Crawling up from the cold stone, the seven sinner's stirred like corpses waking from burial. Blood pooled beneath each of them, thin and dark, spreading across the cracked floor. Most of them coughed their own life onto the ground—those who still had blood to spare.
Ramir, the [Sinner of Gluttony], didn't. He was an Enjindron, a machine. His ribs of polished alloy and lungs that hummed instead of heaved.
The violet-masked golem, [Sinner of Pride], didn't either; it wasn't even certain he breathed. Though the rocks of his form scraped against themselves as he rose.
The yellow-masked undead, [Sinner of Greed] tried, though his effort only painted the inside of his with rotten muck. Making him remove his mask and showing his rotted face just to scrape it out onto the floor before putting it back on.
I stood among them, unbowed. My body was whole before a heartbeat could pass. Immortal regeneration stitched bone and soul alike before the pain had time to settle thankfully.
We're done here, I thought to the raven sleeping in my chest. Let's leave.
Music to my ears, Thorn's dry voice replied within my mind, feathers rustling in satisfaction.
I raised a hand, the air distorting as threads of light and vacuum folded into a spinning halo. [Mach Void], my passage through severance of existence began to hum with amber-gold light. But before I could finish, a roar broke through the silence.
"Wrath!" The voice was coarse, heavy with authority that demanded obedience. I ignored it.
The amber pillar beneath my feet pulsed, resonating with the glyphs I'd etched into the ground. There was a distorting field over this place, Clarity's handiwork. It would take some reconfiguring to punch straight through to Earth.
"Wrath." The second call was smoother, slick with false politeness. Greed spoke, tone tight with formality. "Do show Pride some respect, will you? He'll turn on me and Sloth if you don't."
I sighed and turned my head to the violet masked golem. "What now?"
Pride's voice cracked like a whip from across the room. "You arrive unadorned. In improper attire. You disrespect Clarity with that mad gaze of yours. You were late to the summons and forced Lust to fetch you! Have you no shame?"
"Loquerisne puter deum?" I asked, grinning in the tongue of the outer gods.
"Do not mock me, homunculus," he spat but staying composed. "Even before your exile seven thousand years ago, your only offering to our masters was a single apple seed. One! Your insolence ends today."
"Your masters," I corrected quietly.
Behind him, one of the tower's arched halls gleamed with treasures. Offerings from Pride himself: useless gold, relics, and precious stones shaped into symbols of devotion.
My eyes caught a flicker of motion—Greed, slipping one rare relic into his sleeve while pretending to admire another.
I pretended not to notice. "Even if I did offer them something," I said, "they'd care about it as little as yours. I'm a volunteer, Pride, not a disciple."
"Yet you remain one of the Clarified Sinners~." Came a playful voice. Envy leaned from her perch high in an archway, a chalk coin spinning between her fingers. "Will you still pretend detachment when the day we've waited for—the day all past Clarified Sinners have waited for—is finally here?"
I gave her a sharp smile. "We all killed our predecessors to earn our titles. If I'd known mine came with sermons and bureaucracy, I might've let Satan live. You're all such a delight to spend eternity with."
The [Sinner of Sloth] in his light blue mask sluggishly nodded along. Agreeing he would have done the same with a heavy sigh and no words. Making Pride scowl at them.
Envy giggled and clapped. "How cool! How cool!"
"Not that I never admired your cause," I quickly added, returning to the forming spell, "but I don't live for goals that aren't mine."
The [Mach Void] construct vibrated, a luminous vortex expanding beneath my boots. I flexed my bandaged right hand—the tether binding me to this reality. Once I let go, the void would open.
"It must sting," I said, my gaze sliding back to Pride. "Seeing a hellspawn like me seated among your noble circle."
He inhaled sharply, the air crackling with suppressed fury. But before his voice could rise again, I released the tether.
The world ruptured. Light vanished. The white void swallowed everything around me.
For an instant, there was no direction, no movement, only the paradox of infinite motion and perfect stillness. Then the membrane of reality tore, and I stepped through the fracture back into existence.
