" A boy begs the world to stop. The world answers too late."
Silence pressed its ear to the chapel and listened.
Kaen knelt in Lucien's blood. The priest's hand lay open beside his knee, already cooling. Knights yanked at Kaen's arms; Aelis bled and breathed in shallow stutters; Liora rose on shaking legs, eyes wide and wet.
"Bind him," the Dominion Inspector snapped.
Kaen stared at the floor and prayed to anything that could hear a defect. "Please… help me stop this."
The air tilted.
Candles leaned toward him instead of up. Nails shivered in their wood. The chapel's ribs—old stone and older faith—creaked like a ship taking on water.
A knight swore, "What—"
Gravity collapsed inward. Armor slammed to stone, dragging bodies with it. Pew bolts screamed and tore. The men holding Kaen dropped him and crushed their own wrists under the weight of their gauntlets.
Kaen crawled to Lucien and touched the sleeve that would never move again.
"Lucien… get up…" His voice split. "Please."
A perfect black halo bit into the air behind Kaen's skull—an eclipse devouring the lantern light. Flames stretched thin and vanished into it, thread by thread. A low hum rolled through the nave, deep enough to rattle teeth.
The stained-glass sun-god exploded——but the shards did not fall.
They orbited Kaen in a slow ring, each shard reflecting a life: Lucien laughing in spring rain; Lucien setting bread on Aelis's sill; Lucien lifting a muddy boy from a ditch, saying, Try again.
Kaen reached for that one.
His fingers passed through glass like mist. The memory scattered.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
The world obeyed his grief.
The first to die
A villager lunged for the door with his daughter in his arms. The air thickened around them; his stride shortened like the floor stole distance. Knees buckled. The child slipped, breath punched out of her. He reached—too slow. He hit stone. He did not rise.
"Get out!" someone screamed. "Everyone RUN!"
People surged. Others collapsed. Some dropped to their knees, pressing their palms to the floor as if it were a god.
"Death… god," an old woman whispered, voice shredded.
The whisper caught.
"Death God!" a man cried, pointing at the boy with the black ring. Panic shoved the word into other mouths—sobs, prayers, curses.
"Death god—!""Protect us, Source—!""Kill it—kill the Death God—!"
Kaen flinched at the name like a blow. "I'm not— I didn't—"
A knight charged.
His spear met the air in front of Kaen and rotted from the tip back, collapsing into orange flakes that fell across Kaen's shirt. The knight stared at his empty hands. He aged ten years in a breath. Then ten more. He folded, armor creasing like paper.
Kaen recoiled. "No—no—please—" He held his hands away from his body as if they were knives.
A second knight vaulted a pew. Time misstepped—his leap stretched, held, then snapped backward; he landed where he'd started, ankle breaking on contact. He screamed. The sound ripped off halfway and went nowhere.
A mother shoved her son toward the aisle. She froze mid-step, seeing Kaen hovering inches above cracked tile. Her voice shrank to a thread. "Death… god…"
Her son turned to stone where he stood—not dead, pinned by a weight he could not name. His eyes rolled white. He made small, animal sounds.
Kaen shook, every muscle locking and releasing in painful waves. The eclipse crown pulsed. With each beat, the chapel bent.
"Kaen!" Liora's voice fought through the pressure. She stumbled, cane splintering. She crawled the last feet, hair pasted to her face with sweat, tears cutting tracks through dust. A beam dropped. She rolled beneath it. A spear clattered beside her ear. She did not stop.
Her hand found his.
Color returned—faint as a bruise, but there.
"Look at me," she begged, pressing her forehead to his. "You are still you."
His eyes flickered between ocean-blue and pure white void. "I can't stop it, Liora—" He gulped air. "I only wanted to save him—"
"I know." She squeezed until it hurt. "Breathe with me. In—out—"
The hum softened. Several villagers staggered free of the pull, gasping.
"Loose them!" the Inspector barked, shouldering through with his shield. "Form! On me!"
Some knights obeyed. Others prayed. A few ran.
A boy in the third pew hiccupped a sob and whispered, "Death God," like a lesson learned. His grandmother slapped her own mouth to keep her prayer in.
