The moon was red again.
It bled quietly over the Black Plateau, staining the jagged cliffs like a wound that refused to close. Smoke curled from the charred remains of a border fortress — what once stood as the Church's proud bastion now lay gutted, collapsed inward like a dying animal.
Ren stood at the edge of it all.
His boots cracked bone with every step. He wasn't hiding this time.
No. This massacre was deliberate.
A message.
The paladins hadn't been weak — no, some of them were Ascended, gifted by the gods, carrying blades of scripture and light. But what was divinity to him now? A thousand years of hate had stripped that word of meaning.
He had walked through their prayers like mist.
One commander had tried to recite a purification rite.
Ren had torn out his tongue mid-verse and nailed it to the chapel doors.
Another had begged — for life, for forgiveness, for salvation. His body now hung from the battlements, upside down, eyes wide, lips sewn shut with blessed thread. The birds hadn't touched him. Even the carrion things knew better.
Ren stepped into the desecrated chapel.
He could still hear the echoes of hymns — once a lullaby in his old life.
Now they burned his ears.
He reached the altar, and from its base dragged out the Arch-Inquisitor — the only one left breathing.
The man wheezed through cracked ribs and broken faith, his once-golden armor now rusted red.
"You… you're him," the inquisitor gasped. "You're… the Final Sin. The…—"
Crunch.
Ren stepped on his leg, twisting until the kneecap burst like fruit.
"No titles today," Ren said calmly. "Just confessions."
The inquisitor screamed.
Ren let him.
He placed his hand on the altar, and black veins slithered out like roots, infecting the holy structure. The stained glass above shattered, and the carved angels twisted into shrieking demons. Even the air recoiled from him.
"You were looking for the Hero," Ren whispered. "You were tracking him. Why?"
The inquisitor was choking now, weeping from pain and terror.
Ren leaned closer.
"You know what happens to liars."
The man nodded, trembling.
"Th-the prophecy," he sobbed. "He's… growing stronger… we're afraid… of what he might remember…"
Ren froze.
Just for a moment.
There it was again — that word: remember.
The thing the gods feared most.
The thing they were trying to suppress.
He looked down at the man.
"You'll be useful," Ren muttered.
With one slow motion, he carved a sigil into the inquisitor's forehead — not to kill him, but to bind him. The man's body spasmed violently, then fell limp. He would speak again — under better circumstances.
Ren left the chapel without another word.
Elsewhere...
Far across the continent, under blue skies and blooming wildflowers, Kaito laughed.
His sword was dull. His armor, imperfect. But he moved with a lightness — the kind Ren hadn't seen in a thousand years.
The Hero didn't know he was being watched.
Didn't feel the eyes from shadowed trees.
Didn't see the black wisp that disappeared every time he turned his head.
But Ren was always near.
Always watching.
Later That Night…
In the ruined chapel, Ren stood on a spire, alone, the inquisitor's twitching body chained below.
He looked toward the east — toward the capital, toward the light.
Where Kaito slept peacefully.
Ren clenched his fists.
"They want you to be their weapon.
But I remember the boy who cried when his bird died.
Who burned his fingers trying to save a kitten from the oven.
I remember everything.
So I'll kill every god who tries to make you forget."
The wind howled around him.
In the distance, something howled back — monstrous, ancient, afraid.
And the earth itself whispered:
The Demon King is moving.