My boots touched solid stone. A rooftop, high above a ruined city.
Thorn crawled out from between my shoulder blades, stretching his wings. "That guy really loves the sound of his own voice," he muttered. "Miracle the Clarified Sinners haven't strangled him yet."
"Pride's loyal," I said, brushing void matter from my coat. "He's the only one Clarity trusts without doubt. But he'll never forgive me for being both a sinner and a Kralscell."
"That sentient rock's just racist," Thorn grumbled. "Don't sugarcoat it." The ghostly raven hopped onto my arm, head tilting. "Anyway, think you can track down the Three Prodigals?"
"Maybe." I stepped to the rooftop ledge, wind whipping against my coat. "Even if I start off wrong, we'll know once we're close. Their souls are built from fragments of Clarity—they'll shine like cosmic beacons. Once we land on the right planet, they'll find us before we find them."
"Huh." Thorn preened his feathers. "Any chance one's hiding here on this dead dustball?"
I looked out.
The world stretched into ruin: a city of hollow towers and choking vines, where polluted ash mixed with dry blood in the stagnant air. Trees clawed through broken concrete, their roots drinking from stagnant pools. The wind smelled of rust, rot, and something older—like memory turned sour. A river slid sluggishly through the wreckage, curling past the corpse of a tower that had fallen into its own reflection.
The land was gutted. The air dead. The water a cemetery.
This was what remained when the Kralscells uprooted a world. This was all that remained of civilisation once known as Earth.
"Afraid not," I said quietly. "Even if Earth was once beautiful, they wouldn't reincarnate a fragment of their soul here. Too empty. Too far gone. I doubt they'd risk a Prodigal being born on a world ravaged by the Kralscell's either."
"London wasn't much of a paradise at its peak either," Thorn said. "At least the Japanese knew how to make a civilization last."
I chuckled. "You only say that because of their anime."
"And their food," he added.
"England had better beer."
"Debatable."
I leapt from the roof. Three stories down, my boots cracked the pavement beside a roundabout filled with cars stripped to skeletons. A sign still clung to a rusted post: University of East London.
Thorn fluttered down after me, landing on my shoulder. "The Scots and Irish were the better brewers," he said. "Hands down." He paused, then added, "So… any clue where to find young Silven? You're the one with his memories sloshing around that piss bowl you call a skull."
I smiled faintly, eyes scanning the horizon.
Smoke hung over the city like a mourning shroud. Somewhere beyond it, the ghosts of towers shimmered in the distance. For a moment, the wind caught a glint—metal, perhaps, or something divine pretending to be metal.
"Somewhere out there," I murmured, "the Prodigals are moving. They'll leave trails of fractured light in the aether, echoes of divinity that Clarity tore from themselves. We just have to follow the cracks."
Thorn's feathers rustled. "Then what?"
"Then," I said, tightening the bandages on my right hand, "we see what happens and what needs to be done. You know, improvise."
The wind shifted, carrying the smell of fire and old rain. I took one step forward, the void still whispering faintly at my back.
"Anyway, you have any idea where we're going to find a young Silven?" Thorn questioned. "You're the one with his memories inside that piss bowl you call a skull."
Walking onwards to an apartment complex nearby i looked around aimlessly. "Not really. Only thing Silven remembered about his home was that it was next to the river in London. His memories are too blurry to try and decipher the signs and other things he saw when he didn't even know how to read English either."
As i headed for a bridge across the river Thorn jumped from my shoulder and started flying above. "That sounds about right for a Brit if you ask me. His posh accent always did make the devotees in New Eden fawn over him."
Walking across the bridge i came up to the centre point of it as i wandered in the middle of its road. The shape and design was similar to Silven's memories, the university nearby is also familiar. Only problem is that Silven's family home is a mystery for me. The only time he saw the outside of it was once and that was when he was supposed to be married off to another family. Before he ran away that is.
With a [void step] I teleported to the high railing of the bridge and looked across the bridge seeing the many high rising apartment buildings that had either been torn in half or completely crumbled on the ground.
