The ascent from Hell was not a climb. The rift simply exhaled Delta back into the mortal plane, as though the underworld had grown weary of containing him. One moment the air tasted of sulfur and regret; the next, it carried the dry scent of dust and dying grain. The sky above was the color of old parchment, cracked with veins of pale light. No fanfare. No transition. Only the shift.
He emerged onto the edge of the Verdant Expanse—a once-lush valley now turned to famine. Fields that should have rippled with golden wheat stood brittle and brown, stalks bent like broken spines. Barns sagged under roofs of cracked thatch. Rivers had shrunk to muddy scars. The people of the valley had not starved yet, but the edge of hunger had sharpened their eyes and hollowed their cheeks.
Delta walked the central road—once a thoroughfare of carts and laughter, now a path of silence. His boots made no sound on the cracked earth. Shadows fled his passage. A stray dog lifted its head, then slunk away without bark. Birds did not sing.
In the distance rose the Temple of Plenty: a grand ziggurat of white stone veined with gold, crowned by a colossal statue of Voran. The god of harvest stood thirty feet tall in bronze and emerald, arms outstretched, palms cupped as though offering bounty. Wheat sheaves formed his crown; vines twined his limbs. His eyes—set with living jade—glowed faintly, watching over fields that no longer yielded.
The statue's gaze shifted as Delta approached.
Voran felt the anomaly before seeing him. A tremor ran through the divine weave—the subtle threads that bound growth to prayer, rain to ritual, plenty to obedience. One thread snapped. Then another. The god stirred within his idol.
Delta stopped at the temple steps. The blade hung at his side, chipped edge dull under the dying sun.
From the temple doors emerged the high priests—seven figures in robes of woven grain, faces gaunt, eyes desperate. They carried censers that smoked with the last of the sacred herbs. One, an elder woman named Lira, stepped forward.
"Stranger," she said, voice cracking like dry earth. "The fields die. Voran withholds. We have prayed. We have sacrificed. He does not answer."
Delta regarded her. Silence stretched.
Then he spoke, low and without inflection. "He hears. He chooses not to give."
The priests recoiled. Lira's hands trembled. "You... speak of the god as though he were a miser?"
"He is," Delta answered. "And misers hoard."
A murmur rippled through the priests. One younger man, face flushed with zeal, stepped forward. "Blasphemer! Voran is mercy. He tests us. Kneel and pray!"
Delta looked at him. "Prayer is irrelevant when the answer is refusal."
The words landed like stones in still water. The young priest staggered as though struck. His robes began to fray at the edges, threads unraveling without cause.
Lira lifted a hand. "Enough. If you are not here to pray, leave. The god—"
The statue moved.
Bronze groaned. Emerald eyes flared bright.
The colossal form of Voran stepped down from the pedestal, ground shaking with each footfall. Vines sprouted from the stone, whipping through the air. Wheat sheaves ignited into golden flame that did not consume. The air filled with the scent of ripening grain and burning harvest.
Voran towered over the temple square. His voice boomed—not thunder, but the low rumble of earth giving birth.
"Anomaly. You walk where no mortal may. You carry a blade that should not be. Leave this valley, or be reaped."
Delta lifted his head. Hood shadowed his face, but the priests felt the weight of unseen eyes.
"I do not leave," he said. "I answer."
Voran laughed—a sound like wind through dry stalks. "Answer? You are no savior. No chosen. You are error. Mistake. I will erase you."
The god raised one massive hand. The ground erupted.
Wheat burst upward in tidal waves—golden stalks thick as trees, tipped with razor barbs. They surged toward Delta, aiming to entangle, pierce, bury.
The fight began in earnest.
Delta did not run. He walked forward into the storm of grain.
The blade rose in slow, precise arcs. Each swing severed stalks cleanly—steel passing through divine matter as though it were straw. Golden fragments exploded outward, but they did not fall; they hung in the air, then withered to ash. The waves collapsed around him, crumbling to dust that blew away on a wind that had not existed moments before.
Voran roared. Vines lashed down—thick, green tendrils armored with thorns. They wrapped Delta's limbs, squeezing with the force of centuries-old roots.
