He thought killing the priest would make the fire go out.
It didn't.
It only fed it.
Now, when Ren closed his eyes, he didn't see the faces of the dead he failed to protect.
He saw the ones he didn't kill fast enough.
He built the kingdom in the ashes.
No, they built it. The broken ones. Survivors, monsters, hybrids, runts—anyone the "holy" world above had spat out. They came crawling to him with shattered wings, missing eyes, and poisoned faith.
They didn't need a hero.
They needed a monster on their side.
Ren never asked to be king.
But when the ash-choked crowd chanted his name—"Dread King Ren." "The Godless Flame." "Father of the Forgotten."—he let them crown him with a halo made from the melted relics of slaughtered saints.
He thought: If I wear their lies on my head, maybe I'll learn to see the truth beneath them.
He was wrong.
Three Years Later.
The throne room of Veil-Karash was carved from the ribcage of a fallen seraph.
Thirteen spears hovered around Ren's throne at all times—reminders of the thirteen warlords who once ruled the demonic realm before him.
He had silenced them all.
Some through diplomacy. Others through fire. Most... through slow, agonizing faith-dismantling death.
Today, his war priests dragged in a scholar.
Human.
Captured wandering the border with a stolen relic: an original page from the Book of the Flame, untouched by divine censorship.
The scholar—once a proud theologian of the Church—now reeked of piss, sweat, and unholy truth.
Ren leaned forward from the throne, eyes like dying stars.
"Speak."
The scholar trembled. "I—I sought only to learn the roots, Your Dreadness. The unredacted prophecy—it—it speaks not of salvation, but—"
"Speak plainly."
The man swallowed, eyes darting around the bone chamber. "The 'Hero' is not a savior. He is a weapon. A failsafe. A—sleeper curse, forged in mortal flesh to kill the King of the Hollow Flame."
Ren's voice dropped into a whisper that made the floor crack.
"Say that again."
The man closed his eyes. "The Hero is not born. He is chosen. And the mark of his destiny lies in the death of his blood."
Silence.
Ren stood. The throne trembled. The spears lowered, not by command, but by fear.
He walked down the bone steps.
One by one.
And stared the man in the face.
"…My blood?"
The scholar dared a nod. "Yes. The death of your kin—your only family—ushers in the Hero's awakening."
Ren blinked.
And behind his eyelids: a flicker of Kaito's face.
Laughing. Younger. Safe. Human.
The next moment, Ren was holding the man by the jaw.
Not his chin.
His entire jaw.
With a tug, he ripped it loose—flesh, bone, tongue—all came free with a sickening wet pop.
The man collapsed, gurgling through a neckful of blood.
Ren tossed the jaw like garbage and turned to the chamber.
"I want the rest of the Book. Every word. Every lie. Find them. Burn the forgeries. Leave only what bleeds."
They found six copies.
All fake.
All tampered.
But from each, Ren learned fragments of the original prophecy.
"The Final Flame shall be bound in horns."
"He who remembers fire shall be undone by forgetfulness."
"From the death of the brother, the sword shall awaken."
That line.
That line drove Ren mad.
He shut himself away in the Mirror Crypt, the most sacred chamber of Veil-Karash.
Inside were hundreds of mirrors—some magical, others cursed, all stolen from temples and palaces. They showed truths, lies, possibilities.
He stood naked before them.
His reflection flickered. Human one moment, horned the next. Soft eyes. Blood-red fury. One mirror showed him holding a child. Another showed him impaled by a sword of light. And one—just one—showed his brother.
Kaito.
Grown.
Clad in white armor.
Crying.
Plunging a glowing blade into Ren's chest.
Ren laughed.
Then screamed.
Then fell to his knees, clutching his face.
"No… not you… not you…"
When the war priests came to check on him, they found Ren curled in a fetal position, whispering his brother's name.
They assumed he had cracked.
He hadn't.
He had decided.
That night, Ren summoned the High Flamebound—the Church's former elite executioner, now his tortured prisoner.
He offered him freedom in exchange for one truth: where was the Hero?
The man spat in Ren's face.
So Ren flayed him alive, strip by strip, while whispering apologies in his ear.
"I'm sorry. I didn't want this. But if I must become your nightmare to protect him... I will."
By the end, all that remained was a head.
Still screaming.
Ren fed it to the throne.
Then came the dream.
A world of golden fields. A small cottage. A boy with messy hair training with a wooden sword. He laughed like bells. Moved like light.
Kaito.
Ren reached for him, sobbing.
But the boy turned.
And in his hand was a blade.
The same blade from the mirror.
The dream ended with a whisper on the wind:
"The Hero remembers nothing.
But the King remembers too much."