The Inspector snatched a fallen spear, sighted past Liora—at Kaen's heart.
Kaen saw the line: metal → him → Liora behind.
His eyes went white.
"No."
Time evaporated.
The spear froze. The attacker aged decades in seconds, collapsing into a brittle husk that powdered when it hit the ground.
Kaen gasped—horrified at what his fear had done.
Villagers fell. Not in pain—as if their bodies forgot how to live.A child curled into his father's arms and both went still.A woman stumbled, hands open to nothing, and never took another step.
"I'm sorry—" Kaen choked. The apology rose as smoke, burning black up his cheeks.
For the first time since Lucien fell, calm crept into the ruin. The weight eased. The shards slowed. Crying became sound again.
Liora lifted Kaen's chin. "You came back," she whispered. "Stay."
He nodded, shaking.
The eclipse ring flickered—
The Betrayal
Rellan moved.
Tears silvered his cheeks. Fear chewed his thoughts. Death God echoed from every mouth. He saw Kaen floating. He saw gold on Liora's skin. He felt his place slipping.
He snatched a fallen spear, hands shaking, breath breaking.
"This is your fault," he rasped. "You ruined everything!"
He threw.
Liora sensed it—turned—
Kaen didn't.
The spear punched into her back, the point tearing out through her chest. Her eyes widened, shattered glass catching the eclipse.
Blood mapped Kaen's hands like a curse signing its prophet.
Time did not slow.
It stopped.
"No…" His voice was a single broken note. "…not you."
She slumped into him, warm and wrong.
Her smile trembled—through blood, through agony. "Kaen… listen…"
He bent close, desperate.
"You were never chosen by the Source…"Her fingers brushed his cheek, painting him red."You were chosen… by me."
Her last breath trembled against his skin.
"I love you."
Her hand slipped away.
Kaen forgot how to breathe.
The Collapse
He held her like she still had a future. Held her the way he wished time held mercy.
Then the scream came.
Not power.Not godhood.Not wrath.
Grief.
The eclipse crown shattered, ribbons of dying night unspooling into the rafters. The hum died. Gravity released its grip. The chapel slumped, exhausted. Villagers gasped like drowning souls dragged to shore.
Kaen's power went darkbecause the person keeping it gentlewas gone.
He bowed over Liora's body and wept a boy's scream into a dead girl's hair.
Rellan Breaks
Rellan stared at his hands as if they belonged to a stranger. "I… I didn't— I was trying— Kaen—"
Guilt strangled him.
Then twisted.
He looked at Kaen, cradling Liora like a prayer the Source refused.
"If you'd stayed useless," he whispered, voice splitting, "she'd still be alive."
Hatred bloomed to fill what guilt could not carry.
The Last Stand of Love
Boots circled. Spears lowered.
Aelis dragged herself between Kaen and death, arms wide. "You will NOT touch him!" Her voice tore. "Not while I breathe!"
Kaen buried his face in Liora's hair. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry…"
"You should be," a soldier growled, drawing back his spear.
A knife sang and pinned his wrist to the wall by its shadow.
Smoke curled. A cloak swallowed torchlight.
"Funny thing about the Death God," a new voice said, precise as a cut. "He doesn't die easy."
Elyra strode through the ruin, eyes cold, taking in bodies, blood, the boy with the broken crown.
She stamped a rune—black fire chewed a doorway into the floor's shadow.
"Hold him," she ordered Aelis.
Aelis wrapped her arms around Kaen and the girl in his lap. "I've got you," she whispered. "I've always got you."
Elyra slammed her blade into the sigil.
The darkness rose like water and swallowed all three.
After
Rellan dropped to his knees beside what he'd done. He closed Liora's eyes with shaking fingers.
Then he lifted his face, scraped raw, and chose a lie he could live with.
"They'll blame him," he breathed. "They should blame him."
He looked at the ruin, at the people whispering Death God like a curse and a prayer.
"I'll make them."
Outside, a bell tried to ring and could not find the note.
Inside, Lucien's blood went black as it dried, the circle fading to nothing.
And the name born in terror left Brindle Hollow in a hundred mouths.
Death God.