(POV: Thomas Veyne)
"When the bells stopped ringing, I thought it meant we'd won.
I didn't know it meant the gods had turned their faces away."
The rain came down like ash.
Thomas stood among the ruins of the outer ward, the black-iron sigil of the Guild still gleaming faintly on his shoulder. Steam rose from the cracks where the alchemic fire had burned through stone. Somewhere beneath the smoke, someone was still calling for help—but the voice was too far away, or maybe too human to matter anymore.
He told himself they were saving the city. That was the promise. That was what the Guild of Twelve had always said.
The bells had rung all morning—twelve clear notes to mark the hour of triumph. But now the air was thick and heavy, and only the echo remained. Each toll still reverberated inside his ribs, a hollow weight he couldn't shake loose.
"Thomas."
A voice behind him—soft, certain. Commander Rheis. Cloak still spotless. Eyes calm as glass.
"You've done well. The heretics are broken. The guild will remember your courage."
Thomas wanted to believe him. The words were everything he'd ever trained for—recognition, belonging, redemption for the lives he couldn't save on the frontier. Yet something in the commander's tone felt too measured, too rehearsed, as if he were reading from a eulogy rather than a report.
A faint glow pulsed beneath the commander's gauntlet—guild-seal authorization. A red circle, not gold. Execution class.
Thomas's breath caught. "Sir?"
Rheis didn't answer at first. He only stepped closer, close enough for Thomas to see the reflection of the ruined city in his eyes.
"You were seen crossing the inner perimeter before the containment order was given," Rheis said quietly. "Protocol requires removal of all witnesses."
The words were simple, procedural. But in them, Thomas heard the machinery of the guild turning, the same clockwork precision that had guided every campaign. He realized then that justice had always been another word for obedience.
The rain thickened. Lightning carved the sky open, white on black. He felt the charge of etheric power humming through his veins, instinct urging him to draw, to fight, to ask why.
Instead, he whispered, "After everything… after all we—"
A pulse of light answered him. The ground split, and the guild-sigil on his armor burned itself away, leaving the faint smell of iron and ozone. He stumbled backward, vision blurring. Somewhere, the bells began to toll again only this time the sound came from below.
Through the ringing, he thought he heard voices. Not human, not divine—something deeper, older. They didn't speak words; they sang, and the song was hollow and beautiful and wrong. The Choir of the Void.
He fell to his knees. The world tilted sideways. The rain turned to shadow.
And as the commander's silhouette dissolved into light, Thomas understood the final lesson of heroism:
The world doesn't need heroes.
It needs someone willing to break what heroes protect.
Then the light swallowed everything.