"This is definitely the right area." I mumbled while continuing to scan the area with my eyes. "Only question now is whether Silven is even born yet."
Speaking up Thorn offered his thoughts. "If you recall correctly, pisspot. Silven's grandpa was a survivor from the Kralscell's upending on Earth, wasn't he? Do some maths and figure it out."
"You know I'm not good with numbers."
"Yet you can become fluent in a new language in three years. Get hippity hoppity on with it."
With a defeated sigh i started running a few math equations in my head with what i knew. Silven's grandpa was only a kid when he survived the uprooting but lived to have kids at 43, Silven's parents then birthed him thirty years later. So maybe... "i think it's been seventy or seventy-five years for Earth since the uprooting, Thorn."
"So we early or late?" Thorn asked confused
"Well, Silven dies to reincarnate as Cayde before Laegii's
[skill: astral third eye — detection]
Aether directed me and i turned my neck to see a familiar face from Silven's memory running across the bridge behind us. "That's Silven's older brother... Golen" crouching down on the railing i hid my existence with a veil of void aether and watched. "We are right on time apparently."
Running by me completely unaware, Silven's older brother who looked to be in his late teens went past wearing a dark expression on his face as he jogged for exercise.
Thorn beckoned with his wing while i watched. "Let's follow him, pisspot."
Stalking behind the adolescent boy i followed him for maybe three miles along the debris filled roads of rocks and broken cars. Signs of monstrous feet and claw marks lined everything in sight regardless of where you looked. Unless you put effort into being blind it was impossible to not see the remnants of some type of monstrous creatures swarming through the streets.
After a while Golen arrived outside a large building that looked like a former library that had been renovated into a mansion. Several maids rushed out immediately to greet him and hurried the boy inside.
"Come young master! The ceremony will begin soon!"
"We must get you prepared before the departure!"
"We've been looking for you all morning!"
The doors to the mansion shut before i could sneak in behind the maids but a thought of realisation hit me as i looked around. White ribbons, the hurry the maids were in, and the pile of gifts surrounded by guards next to the entrance.
"Is today the day Silven was meant to get married?" I asked while standing atop the roof of a building on the other side of the street.
Landing atop my dark silver hair Thorn spoke. "I guess so. Thats a surprise."
[skill: astral third eye — scanning]
Twisting my neck around i looked for any sign of a silver knight i knew in the area but it seemed like he hadn't arrived yet. It's impossible for him to hide from my aether sense even if he is quite powerful for a human exalted but I'm still surprised he hasn't arrived sooner than me.
After i waited an hour outside, the libraries doors opened once more and a sophisticated man followed by a extravagant woman that were Silven's parents exited the building followed by their entourage. "Come everyone. We mustn't be late to the wedding."
Already waiting for them all was several carriages with horses. One after another the large family of uncles and aunts with their own children climbed into the carriages and they set off. Soon enough though there was just Silven's older brother and his parents waiting but he was nowhere to be seen.
"Tch! Golen, where is your brother?" Annoyed the woman made no effort to hide frustration.
"I-I'm sure he's just struggling to button up his shirt. I'll go check-"
"I'm here, madam Alfell."
A disappointed expression marked my face while i watched a boy that was only 11-years-old limp his left leg behind him out of the building. "So this is what you were like. Your different than you remember, Silven." While talking to myself i got an annoyed head roll from Thorn.
Fixing his blonde hair out of his grey eyes Silven forced a smile before getting slapped by his father. "Look what you've done! Angered your mother! We are late because of you, are you not sorry, boy?!"
Thorn scoffed with me. The reason Silven was late is because all the maids in this house that were supposed to help him didn't. It didn't help either that his younger cousin locked him in his room as well.
"I'm sorry sir Alfell, madam Alfell." The darkness in Silven's eyes that were a build up of neglect and abuse from his parents made me question something about the Silven i knew. "Its my mistake for making us late."
Sickened by Silven's lame display his parents walked onto the last carriage and ignored him.
The only person that did care about Silven, his brother, helped lift him up into the carriage before the driver whipped the horses into action taking them towards the river bank but in the opposite direction Golen came from.