The battlefield burned.
Smoke twisted through the air like serpents slithering across a crimson sky. The corpses of angels and demons alike littered the ashen earth, wings torn, flesh scorched, blood blackened into ichor. Screams had long faded—only silence remained now, heavy and suffocating, as if the world itself held its breath.
At the center of it all, beneath a sky cracked by the weight of shattered stars, stood a lone figure—tall, slender, clad in blood-drenched armor that shimmered with the ethereal sheen of old magic. His silver-white hair, bound in twin braids, was matted with sweat and dirt. His emerald eyes, once bright with justice, were dulled by something far colder.
Oryzzell.
The Hero.
The Traitor.
The Savior who had gone too far.
In his hand, he held a sword that should never have existed—Aeon Severance. Its dual-toned blade shimmered like oil over water, one edge pure white, the other abyssal black, both trembling with a hum that felt like the world itself weeping.
Before him knelt the Demon Lord, Var'khaz the Void Tyrant—what remained of him, anyway. Most of his body had been severed from the timeline itself, his soul unraveled across non-existence. He didn't scream. He couldn't. His mouth had been conceptually erased.
It was over. The war that had spanned five hundred years had finally reached its end.
And yet, Oryzzell's hand didn't loosen around the blade. His breath came in ragged pulls, heart heavy with the weight of what he had done.
"You severed time," whispered a voice behind him. Feminine. Familiar. "You shattered fate. You broke everything just to win."
He didn't turn. He didn't need to.
He knew that voice.
Valia.
High Priestess.
His comrade. His once-lover. The one who led the holy covenant beside him.
She stood with others now—knights, archmages, war saints—those who had fought beside him. Trusted him. Followed him into the abyss.
Their weapons were drawn.
"You've become the very monster we swore to defeat," Valia said, stepping closer, silver tears staining her face. "Aeon Severance... is not a sword of salvation. It's the end of all things."
Oryzzell said nothing.
He looked up at the ruined sky. At the cracks bleeding starlight. At the celestial rot that had begun to spread ever since he'd first drawn the blade from its prison beneath the Hall of the Dead Gods.
He felt it now.
The cost.
The world would never be the same. Its very laws had been wounded. Magic trembled. Time buckled. Life struggled to continue where so many truths had been cut away.
Still, he did not regret it.
Var'khaz was dead. The war was over. Peace could come.
"Then do it," he said at last, voice hollow. "If you believe I've become a monster, strike me down."
There was silence.
Then steel.
Then pain.
And darkness.
---
Somewhere beyond death...
A heartbeat.
Another.
A breath not drawn by lungs of flesh.
Oryzzell's eyes snapped open, but what he saw was not sky. Not fire. Not the ethereal limbo of warriors.
It was a forest. Ancient, dark, alive with whispers and shrouded in perpetual dusk. His body... felt wrong. Smaller. Younger. Stronger in some ways, weaker in others.
A memory surged, not his own. A name.
Yuuji Kazehaya.
High school student. Earth.
That was his name… wasn't it?
No.
He was Oryzzell.
Wasn't he?
He gripped his head as pain lanced through his mind, clashing lifetimes fighting for control.
And then, in the shadows before him, something pulsed.
The blade.
Aeon Severance.
It had followed him into death. Or had it brought him back?
Its whisper slithered through his thoughts like a forgotten lullaby.
"Sever the past. Sever the truth. Sever the world."
Oryzzell's eyes narrowed. His fate had been cut once already.
But this time—he would be the one holding the edge.