The corpse hadn't cooled.
Steam hissed from ruptured sinew. The ground beneath Wrath's ruin was cratered and blackened, soaked in the stench of rot and burned marrow. Koda lay at its base, unmoving. His breath shallow. Armor split. Hands slack.
And from the smoke, boots crunched forward.
Cardinal Veylan's party moved with precision—gleaming, unscathed, their blades unsheathed but unstained. Their leader walked ahead, wrapped in immaculate robes as if untouched by the chaos around him. He did not look to Koda. He looked only at the carcass.
"Three fragments," Veylan murmured, voice too smooth for the battlefield. "Beautiful."
His companions fell on the titan's remains like well-trained vultures. With careful motion, they extracted the glimmering core fragments—each one still pulsing faintly with sin. One by one, they were lifted from the wreckage: one from beneath Sloth's ruined skull, one from the ribcage, one embedded deep within the fused spine.
Then they turned.
Toward Koda.
Toward the broken ground where he knelt, trying to rise.
Steel rang out.
Before the false heroes could approach, six figures stepped forward from the cliff's edge—burning with resolve. Maia at the front, Thessa's flames still dancing across her fists. Wren's sigils curled defensively around the group. Junen raised one trembling hand, a recovery field flickering to life behind them. Terron's hammer cracked stone as he stepped protectively before Koda. Deker, a look of chaotic silence, readied a bomb with the cold focus of a man prepared to kill.
Not a word was exchanged. The line was drawn.
Veylan raised a hand, motioning his party to stop. He smiled. No apology. No explanation. Just a grin.
"Such passion," he said. "But this battle is already won."
He turned, unfazed, and strode back toward the broken city. The others followed, carrying the shards like stolen crowns.
The gates opened before them. Trumpets blared.
Already, banners were unfurled. Already, their victory was being proclaimed.
From behind the safety of stone, people began to cheer—hollow, confused applause, fed by lies. Veylan mounted the plaza's steps, shards in hand, basking in the adoration.
Boastful laughter echoed through the broken streets.
Veylan stood above the forming crowds on the temple's highest tier, robes torn by the wind, stained with smoke and ichor. His hands were raised not in prayer, but in proclamation. The crowd below waited—not in reverence, but in uncertainty. Something was wrong. It buzzed beneath the skin like a sickness not yet named.
He smiled.
"Rejoice."
The voice struck like a bell rung too close. Sharp. Too clear. Every listener blinked, momentarily dazed.
"The monster is slain," Veylan declared, arms wide. "The sin purged. The wrath broken beneath the righteous hand of the true god's chosen!"
A roar of applause rose—but it was nervous, unsure. His party stood nearby, not smiling. Some looked away.
"And who?" Veylan continued, pacing the edge of the platform like a man aflame and unaware. "Who among you raised sword or soul to stop it? Who cast down the horror that split the sky?"
He jabbed a finger toward the horizon, where Wrath's corpse still steamed. "WE did. I did."
He turned back, eyes fever-bright. "And where were the rest? Where were the so-called holy orders? Where were the priests of the Librarian, with their dusty truths? Where was the Shield, with her knights of rust? The Forger's smiths, cowering behind their gates? The Mother's children, weeping for signs?"
He spat.
"Absent. ALL of them. Faithless. Weak. Clinging to relics of an order long dead."
Then, quieter: "And Koda…?"
He let the name hang like rot in the air.
"Koda fell before he even reached us. Collapsed under the weight of his own failure. The world called for a savior—and he brought a sword." A chuckle, low and bitter. "No doctrine. No sanctuary. Just blood."
Silence fell again, broken only by the wind.
"I am no priest," Veylan said, raising both hands now, palms outward. "No keeper of scrolls. I speak not for five gods who abandoned their posts. I speak for the only one who answered."
He lifted his chin.
"I speak for the TRUE GOD."
Something shifted in the air.
Not wind. Not power. Just wrongness.
"The God who made no empty promises. The one who does not demand worship, only strength. The one who does not ask for sacrifice—He is sacrifice. Rage made divine. Flesh given purpose."
He paused—then laughed, a single barking sound that sent a ripple through the crowd.
"You think me mad?" he said, voice suddenly soft, coaxing. "You think I speak heresy?"
He opened his arms again—and smiled.
Far too wide.
A grin not made for a man's face.
"I am not servant to the true god," he whispered, reverent and cracked all at once. "I am His descent!"
