"Where… am I?"
Azareal's voice trembled in the darkness. His vision was warped, heavy — and when he looked down, he saw himself lying motionless on the obsidian floor.
His eyes widened.
"This… isn't my body."
He turned slowly — and froze.
The skin, the scent, the heartbeat… he was inside the sacrifice.
Then it came.
A sharp, tearing sound — steel biting through flesh.
The priest's knife slid through the sacrifice's palm, tracing down the veins as though drawing symbols for the gods to read.
Azareal screamed.
It wasn't her voice alone that broke the silence — it was theirs. A twisted harmony of agony, his and hers overlapping.
Tears flowed freely as the priest sneered, "Quiet! It is an honor to be offered to the gods."
He twisted the blade inside, splitting muscle and nerve with ritual precision, before cutting toward the heart — vein by vein.
Then, calmly, he walked to the trembling face beneath him.
"May your eyes see the divine for the last time," he whispered.
And he scooped one out.
Azareal's mind shattered. He screamed, but it wasn't only pain — it was memories.
The girl's life flashed before him — fleeting joys, the smell of river lilies, her mother's laughter, her dreams of seeing the sunrise beyond the temple walls. All of it bled into him like a flood of light through darkness.
Her resignation came softly, like a sigh between screams.
If this is fate… let it end.
And as her soul dimmed, his consciousness broke — his veins burning with divine backlash.
His power had reached beyond his body, beyond his limit.
And this was the cost.
The priest raised his bloodied knife to the heavens.
"Glory to the God of Weeping Stars!"
All bowed.
The light in the sacrifice's eyes faded to nothing.