Kaelis stood before yet another door — different from the others, but just as heavy with the promise of the irreversible. His breath came slow and uneven, as if the air itself had grown thicker, more reluctant to enter his lungs. His blood — golden, laced with shadow like smoke trapped in amber — streamed from his wounds, leaving behind glowing traces with every step, like dying stars silently falling to the ground.
He was no longer entirely human.
He felt everything at once — love, hate, sorrow, ecstasy, fury — but nothing reached his face. No muscle twitched. No tear escaped.
He loved everything with the intensity of an ancient god.
He hated everything with the depth of a bottomless pit.
And yet, within him, he was like a broken machine, jammed in the echo of a purpose long since lost. A mechanism still moving, but hollow, driven only by the memory of a desire… that no longer had a name.
What had been his desire, again?
He tried to remember — but all he found was silence. An absence that ached more than any answer could.
There had been something worth fighting for. He could feel it in his bones. But he could no longer recall what it was. Or whether it still mattered.
Guided only by the last sliver of humanity that flickered within him — fragile, but unyielding — Kaelis stepped forward.
The door opened with a rough, muffled groan, as if the Cathedral itself hesitated to let him through.
And then he entered.
What he saw beyond the threshold was the most blasphemous expression of beauty he had ever witnessed.
The chamber was vast — immense, like the womb of a dying god. The ceiling arched deep overhead, shaped like the inverted vault of a cathedral. The pillars did not rise — they curved downward, like the ribs of an ancient titan, made of polished bone and fractured glass, holding up the weight of a sacred tomb.
From the ceiling hung living tapestries — flesh stitched with veils of shadows and murmurs. They whispered constantly, prayers in tongues long since lost, uttering words not meant to be understood but to be felt — like needles threading through the heart.
At the center stood an altar.
Made of marble too white to be pure — the white of tombstones, of funeral masks. Cold. Immaculate. Profane.
Above it, a colossal stained-glass window depicted a heart suspended between two wings.
One was made of feathers black as guilt.
The other, white as innocence long condemned.
The heart, sculpted from crimson glass, pulsed. Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. It beat. Each pulse released a warm, bloody glow — as if it waited… for something. Or someone.
And in front of the altar, someone was waiting.
He wore white ceremonial robes, embroidered with silver thread and tiny golden thorns that seemed to bleed light. His hood concealed most of his face, but what could be seen was pale, waxy — almost unreal. His feet cast no shadow.
As though he did not belong entirely to the physical world.
It was him.
The priest.
The veiled architect behind every torment in Kaelis's journey — the master of unseen strings.
"Welcome to the end of the beginning, Hadriel," said the priest, his voice tender as a lullaby — and twice as deadly.
"Your parents loved you… but not enough to stop us."
"They didn't sacrifice themselves for you, child. No. They were sacrificed. By us. To purify your soul."
He extended his hands, as if offering comfort — or preparing to defile something sacred. At that moment, the stained glass above blazed brighter, casting beams of red light that spilled like fresh blood across the altar.
"You are our masterpiece. The perfect vessel for divinity."
And then Kaelis saw.
No more veils. No lies.
The ritual.
The blood circle.
The silver dagger with the ruby on its hilt — the same one he had carried since the beginning.
He saw his mother, hand in hand with his father. Encircled by hooded clerics. Chains of prayer wrapped them, like binding serpents of light. His mother looked up — not for salvation, but for meaning. A meaning that never came.
He saw the blade slice her throat.
He saw his father dragged into the Cathedral's depths, tortured and broken over days.
He saw his sister.
Pushed from a bridge into the Lower Heaven — by his own innocent hands.
She fell.
And never returned.
The prayers of the Church were false.
But the power… was real.
Somehow, the divinity had already been imprisoned — bound by corrupted faith, trapped in this cursed Cathedral. Pain wasn't an obstacle. It was the design. The method.
Hadriel's soul — like Kaelis's — had been forged in agony.
His values carved through loss.
His hope nurtured like soil readied for the seed of a god.
And then — something broke inside him.
It wasn't a scream.
Nor a tear.
It was the moment the human dies — and the divine begins to be born.
The chains of past trials burned through his veins. The memory of hunger, of humiliation, of denied love — it all ignited.
Everything boiled.
Everything burned.
And then—
Wings tore through his flesh.
The sound was hideous — bones cracking, muscles shredding, a grotesque concerto of birth and pain. Screams made of marrow and flame.
Wings black as grief.
Forged from raw light and pale fire — brokenly beautiful, a sacred heresy made flesh.
The altar shook.
The Cathedral trembled.
And outside — the city felt it.
Something ancient stirred.
The priest stepped back — for the first time, uncertain.
Kaelis rose.
His expression bore no anger.
No sorrow.
Only… judgment.
"If this is what it means to be a god…"
He took a step.
"Then let all profane bodies and souls burn."
Another.
"And let all false gods burn with me."
And the Heart God… heard.
Heard the cry of its vessel.
Kaelis had spoken — not with lips, but with soul. And the cry pierced the veil, echoing into the marrow of the divine.
And from the abyss… a voice replied:
"If your will is to judge… then judge."
"Choose your face, vessel…"
"And receive…"
"Your true name."