Black ash still swirls around the fractured altar where Emperor Zadkiel stands—no longer corpse, not yet god, a living wound stitched together by wrath. The sky above him is a livid bruise of storm-purple and blood-red.
He tilts his head back, baffled.
Zadkiel (hoarse, almost child-like)
"…Why am I still here?"
A razor of pain splits his skull.
He drops to one knee—taloned fingers digging furrows through stone as a tidal wave of memories detonates behind his eyes.
The First Blade of Betrayal
He sees his wife again—soft smile, moonlit hair.
Then the torches.
Then the mob.
Her terrified face pressed against the doorframe while he is dragged to a cellar, iron chains cutting bone.
Above him, muffled screams: his daughter… his twin sons…
Violence sloshes through cracked floorboards.
A final, wet silence.
The cellar door opens. They haul him out, lash him to a post, pile tinder at his feet.
The flames rise—
—and something inside him dies and is reborn all at once.
Village in ashes. Wife's hollow eyes. Daughter's small body swaying from a branch.
His sons crawling in the dirt, minds shattered past any mercy.
A new tableau—an elegant manor ablaze.
Mother, Father, the kind strangers who called him "son," both sprawled on marble, throats opened by accident in his desperate panic.
Two little sisters in nightgowns, eyes huge with terror.
Little Sister (screaming)
"Monster! Murderer!"
Their words brand his heart.
He reaches out—I love you!—but flames swallow their faces.
A third vision—threads weaving the prior horrors together:
A man of immaculate poise: Law.
Smiling at Zadkiel's wife on the day of the festival.
Whispering to villagers behind shuttered doors.
Standing in the burning mansion's foyer, untouched by smoke.
Kneeling in that same cellar, fingers cool on Zadkiel's temples.
Law (silken, echoing):
"You will forget I was ever here."
Reality buckles. Memory fractures. The edits bleed.
Present Moment
Zadkiel lurches upright, screaming until the mountains tremble.
Zadkiel (roaring at the heavens)
"WHY DO YOU ALL KEEP LEAVING ME?
WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE ME SO MUCH?"
Black ichor tears streak his cheeks. The ground cracks in spiderwebs beneath him.
Around his feet, raw emotion coalesces—spectral figures of rage, envy, despair swirl like storm spirits, drawn to their maker. Each memory shard feeds them; each unanswered question sharpens them into spears.
Then—amid the cacophony—one voice cuts through:
Law's whisper inside his mind, smooth and certain.
> "Hate them, Zadkiel.
Hate the world that cast you out.
And when all is ashes… I will show you the truth."
Zadkiel's eyes flare—two supernovas of agony and fury.
He staggers forward, half-sobbing, half-snarling, as the ridge top quakes beneath an expanding corona of dark power.
Zadkiel (voice cracking, a vow to the void)
"I will burn every star that ever shone on my suffering.
I will kill the gods that watched and laughed.
And when the last scream fades…
No one will forget me again."