The sun rose blood-orange over the treeline.
Ashen didn't sleep. The ache in his ribs from the Anathema backlash was manageable, but the real pain was buried deeper—the memory of that future.
His body in a crater. His name erased. Kaleid smiling.
He let the pain sit in his chest. Let it smolder like a coal not yet hot enough to burn.
Lira stirred first. She emerged from the tent they'd hastily pitched, her armor now stripped to the bare essentials: breastplate, gloves, and a blade she'd reforged herself. Her hair was braided tight, and her eyes carried the same unflinching steel they had yesterday—though now there was something else in them. A sliver of trust.
"Your wound?" she asked, crouching beside him.
Ashen nodded slowly. "Sealed. The backlash was light this time."
She looked unconvinced. "You coughed up blood last night."
"I've done worse for less."
"Not sure if that's noble or suicidal."
Ashen gave her a faint smile. "Little of both."
From the other side of the camp, Riven emerged, draped in a travel cloak. Her fingers were stained with soul-ink from her ritual casting, and the rings beneath her eyes had deepened.
"I confirmed it," she said without greeting. "The altar site's energy signature is already destabilizing. The System can't rewrite it. That Fragment is dead."
Ashen's hand curled loosely around the hilt of his sword.
"Then we move."
They reached the outskirts of Auris, the shining capital of the Empire, by noon. What had once been a symbol of divinity and light to Ashen now made his stomach churn.
The ivory towers. The golden spires of the Hero Church, gleaming like a crown atop the cliffside sanctuary. Streets paved in etched mana-sigils. Every second step echoed like scripture on stone.
This place had once made him proud.
Now, he saw it for what it was: a theater.
At the gates, the guards in white enamel plate barely glanced at Lira or Riven. But their eyes lingered a little too long on Ashen.
He'd changed his name in this timeline—Cayle Varrin on paper—but something about him still felt... unplaceable.
Too calm. Too quiet. Too heavy.
"Name?" the captain asked.
"Cayle. Varrin. Traveling healer, with escort."
The captain scowled. "Papers?"
Ashen handed him the forged document.
Lira casually tightened her grip on her scabbard, just in case.
After a long moment, the man handed them back.
"Move along. Hero's procession is beginning soon. Try not to cause trouble."
Ashen didn't react.
But inside, something coiled.
Procession.
That meant Kaleid.
The Hero's Plaza was packed with citizens. Tens of thousands filled the tiered viewing levels surrounding the cathedral steps.
Holy banners snapped in the wind. The seal of the Church—a sword embedded in a sun—loomed fifty feet high on a golden backdrop.
And at the center, Kaleid stood, cloaked in immaculate silver robes. Hair golden. Eyes radiant. The very image of a hero, if one had never seen war.
Ashen stared from the crowd, hood up, every muscle still.
"…Today, the Empire stands tall," Kaleid boomed, voice amplified by blessed runes. "Because the gods have granted us a second age of light!"
Cheers erupted like thunder.
Ashen felt bile rise in his throat.
"Darkness stirs," Kaleid continued, "but the System watches. The System protects. And with it, we rise above all corruption!"
Riven, standing beside Ashen, muttered, "You'd think he actually believed that crap."
Ashen's eyes didn't move from the stage.
"He does," he said. "That's what makes him dangerous."
After the speech, the crowd thinned into waves—some flooding into cathedrals, others toward the merchant districts, and a few trickling to the taverns near the scholar quarter.
Ashen led them toward the Undercathedra, a sealed sub-level beneath the holy structure. Officially off-limits. Unofficially, it was a graveyard for outcast relics, failed blessings, and cursed prophecies.
They'd need answers the surface world couldn't offer.
As they descended through hidden back-alleys, Lira kept watch. "You know sneaking under the Church right after a procession is suicidal, right?"
"Only if we're caught," Ashen said.
Riven smiled dryly. "How comforting."
They reached the sealed passage: an iron slab etched with anti-demonic wards. Most adventurers would be repelled immediately by the divine resistance.
But Ashen?
The Anathema carved the sigils into his mind like a reverse map. The weakness wasn't in the seal.
It was in the name of the god that blessed it.
Ashen whispered a phrase in an old tongue—one long scrubbed from Church archives.
The wards hissed. Faded. The door opened.
The Undercathedra smelled of wet stone and forgotten dust. Hallways spiraled downward in uneven angles. The walls were embedded with scripture carvings—half-erased, half-rewritten.
They passed a row of empty blessing altars. Statues of former Saints lined the hallway—most broken, defaced, or missing their faces entirely.
"This is where they put the 'failed miracles,' right?" Riven asked, brushing dust from a statue's base.
Ashen nodded. "Every divine vision that didn't fit the narrative. Every prophecy that didn't align with the Hero's path."
Lira grimaced. "So what are we looking for?"
"A record," Ashen said. "One that proves the System knew about the Fragments—and buried it."
They reached the final chamber—a vault sealed not with metal, but with memory magic.
Riven stepped forward. "This'll take time."
Ashen nodded, keeping watch.
Minutes passed. Then—
A pulse.
Not from the vault.
From behind them.
Three figures stepped into the chamber—white-robed, armored lightly in gold-threaded cloth.
Paladins.
Their leader's eyes flickered with divine light. His gauntlet glowed with system runes.
"You've entered forbidden ground," the man said calmly. "And by order of the Church, you are under arrest."
Ashen's mind raced.
These weren't random patrols.
They knew.
The System had marked them.
Riven finished the last sigil. The vault cracked open.
Ashen turned. "Riven. Lira. Go."
"But—" Lira protested.
"Now!"
The Paladins surged forward.
Ashen stepped into their path.
The chamber erupted in violence.
The lead Paladin conjured a blade of burning scripture. Ashen met it with cold steel—his blade not blessed, not named, not divine.
But it was his.
Clang. Slash. Step.
Ashen moved like water around stone. Every blow cost him. Every breath drew fire into his ribs.
But the Paladin couldn't understand why his attacks weren't working.
Because Ashen had fought him before—in another timeline. Knew every feint. Every step.
He remembered dying to this man.
He refused to repeat it.
Anathema Activation: Memory Sync
Cost: Nerve Degeneration – Temporary
His limbs burned, but his body moved.
Steel met scripture.
Ashen buried his blade in the Paladin's chest.
The man gasped—staring in horror as his blessing shattered.
Ashen stood alone when the others returned.
Riven's hands trembled, clutching a scroll covered in blood-red ink.
"The System did know," she whispered. "The Fragments… the rewinds… even the other regressors. It's all here."
Lira stared at the fallen Paladins. "They'll know. The Church won't let this go."
Ashen picked up the golden pendant from the dead man's chest.
It bore the mark of the Exalted Flame, the highest order of Paladins.
"They already don't forgive," he said. "Now they won't forget."
That night, they stayed at a low-tier tavern near the eastern slums, far from the gaze of the Church. Ashen wrapped his wounds in silence while Riven reviewed the scroll again.
"They called you something in this," she said slowly.
Ashen looked up.
"They call you the Unmarked Sin."
Lira's eyes narrowed. "Because he has no blessing?"
"Because the System can't define him," Riven said. "He breaks patterns. Refuses destiny. That makes him a threat."
Ashen tightened the wrap on his arm.
"They're right."
The chapter closes as Ashen steps outside onto the quiet street, the stars overhead faint behind the Cathedral's looming silhouette.
He looks up, whispering the words of a dead priest he once met:
"The gods do not forgive. They forget."
Ashen draws his cloak tighter and walks into the night.
Not to escape.
But to prepare.
Because the Church of Light never forgives.
But neither does he.