And with that, before the horror could bloom in full—
The city watched as he lifted the first shard to the light, letting its crimson glow stain his skin. Then the second. Then the third.
And still smiling, a grin too wide and with too many teeth–practically splitting his face, he opened his mouth. And swallowed them.
One by one.
He swallowed the shards.
All three.
Not hidden. Not subtle.
One after another, he placed them between his teeth, and bit down.
Cracks ran through his skin like lightning. His robes tore as his back arched, bones shifting beneath flesh. A low sound—half laugh, half reverberation—rumbled from his chest.
And as the crowd backed away in instinctive terror, as even his own party stepped from him with horror dawning in their eyes—Veylan lifted his arms, body trembling.
The sermon was not over.
Veylan stood amidst the storm of his own making, arms outstretched like a crucified prophet, trembling with power he could no longer contain—or perhaps never wanted to. His voice was no longer his own. It rang with a resonance that bypassed ears and struck straight into the mind, vibrating through marrow and memory alike.
"You feel it, don't you?" he whispered, and the words were not carried by sound, but by something colder. "In your spine. In your teeth. That tremble that no priest ever taught you to name."
The crowd flinched. They could not look away. Something in their bones obeyed him.
"The weakness of the Five has brought this world to ruin!" he bellowed, and his voice shattered like a chorus layered over itself. "They preach peace while the stars bleed sin! They preach unity—while hiding in their broken temples!"
Another wave of something unseen washed through the crowd. A mother collapsed to her knees, eyes wide and vacant. A merchant screamed, then clasped his hands to his mouth in shame. One of the city guards began to tremble violently, dropping his spear with a clatter.
Veylan grinned wider.
"You need not fear me," he said gently, tilting his head like a kind father. "You fear only what you already know. That this world is a lie. That its order was built to control you. That your gods were never gods… only jailors."
He took a step forward, and the stones beneath his feet darkened. His skin had begun to shimmer, metallic at the edges. Veins of red-gold flickered beneath the surface like magma beneath cracked earth. His shadow now warped behind him—not longer his shape, but that of something vast, crowned, and burning.
"I bring you truth."
His voice cracked—then deepened, an octave too low for a human throat.
"Not the brittle comfort of scripture. Not the illusions of balance or mercy. I bring you the True God's revelation: that divinity is earned."
He extended a hand toward the crowd, and hundreds watched, paralyzed.
"Do you not see? You are not small because you were made that way. You were made small to be ruled. But no longer. No longer!"
People began to weep openly. Some fell to their knees—not in devotion, but in collapse. Others turned to run, but the plaza gates remained closed, locked at Veylan's first word. Trapped. All of them trapped.
A soldier vomited in his helmet. A cleric began screaming prayers, then stopped when her tongue froze in her mouth.
"There will be no more old gods!" Veylan shrieked suddenly, voice booming like a collapsing tower. "There will be no more weakness in flesh or spirit!"
He clawed at his own chest—and the flesh peeled, willingly. Beneath it: not bone, but shimmering, shifting gold-veined sinew. His ribcage pulsed outward. His heart beat in triple time. Something ancient and wrong began to crawl from within his spine.
"I am not the chosen of the True God," he whispered now, voice soft as silk and razor-thin.
His followers, still standing at the base of the steps, backed away in horror. One, the youngest, made the mistake of stepping forward.
"Cardinal?" she whispered.
He looked down at her. Smiled. Then opened his mouth—and for a moment, all sound ceased. In the silence, she dropped to her knees, nose bleeding, eyes rolling back into her skull.
She did not rise.
A dozen others now turned and fled—but it was too late. The air itself had thickened, pressing down like a weighted prayer. The very stones of the plaza seemed to bow beneath Veylan's growing presence. His shadow stretched across the walls like a god's hand grasping at the city.
"I am the True God," he said.
Dripping with self righteousness.
And the people believed him. Not because they wanted to—but because they couldn't not. His presence stripped away resistance like skin from fruit. Every step he took was an invasion. Every word, a chain. His charisma, once polished, was now unbearable—a mandate, not a gift.
Behind him, the temple itself began to warp. Columns bowed inward. Stained glass cracked and reshaped into his likeness. The steeple twisted into a crown. The sky darkened—but not with storm. With submission.
He raised one arm, and the crowd collapsed as one.
Not in worship.
In surrender.
Their will was not broken. It had been overwritten.
