What are we but delusional priests kneeling before the corpse of a righteousness long dead?
We are men who raise our hands against a greater sin yet cannot keep the lesser evils from feeding in our own hearts. We speak of purity with blood in our mouths. We call the world mad, as though madness were not already breathing behind our eyes.
We are dust wearing the shape of men, crawling through a world that has forgotten how to be clean. We purge the sins of others and strike at the ugliness of the earth with words that enter one ear and leave through the other. Nothing changes. The filth remains. The insanity remains.
And worse, it remains in us.
The rot we rebuke in the world has already made a home in our souls. We are not righteous. We are only lonely men, trembling before the dark, mistaking our despair for holiness.
Then Val turned into a stark of dust.
No cry. No mercy. No miracle.
He came apart like a truth the world could not bear. One moment he stood there, and the next he was nothing but silence, as though existence itself had stripped him away.
Val had spoken a truth.
And he had died for it.
The Crow who had seen this knew he could not stay any longer.
Especially when the owner of this domain was dead.
This domain would collapse.
The space began to rupture violently; ripples began to emerge and burst like things that had been caged for too long.
Leon shook El aggressively, but El stood there watching everything unfold with the same indifferent expression.
No.
That indifferent expression had now loosened in its intensity; it became expressionless and desperate.
Val was gone.
And so had something in him.
"Wake up!" Leon barked.
The domain was collapsing in front of him.
And there was nothing he could do.
He could only wait for El to regain his sanity.
Wake up.
Amon, wake up.
"Wake up!"
El took a deep sigh.
"Eat it up," he commanded.
At once, The Silence devoured the domain whole.
…
The crow knelt and lowered his head in front a being throned in darkness.
Around him were many mouths, many eyes and many clocks rotating in the distance.
Tick.
Tock.
Silence ruled this place with no opposition.
Words were devoured before sound could collect them.
And the mind was destroyed before it could understand it.
"My Lord… I am sorry father. I…" The Crow could not finish sentence.
A being from behind twisted his neck immediately, ending his life.
…
In the star-strewn void, the Ancients gathered.
Their thrones, each of a different hue, were arranged in a silent circle, their backs turned toward the table at the centre, as though even they refused to face what lay upon it.
"He spoke too much," one voice broke the stillness.
"He was meant to warn them."
"Not reveal everything."
A murmur passed between them, low and restrained.
"We warned him."
The throne at the far end spoke at last.
Its voice did not rise, yet it settled over the assembly with absolute weight.
"It has already begun."
A pause followed, vast and suffocating.
"Prepare for the first outbreak of the corruptions."
…
Seven skeletons gathered around a Circle.
The circle was carved from dead flesh and from the blood of dead animals.
Three eyes overlapped at its centre, layered one within another, each seeing a different truth. Six wings were fused into a single sigil, three on the right were angelic, white and pure wings were on the right and the three wings on the left were infernal, dark and grim.
Dots, runes, scars, and markings crawled across its surface, symbols, words that could not be comprehended were etched to the ground. Three triangles interlocked, pointing inward and outward at once.
Around the circle lay blood; Dark red, thick and ancient, saturated with sacrifice. It pulsed faintly, as if remembering the lives it had consumed. The seven skeletons stood veiled, their forms obscured, their presence heavy, golden crosses adorned their necks. Each radiated a different aspect; seven colours, seven authorities, seven fragments of divinity.
Above them loomed structures like crosses, towering and silent. Upon each cross hung a skeleton, broken and offered, withered away with time and nailed by fate itself.
These were neither sacrifices nor victims in the usual sense; they were something older, more enigmatic, their purpose unresolved, left for another time.
A man cloaked in shadow emerged without warning.
A chained cross rested against his chest, cold and severe. From his hand hung the hands of many men, linked together like heavy chains. They did not resemble chains.
They were chains.
Severed, bound, and repurposed into something grotesque, something meant to restrain what should never be restrained.
With a single motion, he cast the man forward and drove him into the wall. Flesh struck stone with a dull, final weight.
The man was naked.
Dark hair fell past his shoulders, unkempt and lifeless. His pupils were deep and hollow, his frame tall yet diminished by the weight of what had been done to him. His face bore an unmistakable resemblance to Amon, only older, worn, and emptied of resistance.
The cloaked figure stood over him.
"First, it was your wife."
His voice was calm, stripped of heat, as though reciting something long decided.
"Second, your daughter."
A brief pause followed, heavy and deliberate.
"Now, it is you."
The air seemed to tighten.
"You will suffer for a thousand years. You have been cast out of the Order. The gods have turned their faces away from you."
Each word settled with quiet finality.
"You are condemned."
Silence closed in.
Then, without change in tone,
"Welcome to your new hell."
…
"We need a plan. The other Churches of God have begun to move against us."
The man in white robes spoke in a low whisper, a candle cupped in his hand. Its light climbed across his face, illuminating a smile that did not belong in the dark.
"Should we ask him for help?"
A brief silence followed, thin and tense.
"Yes."
…
"The Great Ragnarok has begun."