Delta stood still. The vines tightened, then blackened. Thorns dulled. Leaves curled inward. The tendrils rotted from the point of contact, decay racing upward like fire through paper. They fell away in blackened husks.
"You cannot unmake my growth!" Voran bellowed.
"I do not unmake," Delta replied. "I end."
He advanced up the temple steps.
Voran descended fully now, striding across the square. Each footfall cracked stone, sent fissures racing outward. The god swung a massive sickle—forged of living emerald, edge shimmering with harvest light.
The sickle descended in a crescent arc that could fell mountains.
Delta met it.
Blade clashed against blade. No spark. No clang. Only a low, resonant groan—like reality itself protesting. The emerald edge chipped. A hairline fracture appeared. Voran recoiled, surprise flickering in jade eyes.
The god pressed the attack. Sickle swept low, then high, then in brutal overhead strikes. Delta parried each one—measured, unhurried. Every block sent tremors through Voran's form. Cracks spread across the bronze skin. Golden wheat crown began to wilt.
Priests and villagers had gathered at the square's edge. They watched in horror and awe. Lira clutched her robes. "He fights a god..."
The young priest whispered, "He fights without rage."
Voran grew desperate. He summoned the valley itself.
The earth heaved. Fields rose in columns—earth and root and grain fused into towering guardians. Dozens. Hundreds. They lumbered forward, fists of packed soil, eyes of glowing harvest light.
Delta moved through them.
The blade danced—not fast, but inevitable. Each guardian met steel and fell apart: soil crumbling, roots withering, grain burning to ash. One column tried to engulf him; he stepped through its core, blade piercing upward. The construct collapsed inward, burying itself.
Voran charged.
The god's sickle came down in a final, cataclysmic blow—divine power concentrated, the air screaming as it parted.
Delta sidestepped. Not evasion. Guidance.
He drove the blade upward, point entering beneath Voran's ribcage—where divine essence gathered thickest.
The strike was clean. Deep.
Voran froze. A low groan escaped him—the sound of a thousand harvests failing at once.
Darkness spread from the wound—not blood, but absence. Golden light guttered. Wheat crown fell in blackened sheaves. Vines shriveled. The bronze form cracked, fissures racing across limbs and chest.
The god dropped to one knee. The valley trembled.
"What... are you?" Voran rasped, voice reduced to wind through empty fields.
Delta withdrew the blade. A fresh chip glowed briefly on the edge, then faded. The weight in his arm increased—imperceptible to others, but there.
"The answer to your refusal," he said.
Voran stared up. Jade eyes dimmed. "Then... end it."
Delta considered. "No."
He turned away.
The god remained kneeling, essence leaking slowly. The statue form began to crumble—bronze flaking, vines turning to dust, the temple itself groaning as supports failed.
The valley changed.
Rain fell—not storm, but steady, indifferent. The ground drank it greedily. Brittle stalks softened. Green pushed through brown. Life returned—not as blessing, but necessity.
The priests and villagers stared. Lira fell to her knees. Tears mixed with rain.
"He... answered," she whispered. "When Voran would not."
The young priest, robes half-unraveled, lifted his head. In a voice that trembled but grew stronger, he began to speak.
"Not savior. Not destroyer. The one who walks when gods turn away."
Others joined. Words formed. A hymn—halting at first, then steady.
"The blade that cuts without hate,
The silence louder than prayer,
He comes unbidden, leaves unchanged,
And the harvest returns without thanks."
Delta walked past them. No acknowledgment. No pause.
The hymn followed him into the dust.
Behind, the temple collapsed slowly. Voran's broken form lay amid ruins, a monument to refusal.
In distant cathedrals, angels felt the tear—another sigil snapped. In Hell's deeper pits, demons whispered of the one who humbled a god without claiming his power.
The myth hardened.
Delta continued eastward. The blade heavier still. The horizon waited.
Here are visions of Voran in his prime and fall—the towering harvest deity, fields alive then dying, the clash of chipped blade against divine sickle:
And the aftermath—the barren-turned-green valley, the kneeling broken god, the hooded figure walking into dust:
The witness moment—mortals in awe and fear, the first true hymn forming