Lornell clung to my sleeves, his small fingers trembling like frightened sparrows in the wind.
His face was a canvas of despair and accusation, a living map of terror written in the language of pleading.
He screamed my name, syllables jagged with hysteria, torn between begging and cursing.
The sound, raw, desperate, human, lodged itself somewhere deep in my ribs like a splinter that would never leave.
And somehow, those cries calmed me.
They fused with the cold air, braided with the static hum that had begun to fill my mind.
The storm within me grew eerily serene.
Each shiver of his voice became an anchor, holding me in that perfect, lucid moment where every emotion aligned, where cruelty and beauty shared a single breath.
A strange lightness began to bloom inside my lungs, a feverish buoyancy that came before transcendence, or madness.
It was the culmination of years of inertia.
My failures, my indolence, my refusal to rise when it mattered, all of it condensed into this one exquisite instant.
I had always wanted the thrill of death without the burden of consequence.
The intoxication of violence without the discipline that gives it meaning.
I desired sensation unchained from responsibility. And now, standing here, I realized I had finally achieved it.
A smile crept across my face, unbidden, ridiculous. It grew until it fractured into laughter, something alien and beautiful that echoed like a forgotten hymn escaping a tomb.
[He remembered correctly this time.]
I did not know how. I did not want to.
"Nicholas," Lornell spat, his voice calcified into granite. "You promised my family coin. You promised safety. You promised peace. For what? For this?"
The fear dissolved from his eyes, replaced by something heavier, purer. Hatred.
It settled in him like sediment at the bottom of a dying river. "Was this your design all along? To ruin us? To watch us burn?"
And I laughed.
It began as a tremor, then uncoiled into something crystalline, manic. "No. I didn't plan this. I didn't mean to be cruel. But—"
I let go.
His body slipped from my grasp, soft as water. The last thing he saw was my face, smiling through tears that were both joy and hunger.
Then the sound: flesh meeting earth, a single brutal punctuation that ended him.
A cold line crept up my spine. I stepped back until the cliff bit into me. My hands shook, pale, unmarked, and yet I saw blood there, imagined it as scripture written upon skin.
My mind filled with echoes of another slaughter, one that had not been a battle because no one had fought back. I felt pride bloom like rot, obscene and holy.
My first kill, it felt like a coronation.
The laughter returned, splintered, sharp. It tore something open inside my skull. A mark slithered up my finger, like a serpent made of ink and will, branding me.
And for the first time, I understood what it meant to belong to the act. Not as a sinner, but as an artist of desecration.
The sky above seemed to twist, slow and deliberate, as if the heavens themselves recoiled.
Wind dragged against my skin in long, deliberate strokes, whispering a language I almost recognized.
It sounded like a prayer. It sounded like mockery.
Then came the cough, wet, coppery. Warm red spilled past my lips, staining the stone with the color of devotion.
I fell, my knees striking the rock, the taste of iron and winter thick in my mouth. The world folded, pressed inward, and I sank through it like water, unmoored from time.
When I woke, the cave awaited me again, a cathedral of interrogation where thought itself was dangerous.
The air shimmered with the memory of screams that had never been mine.
"Nicholas," Destrarossa said. Her voice was steady, honed, merciless. "You are monstrous. Do not flinch from it. Name it. Own it."
Her words did not condemn. They baptized.
Cracks shimmered across my skin like fractured glass.
The torchlight caught them, painting me in veins of molten gold, as though I were being reforged in the image of my sin.
And I smiled, slowly, hungrily, as if at last, some hidden part of me had received its long-awaited benediction.
"Am I truly this indolent?"
***
[Stiffer.]
I knew it. Futility pulsed like a second heartbeat. Still, his ascension had to occur.
The resurrection of God lingered close enough to taste, divine residue saturating the air like incense.
Humanity was irredeemable, fragile, corrupt, foolish. That was why I reshaped the world in his image. That was why I deceived them.
I lifted my sword and inhaled, the air thick with ruin. "I will say it once more."
They glared at me with venom, but my tone did not falter. "As he once declared, you will falter. You will perish. You will be purged of the infection called life."
Cole's blade drove through my chest, twisting with surgical precision. "When he comes," he hissed, "your head will be my offering."
My eyes flicked to the girl. My hand clenched.
And then, reality folded.
The blade buried itself in his own heart. The world bent, rewritten, reshaped beneath my will. The girl lunged; her strike slipped past me like smoke.
"Satire's magic was useful," I murmured, sidestepping her fury.
I caught Malachi's wrist mid-swing, shattered it, hurled him into the sand. A beam of blood hissed by, heat cracking the air. I spun, blocked, countered, ascended.
Light erupted, a storm of holiness and destruction. "Heavenly Storm!" I cried, and the heavens obliged, their brilliance devouring shadow.
Through the torrent, Calista's eyes met mine.
Her voice pierced the downpour. "This is the truth, you, and your false world will crumble before it."
Her words struck me like scripture. Beautiful. Absolute.
Perfect.
It was perfect.
It was perfect.
It was perfect.
The repetition clawed through my skull, a divine refrain rewriting my thoughts. Her voice, her conviction, was burrowing into me, engraving itself onto my soul.
My world fractured. My truth bled out. I tried to mimic her, to steal her certainty, to wield it as my own. But it rejected me entirely, as though the cosmos itself had chosen her over me.
No. Impossible. She could not be stronger than me. She could not.
A truth.
A truth.
A truth.
Damn it all!
Her blade sang as it tore from my throat. Cole's curved sword followed, severing my arm in a single gleaming arc. His grin, sharp, cruel, mirrored divine satisfaction.
Then came Malachi's voice, thunderous: "Sword of Inanis: Void Espada!"
The void itself took shape. I knew it was the end. I knew.
But then, someone intervened.
A Saint unlike any other. My beloved. My salvation.
Mucro.
She descended like a blade of starlight, her arrival shaking the air. She caught me as I fell, her arms unyielding, divine. Together, we struck the sand, the world cracking beneath us.
Her silver hair cascaded like silk, framing porcelain skin and eyes of radiant gold, eyes filled with fury and devotion.
Her odachi struck the ground beside us, its grey edge thrumming with latent cataclysm.
"Damn it, Stiffer!" she snarled, half wrath, half relief. "I told you not to fight without me. You're fortunate I returned in time."
She had been sent to another realm, to harvest souls for the resurrection.
If she was here, then so was he.
And if he was here… then all the others would follow.
We had won.
I turned toward the enemy. Their faces, once blazing with defiance, now emptied into despair. Their faith collapsed. Their courage curdled.
What remained were hollow vessels, awaiting judgment.