The battlefield was silent.Silent, yet not empty. Silent, yet heavier than the clash of titans that had shattered dimensions moments before. Leo's chest rose and fell in a rhythm that was not exhaustion, but contemplation—each breath weighed with the memory of that confrontation with the fake Yahweh, a deity who dressed cruelty as divinity and cloaked tyranny with sacred hymns. The illusion had been defeated, yes, but victory was a hollow word in this place where truth itself trembled.
The emerald glow of his eyes flickered faintly, reflecting no triumph but a question. A wound not of the body, but of the spirit. The kind of wound that bleeds silently, unseen, and never stops.
He stepped forward, his boots clicking against the fractured stone of the endless corridor. At the far end of the passage shimmered a portal—pulsing like the iris of a cosmic eye, staring, inviting, judging. Its surface rippled with light, not golden, not divine, but cold and fractured like a broken mirror. And there, standing before it, was a figure.
A girl.
She was still, framed in the eerie glow of the portal as though carved into the fabric of eternity itself. A cascade of pale silver hair draped over her shoulders, her presence fragile yet absolute, and her eyes—not blue, not brown, but crystalline like untouched ice—pierced him with a serenity that felt older than time. Her name whispered itself into the silence, as though the world spoke it before she even moved her lips:
"Selaphine."
The name lingered in the air, resonating like an echo from forgotten scriptures. She was no ordinary maiden, nor the caricature of purity from old religious art. No gilded wings or borrowed halos adorned her. She bore the scars of knowledge, the silent gravity of one who had seen too much. Her beauty was not one of perfection, but one of incomprehensible tragedy—like a fallen angel who had witnessed heaven burn.
Leo paused, his emerald eyes narrowing slightly. For a moment, neither spoke. The air between them was dense, filled with invisible screams that only those awake to the cruelty of existence could hear.
Then, without a word, Selaphine lowered her gaze. And the world around them shifted.
The silence shattered.
Screens—massive, towering monitors suspended above the broken cityscape—ignited in a flare of static. Their size dwarfed skyscrapers, their presence unavoidable, inescapable. On them played scenes of the Dark Ages, projected in grotesque detail. No distant history, no diluted textbooks—raw, unfiltered cruelty. Priests auctioning women under the guise of sacred marriage. Nobles baptizing themselves in blood-soaked ceremonies to sanctify power. Kings twisting scripture into contracts of slavery, mutilation, and conquest.
The images burned into the retinas of the people who filled the square. A sea of human faces—eyes hollow, jaws clenched, bodies trembling. Depression dripped from them like oil. Panic rattled through their veins like disease. They did not scream, but their silence screamed louder than any mob. Their stillness was not peace—it was despair too heavy for breath.
Leo stopped in his tracks. His emerald eyes caught the flicker of the monitors, each image clawing at his memory. The Middle Ages twisted into theatre, religion as a currency, faith mutilated into politics. Every detail sharpened in his mind: the priest's cold smile, the child's hollow stare, the noble's greedy hands clutching a chalice filled with lies.
A thought whispered in him, sharp as a blade:"Human is the Devil Himself."
He clenched his fist, but not in anger. In acknowledgment. For it was not some external Lucifer, no fallen angel lurking in the abyss, but humanity itself that perpetually carved cruelty into existence. Every atrocity was not imposed by demons, but manufactured by men wearing robes, crowns, or uniforms.
As Leo walked among the crowd, their despair pressed against him like a tide. People whispered fractured prayers under their breath, not from faith, but from fear. Fear that silence meant abandonment. Fear that without repeating borrowed hymns, the void would finally swallow them whole.
Selaphine's voice broke the air, low, melodic, yet laced with venomous truth:"Do you see them, Leonidas? They pray, yet they do not believe. They bow, yet they do not love. Their words are chains, not wings. They kneel before gods not because gods are real, but because gods are useful."
Her eyes, those crystalline abysses, turned toward the monitors."Religion was never the crime, Leo. The crime was how man twisted it into an empire. They sanctified greed with liturgies. They baptized war in holy water. They placed crowns on tyrants' heads and named them chosen."
Leo's steps slowed. His thoughts spiraled inward, deeper and darker. The battle with the false Yahweh was still burning in his mind—the deceit, the arrogance, the suffocating divinity. Yet here, among mortals, the deception was worse. It was not a single god masquerading as truth. It was an entire species.
He remembered the clash of blades, the rupture of dimensions, the illusion of omnipotence collapsing under his emerald gaze. Yet here he faced something he could not strike, could not pierce: the nature of man itself.
Without rules, men devoured each other. With rules, they weaponized them. With faith, they corrupted. Without faith, they despaired.There was no escape. No equilibrium.
The monitors changed again, faster now, cycling through centuries of desecration. Crusaders drenched in blood, inquisitors burning dissenters alive, temples turned into markets, prophets silenced with coins. Every frame an indictment, every scene a verdict.
Selaphine whispered, though her voice seemed to echo in the very marrow of his bones:"They will never stop, Leo. Strip them of law, they will create chaos. Give them law, they will twist it into chains. Offer them gods, they will weaponize worship. Deny them gods, they will invent idols. Humanity will always demand a cage—whether of gold or iron. And when they find none, they will build one for themselves."
Leo's eyes glowed faintly brighter, emerald flames in the suffocating dark. He kept walking, past the trembling crowd, past the glow of the monitors, deeper into the corridor of broken truth. His thoughts sharpened into a single, brutal realization:
Perhaps the false Yahweh had not been an aberration. Perhaps he had been the most honest god of all. For in his cruelty, he mirrored mankind itself—naked, unmasked, undisguised.
The real lie was not the monster.The real lie was the mask of benevolence.
As this realization carved itself into Leo's mind, Selaphine's steps fell in beside him. Together they approached the shimmering portal, its light pulsing like a wound in the universe.
The crowd did not follow. They only stared, hollow-eyed, clinging to their rosaries, their mantras, their chants—desperate to keep afloat in the endless sea of nothingness.
Leo placed his hand near the portal, emerald light pulsing from his palm. His voice was low, almost a whisper, almost to himself:"Maybe… God never existed. Maybe humanity was the only god it ever had. And if that's true—then hell was inevitable."
The portal responded with a violent shudder. The air quaked. The world trembled.
And somewhere, far beyond, something ancient stirred.