Only Koda's party, far behind on the hill, could still feel the world as it once was. And even they were not untouched—each of them staggered as a pulse of Pride rolled outward like a tidal wave. Maia gritted her teeth, resisting the dread that clawed at her throat. Wren clutched her staff, shielding them from the worst of it. Junen nearly collapsed before Terron caught him. Deker lit another bomb, not knowing where to throw it.
And at the city's heart, Veylan—no, Pride—spread his arms once more.
"Let the old gods watch," he said.
"Let them see what real divinity looks like."
He turned his gaze upward.
And the sky itself blinked.
They ran until the city was only a shape against the sky.
Through ash-thick woods and cracked foothills, they pushed forward—half-carrying Koda, half-dragging their own broken bodies—until their muscles screamed and their vision blurred. Wren found the entrance first, a collapsed mining shaft choked with bramble and soot. It was old, abandoned decades ago when the silver veins dried up. No markers, no light, no patrols. Just a hole carved into the bones of the earth.
They ducked inside and vanished.
Darkness swallowed them.
It was a full day's journey, but none of them kept time. Their thoughts were fixed behind them, on the broken city and the thing now rising within it.
Veylan.
Pride.
The Primal God.
Within the shaft's crumbling mouth, they settled among splintered beams and rusted track. The air was damp and mineral-rich. Safe, for the moment. Maia laid Koda down on a bed of torn cloaks, her hands already glowing, breath tight with focus. She didn't speak—just pressed her palms to his chest and let the healing flow, her power pulsing with flickers of gold and green.
He didn't stir.
Junen knelt beside her, sweat pooling on her brow as she channeled what remained of her strength into regeneration fields. Her fingers trembled. Her voice cracked with every incantation. But she worked. They all did. Because the alternative was unthinkable.
Thessa paced near the mouth of the tunnel, twin trails of smoke curling from her shoulders. Her flames had dimmed, but her fury hadn't. Terron stood opposite her, hammer braced across his back, eyes fixed on the narrow slit of daylight beyond the entrance. Deker sat against a wall, tinkering with a few vials.
Wren stood still.
Watching the shadows like they might move.
No one spoke of the city. No one dared. But they all felt it. That something terrible was blooming behind them—like blood in water, like a scream caught in time.
Pride wasn't just a Fragment now.
He was a vessel.
And the god that moved through him… was waking.
A fusion of Wrath's endless rage, Sloth's inescapable weight, and Lust's devouring desire. They had seen it in Wrath's corpse—that impossible fusion, stitched together by sin and sustained by spite. But that was only the shell. This… this was the soul. It had found its mouthpiece. And it would not stop.
Maia leaned closer over Koda, sweat dripping from her jaw. Her voice was hoarse. "He's still in there. I can feel him."
Junen nodded weakly. "His vitals are stabilizing. Whatever that thing did to him… it didn't take him completely."
"He was too close," Wren murmured from the shadows. "We all felt it. But he—he took the full weight. He met the mind of Wrath and answered."
Terron grunted. "And it nearly killed him."
"But it didn't," Maia snapped. Her eyes burned now—not with magic, but resolve. "He survived the worst of them. And he'll rise again. He has to."
Thessa's voice came low and tight. "It won't matter if we wait too long."
Deker stopped tinkering. "He's not done transforming."
They all looked up.
Deker spoke flatly. "Veylan. Pride. That wasn't the end. That was the beginning. His body's changing, sure—but something deeper is unfolding. His words weren't just for the crowd. They were a ritual. And it's still happening."
"You think he's calling it here?" Junen whispered.
Deker's expression never changed. "I think he is it."
Silence pressed down again. The shaft walls seemed to groan under it.
Koda's breath hitched.
Maia's hands flared brighter. "Come on. Come back."
Above them, the world turned. And behind them, the True God began to wake.
They didn't know how long they had. Day, perhaps. A week. Maybe less. But they knew what was coming.
Another war.
Not against a man. Not even against a monster.
Against a god built from the very traits humanity was meant to deny—pride, wrath, sloth, lust. No sermons, no salvation.
Just domination.
They had to move. But Koda was still unconscious. And they needed him. Not just because he fought like fire, or because he bore more wounds than any man should have survived—but because he resisted.
He had stood at the edge of annihilation and had not given in.
They needed that.
They needed him.
So they waited, restless.
They sharpened their blades. Bound their wounds. Prepared the few sigils and bombs and spells they had left. Not because they believed it would be enough—but because they had nothing else.
And beneath the mountain, the shaft exhaled dust.
Soon, they would move again.
Before the god was whole.
Before Pride became something final.
Before there was nothing left to save.