By IMERPUS RELUR
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The fog over the ruined temple thickened as Imer's boots stepped onto the moss-covered stone. The walls whispered, broken languages from dead gods bleeding into his ears. Sin itself lingered like perfume on the altar.
He wasn't alone.
From the shadowed alcove stepped a girl—no older than sixteen, but her eyes were ancient. Pale as bone and draped in veils that fluttered despite the still air. She watched him like one watches a fire—beautiful, but destined to consume.
"You carry too much sin," she said.
Imer's voice was flat. "That's the point."
She smiled, teeth sharp. "Then you'll need to drink more."
From behind her, a vessel rose—a black jar etched with markings from a tongue not spoken since the fall of the first empire. It pulsed.
"What's inside?" Imer asked, though his body already knew.
"Yours. A sin that never lived. A sin that died unborn. A sin too ancient to remember."
He stepped forward, his hands trembling. The jar was heavy with weightless guilt. His eyes turned black as pitch. His heartbeat echoed across dimensions.
He lifted it and drank.
Not wine. Not blood. Something worse.
---
The world flipped inside out. His past lives flooded back—not as visions, but as lived moments. He was the boy who begged for a name. The prince who burned his kingdom for love. The god who wept over his own creation. All his sins. All of them.
And still, he drank.
The temple collapsed. The girl was gone. In her place, a mirror.
In it, Imer saw not himself—but the one who created him. A face wrapped in shadow and flames, whose eyes were identical to his.
"You're not the first," the reflection said. "But you might be the last."
The reflection shattered.
He woke on a stone slab, heartbeat slow. The jar was gone. The sin was not.
His power had grown—but something was different now.
His body didn't burn. His soul didn't scream. Instead... it waited.
Because something older than sin had awakened in him.
Not rage. Not redemption.