Valentine.

My eyes burned.

He did it.

He did what seven dwarven elders couldn’t.

Not with power.

Not with spectacle.

But with will.

Hope surged through me so fiercely I almost laughed.

I listened—really listened—as the chaos shifted into words, into negotiation, into something far more dangerous than battle.

Then I heard it.

"NO!"

The word hit me like a slap.

Disappointment flooded my chest before I could stop it. I clenched my fists, teeth grinding together as my expectations betrayed me.

So that’s it...? I thought bitterly. He won’t fight it? He won’t push further?

I had wanted—selfishly—to see him stand against everything again. To watch him carve legend out of impossible odds the way he had in that church.

But then—

Then I understood.

As the conversation unfolded, as the dwarves’ scheme revealed itself, as the pressure was laid bare and reframed to make refusal look like cowardice, my breath caught.

He saw through it.

All of them had fallen for it.

Except him.

And then he said it.

"Thousand Hammer Crucible."

My blood ran cold.

I’d read about it while researching Forgeheart—half-forgotten footnotes buried beneath polite historical language. A trial so brutal it didn’t just kill bodies, it erased people. A crucible sealed away not out of mercy, but shame.

And Luca Valentine accepted it.

I stared at the arena, a disbelieving laugh bubbling out of my throat.

"Madman," I muttered.

And yet—

I was smiling.

Because that smile wasn’t born of disbelief.

It was born of vindication.

I was right again.

The next two hours passed in a blur of activity. I watched, spellbound, as the dwarven elders repaired the arena—not patching it, not hiding the damage, but reforging it entirely. Stone flowed like molten metal. Runes realigned themselves with impossible precision. What had been ruin became something grander, stronger, more terrifying than before.

It was beautiful.

And it was horrifying.

When the trial began, I felt it in my bones.

The magma.

The descending hammers.

The sheer intent of the place.

Anyone with even a shred of sense would have fled.

And Luca—

Within ten strikes—

He spat blood onto the arena floor.

I swallowed hard, my grip tightening around my camera crystal as I whispered, more to myself than anyone else,

"Will this be the foolish choice of an arrogant young man..."

My lens stayed locked on him as the hammers rose again.

"...or the beginning of another Chapter in a legend?"