Night fell, but no stars shone.
Only the wound in the sky remained—pulsing, watching.
The temple loomed like a broken crown, its spires now jagged teeth. inside, laughter spilled like wine, thick with cruelty.
The High Priest raised his goblet above the chained villagers forcing them kneel before the altar. His golden robe shimmered with a solemn blood.
"In the name of the gods," He declared "we cleansed the impure."
But the gods are no longer listening.
And something else had.
The door burst open inward, not with force, but with absence. Wood rotten in an instant, stone cracked like dry bone, and cold flooded the sacred hall.
Zelf'th entered, his eyes glowing like twin dying stars, the Void trailing behind him in a silent scream. The room bent around him, the light recoiled, and the shadow clung to him like worshipers.
He did not speak.
He did not unleash.
The first scream came out from a guard, his flesh peeled in backward as if reality itself refused to hold him. His bones twisted in spirals, His blood boiled and sang in unholy tongues.
Another reached for a blade, only for his arms to rot mid-air and bloom into black petals that wept ichor. The priest turned, lips trembling, crown slipping from his head.
"W-what are you!"
Zelf'th raised his hand, and time broke.
The Priest was torn from this moment, dragged out of the stream of now. He screamed as his body was pulled into the Void, again and again, ripped apart and rebuilt.
His flesh melted. Reformed. And melted again. A loop of pain. a prayer of suffering.
"You begged the gods for power," Zelf'th whispered, His voice like razors and glass "Now beg for mercy."
The Priest did.
He clawed at his own face, eyes bleeding, tongue torn, howling to the heavens that did not answer.
Zelf'th walked through the halls, where the slaves were shackled, beaten and starved. The whip-wielders tried to flee, the floor swallowed them, screaming to the Void, their lungs burst in the vacuum before silence claimed them.
To the chained, he spoke not as a god, but a fury made flesh.
"You were broken in the name of false Divinity. But I came with no gospel. No salvation, only with justice."
One woman rose up, her back raw with lash mark.
Another, her hand with missing fingers.
A boy, barely old enough to speak, still covered in dried blood and lashes.
They stood, not because they were told to, but because something inside them recognized him.
Not a man.
Not a God.
Something in between.
"Will you follow?" Zelf'th asked, shadow swirling around his feet like faithful hounds.
They did not bow.
They clenched their fists.
They stepped forward.
Not in worship.
But in rage.
Fel arrived, walking through the ruin, through blood and bones, through horrors made holy.
He said nothing.
He stood beside Zelf'th.
Together, they watched the temple burn. Not with fire.
But with Void.
Black flame that gave no light
screams echoed into eternity, the Priest soul shattering again and again, stitched back together only to scream again.
A punishment no god will give.
A punishment only justicecould.
Zelf'th turned to the broken icons once more.
They wept dust.
And one by one, he crushed them beneath his heels.
Let the heavens see.
Let them remember.
The Heretic walks.
and behind him walks the broken, the dammed, the silenced.
Now reborn.
Now armed.
Now his.
The void does not forget.
And neither does he.