Ash fell like snow.
It drifted from a sky torn open by war—an abyssal rift bleeding golden ichor and black fire. Towers crumbled beneath the screams of dying saints. Winged corpses spiraled through smoke-choked air. And in the heart of it all, atop a hill of scorched stone and shattered banners, stood Zevrak Kain, his blade dripping with godblood.
The last bastion of the Celestial Concordance—the holy citadel of Vael Rhaz—burned beneath him.
"Zevrak!" a voice howled across the chaos, brittle and sharp like breaking glass.
He turned slowly, blood-streaked silver hair whipping behind him, dark armor cracked and steaming. His blackened gauntlet crushed the skull of a kneeling archbishop. Bones snapped like twigs.
Across the desecrated square, a dozen familiar faces stared back—his generals, his lovers, his sworn shield-brothers. The ones he had bled beside, killed for, raised to power. They stood now beneath the tattered banners of the gods, swords drawn not in loyalty, but judgment.
He already knew what this was. The betrayal had been growing like a tumor beneath their skin, fed by the whispers of divinity.
The tall one stepped forward first—Serana Virell, commander of the 13th Blades, her blue warcloak soaked with angelic blood. Her voice was calm, almost sorrowful.
"You've gone too far, Zevrak. You're not just killing gods. You're unmaking the cycle. The world itself trembles."
"I promised you," he said, voice low like thunder wrapped in silk, "that I would break their thrones."
"And now you'll fall on the blade you forged."
He smiled at her—beautiful, cruel, knowing. "So this is how it ends?"
"No," Serana said. "This is how you end."
She raised her blade. The others followed.
The gods chose that moment to intervene.
The sky ruptured. Light and flame speared from the heavens as seven divine avatars descended in pillars of judgment. Massive wings blocked the sun. Choirs of blinding purity roared psalms into the air, warping the minds of weak soldiers into frothing zealots. Cities far beyond this battlefield turned to salt and cinder just by witnessing their arrival.
But Zevrak… he welcomed them.
"I was hoping you'd come," he murmured, as the God of Order descended in golden chains, and the Saint of Mercy raised her weeping blade.
He raised his sword—Velkarth, the Godcleaver, forged from the bones of the first fallen angel.
And charged.
The world shattered.
The battlefield blurred into a massacre of apocalyptic proportions. Zevrak carved through thousands. His armor ignited with unholy radiance, a crimson aura fed by divine blood. He weaved through pillars of fire, split holy relics in two, and drove his blade into the throat of a false sun that had taken mortal form.
Each strike felt heavier. The gods were weakening—but so was he.
Above, the Black Sun pulsed once.
The ground cracked as Zevrak's power overloaded the leylines. Black veins spread across the earth like a curse. He buried a blade in the God of Order's heart and watched law itself unravel for twenty seconds.
And then—
The betrayal struck.
A sword pierced his back.
Serana's.
It slid between his ribs like a lover's whisper. His knees buckled. Not from pain, but the weight of prophecy.
He turned to face her. Her hand trembled on the hilt.
"Forgive me," she whispered.
"I already have," he said, and spat blood in her face.
The rest of them came. Blades. Spears. Magic. Divine chains. He let them. He collapsed not as a man defeated—but as one who chose this death.
The gods themselves approached, limping, broken, disfigured. They offered no words—only judgment. They had feared this moment for cycles. Zevrak was too powerful to imprison, too dangerous to corrupt.
So they chose oblivion.
A divine curse etched itself into his bones, burning his soul like fire through parchment. His name was erased. His victories rewritten. His blood scattered across realities, memory sealed in the vaults of the gods.
But Zevrak laughed.
Even impaled, dying, undone—he laughed.
"You idiots," he rasped. "You think this is the end?"
The plague fires around him began to twist. Ash danced in strange patterns. The leyline beneath the battlefield screamed. The Cycle Marks—those hidden brandings of divine rebirth—flickered on the skin of every traitor, every soldier, every god present.
All but him.
Because Zevrak had already broken the cycle.
He whispered the final words of his own forbidden spell—a reincarnation curse powered not by fate, but vengeance.
His soul burned as it tore free from his body, self-guided, unhindered by the divine.
"I'll return," he promised the crumbling world, to gods too weak to stop him. "And when I do…"
He looked directly at Serana, whose hand now trembled.
"…you'll kneel."
With one last grin, eyes blazing with unyielding defiance, Zevrak Kain—the Godbreaker—was consumed in black fire.
And as the world burned around him, and gods wept over the ashes of their shrines, his final words echoed through every plane of existence:
"Every death makes me stronger."
To be continued…