The fog thickened around Luv as he walked, silent and focused, through the forgotten outskirts of the realm. Shadows danced where light should have lived. The silence was deep, not peaceful — suffocating. A place where even screams had forgotten how to rise.
But he didn't stop.
The children had returned to their shelters. The elders were too weak to follow.
So Luv — soul split from body, power sealed — walked alone.
Ahead, a broken bridge hung over an endless chasm. Below, stars shimmered like dying embers. But they weren't stars. They were souls — countless, flickering, screaming in silence.
"This is where the stolen go," he thought. "A graveyard of light."
He stepped forward.
And the fog parted.
A staircase of flickering light appeared, spiraling up into the void like a trail carved by forgotten gods. Each step pulsed with sorrow, every echo a prayer unanswered.
He climbed.
Upward.
Beyond the clouds.
Beyond the silence.
Until at last, he reached Etheris — the floating city of the sky-dwellers.
It was beautiful.
White marble towers pierced the heavens. Streets of polished gold reflected a false sun. Winged guards in silver armor patrolled like angels of judgment. Everything gleamed.
But Luv saw the truth.
"This isn't heaven," he whispered. "It's a throne built on graves."
He passed through the gates. No one noticed. His soul walked between planes, unseen by mortal and god alike.
Yet… something noticed him.
A tremor in the air. A shift in the silence.
"You do not belong here, Outsider."
He turned.
A figure emerged from the mist — tall, robed in shifting light, a single eye where a face should be.
"I am the Sentinel," it said. "Protector of Etheris. You carry the scent of the forgotten. State your purpose before you are erased."
"I've come for the stolen," Luv replied calmly. "The people you took from below."
"They were chosen," the Sentinel answered coldly. "Broken creatures with no purpose. We gave them one. They power our shields, our skies, our light."
"You turned them into fuel," Luv said, voice hardening. "You call that purpose?"
"They serve something greater now. You do not understand balance."
"Balance," Luv thought bitterly. "Is what tyrants call injustice after they polish it."
Suddenly, the Sentinel lunged — its body unraveling into tendrils of light and blade.
Luv's instinct screamed to release his power.
But nothing came.
Sealed. Still sealed.
He gritted his teeth and rolled aside, pulling from his coat a curved black blade — forged from divine scraps, a weapon bound not to his godhood, but to his will.
One of the few tools that still obeyed him.
He parried a blow, slashed through light — the Sentinel shrieked in pain.
But Luv already knew:
He couldn't fight them all.
Not like this. Not head-on.
And if he wanted to free the oppressed...
He couldn't be the hero.
He'd have to lie. Deceive. Manipulate.
He'd have to let the world call him what they feared.
A villain.
A demon.
"Then let them," he thought. "Let them curse my name if it means I save even one child from this hell."
The Sentinel struck again, but Luv spun low and drove his blade up through its chest.
There was no blood — only light, unraveling.
The creature screamed and fell into the abyss.
And the city of Etheris — for the first time in centuries — shivered.
Luv stood in the silence, soul burning, breath steady.
He looked around at the marble streets, the holy banners fluttering above slavery.
And then, from deep within him —
not from his power,
not from his rage,
but from his truth —
he spoke:
They break your bones, then call it grace,
Steal your breath with a smiling face.
They build their thrones on backs that bend,
And preach of justice they never send.
You cry for help — they seal your mouth,
Call it peace while bleeding you out.
A gilded cage, a velvet lie,
Where truth is chained and dreams must die.
But I see through the polished pride,
I hear the screams that dwell inside.
No law they write can cleanse their crime—
No godly mask can halt my climb.
For every soul they kept below,
I'll be the storm they'll never know.
Not as a hero with golden flame,
But as the demon who speaks your name.
His voice faded. The words drifted into the fog like a curse and a promise.
Above, in the tallest tower of Etheris, a man stirred.
Clad in robes of sunlight and bones, wearing a crown forged from the jaw of a dead god — Auran, High Lord of Etheris, rose from his throne.
He looked down at the disturbance, eyes narrowing.
"It has begun…" he said. "The soul of EL walks again."
He turned to his servants.
"Seal the eastern gates. Summon the Architects. Deploy the Sky Cleavers. I want this ghost buried before dawn."
Back below, Luv stood at the edge of a sacred courtyard, where imprisoned souls cried through golden vents in the stone.
He stared down at them, silent.
They could not speak.
They could only weep.
But one of them — a little girl — looked up at him, tears running down her hollow cheeks.
And she smiled.
Not because she recognized him.
But because in the silence, hope had returned.
Luv looked away and stepped into the fog once more.
"Let them call me monster," he thought. "Let them fear me."
"But I will free them. One lie at a time. One life at a time."
And as the fog swallowed him, a name echoed across the forgotten winds.
Not spoken by voice.
But remembered by the world.
"EL…"