The world lay flayed and silent, a vast canvas of ruin where continents had cracked open like shattered bone, mountains ground to dust under forces too violent to name. Ash fell thick and endless, coating the scarred ground in gray mourning, while the air hung heavy with the lingering taste of scorched stone and flesh.
At the heart of the devastation knelt a lone figure, long ink-black hair matted with blood and ash spilling over a face carved deep by loss. His body was a testament to ruin—one arm severed, chest riddled with gaping holes where divine hands had torn out forbidden power, black dragon-scaled armor hanging in cracked fragments. Eight radiant weapons pinned him in place, their holy light mocking the darkness seeping from his wounds.
In his remaining arm he cradled a smaller, delicate form—a woman with long snow-white hair cascading like moonlight over bloodied, half-burned robes that clung to skin grown pale and cold. Her eyes stared empty at nothing, features serene in death as though she had slipped away gently amid the chaos he had wrought.
His trembling hand reached for her cheek, fingers brushing the fragile, chilled skin with infinite tenderness.
The moment lingered—then her body gave way, disintegrating in a soft rain of white sparks that drifted upward like ascending souls, vanishing into the ashen sky before they could fall.
He remained kneeling alone amid the wreckage, her blood still warm on his palms, cooling slowly in the desolate wind. Teeth clenched hard enough to creak, rage holding back tears that threatened to burn hotter than any divine flame.
Slowly, he rose from his knees, head bowed, expression darkened to something beyond grief—something forged in the void she had left behind.
His remaining hand stretched outward. Dark light glitched in the air, warping space with forbidden birth. From nothing came the scythe—long and curved, forged from the world's darkest secrets, blade black as the heart of oblivion, sharp enough to sever heavens themselves.
The world felt it first—a shiver through the ruined ground, as though the planet itself recoiled from what stirred within him.
Wrath erupted.
A dark aura exploded from his body, choking and profane, the perfect antithesis to divine light. It surged upward in violent torrent, pure Evil given form, slamming into the blood-red sky with force that tore reality open.
The heavens answered in terror.
Clouds twisted and turned in sudden frenzy, spiraling inward above him to form a vast, churning whirlpool that swallowed the gray ash and bled deeper crimson. Red lightning cracked across the vortex, jagged veins of scarlet fire that lit the ruin in strobes of hellish glow. Thunder roared in response, deep and primal, shaking the air like the planet's dying heartbeat.
The earth quaked beneath him, stone splitting and groaning as though the ground itself feared what rose. One half of the shattered horizon plunged into utter evil darkness—shadow so complete it devoured light and hope. The other half blazed with white ghostly holy radiance, unnatural and cold, as though the lingering divine presence fought back in vain.
Only then did he raise his head, crimson eyes bleeding fury into the storm he had birthed.
"I'll kill you," he growled, voice low and hoarse, "Every last one of you bastards."
The eight radiant figures hovered high above, their holy auras bending reality in worship, light pure and untouchable—Gods gazing down with the weight of eternal judgment.
And for the first time in their immortal existence, their divine radiance flickered in the presence of a mortal.