Chapter 6

The voice faded, but the mark it left upon Ercolash's soul throbbed like an open wound.

He staggered through the skeletal forest, each tree a blackened claw against the bruised heavens. The earth underfoot was wet-not with dew, but with decay, as if the land itself had been weeping long before his arrival. And still, he walked. Alone. Cloaked in the stench of vengeance and the silence of his own hesitation.

He reached a house.

Or what remained of one.

Its walls were slouched in on themselves like a man in mourning. The windows were hollow eyes staring into nothing. Yet it stood-forgotten, and therefore, untouched. He entered without thought. No monsters lived here; they didn't dare. The air was too heavy. The weight of his presence alone was enough to banish life.

He collapsed onto what was once a cot, bones creaking beneath torn linens.

But sleep never came.

It had been weeks-perhaps a month since that night where the stars had bled and he was reborn in fury. In that time, the world had come to know a new terror. One not of slaughter, but of judgment. Ercolash hunted not the innocent, but those whose hands were slick with blood and power. The thieves who fed on the poor. The nobles who raped and silenced. The soldiers who torched villages under royal decree.

He did not kill them.

He broke them.

And in their brokenness, he bound them in chains of shadow and iron and delivered them-to Leon Manus.

A man... no, not just a man.

A symbol.

Leon's rise had been swift, unnatural, and shrouded. In the span of a fortnight, he had seized the helm of the Royal Inquisitional Guard, an order long thought ceremonial. Now it moved like a blade in his hand-silent, decisive, unstoppable.

They whispered of his power, though none named it. His enemies found their truths rewritten, their confessions extracted not by blade or torture, but by a change in the very thread of cause and consequence. One man, a baron, once declared, "I never touched her!" But the next day, he hanged himself after weeping in court: "I touched her. I defiled her. May justice consume me."

No one knew what Leon had done. Only that it had been true.

And Ercolash... found himself both repelled and drawn.

But tonight, within the suffocating silence of the ruined house, something stirred deeper.

> "You hesitate."

The voice coiled in his mind again, like smoke trailing from a sacrificial fire.

> "You play judge when you were forged to be god."

Ercolash gritted his teeth. "They needed to face judgment. Not death. I... I gave them to Manus because I am not yet beyond salvation."

A laugh, smooth as silk soaked in blood.

> "And what will you do when he decides you are unworthy? When he deems your wrath too unruly for justice? Will you kneel, little wrath? Or will you burn the throne and raise your own?"

He clutched at his chest where the sigil burned-an ever-turning spiral of thorns etched into his flesh since the pact. His breathing quickened. He remembered the face of a child he'd saved from a slaver's den. She had wept not out of relief, but terror-at him.

Because his hands had torn the slaver's eyes from his skull, inch by inch.

Because he had smiled as he did it.

He pressed his back to the crumbling wall, nails digging into stone. He wanted sleep. Escape. But no dream came for monsters. Only memories and whispers.

Thirty days. Thirty nights.

He wandered from ruin to ruin, from corpse to confession. The land was changing. Kingdoms had begun to whisper his name like a curse-The Ashen Walker. Some revered him. Others prayed to be spared.

On the dawn of the thirty-first day, he entered a hollow glade shrouded in fog. The trees here were scorched but standing, as though fire had licked their skin and left them trembling in defiance.

That was when he heard it.

A low hum. No-not hum.

Crackling.

The air thickened. Static danced across his skin. His eyes darted to the clearing ahead-and saw it.

A beast.

Its body, that of a bear-towering, sinewed, unnatural. Its fur shimmered like molten charcoal, and atop its head... a single antler, curved like a blade, sparked with living lightning. Bolts danced from horn to earth, scorching the ground black with each step. The creature's breath came in gusts of steam, its eyes glowing with an unnatural light-neither beast nor demon, but something between.

It saw him.

And roared.

The force of it shattered branches and split stone.

Ercolash stood unmoving. His cloak billowed behind him, his hands empty yet full of hunger.

> "Do not hesitate."

The voice was gentle this time. Almost... fatherly.

> "This is the world. A beast with a crown of thunder. It will kill you, unless you become the greater storm."

The beast charged, lightning peeling off its horn in arcs that carved the trees in half.

Ercolash moved.

Not fast-but with certainty.

The first bolt struck his shoulder, tearing flesh and cloth. He grunted, twisted, and slammed his palm into the earth. From the sigil on his chest, black tendrils erupted-not shadows, but curses given form.

They snaked around the beast's legs, slowing it.

But not enough.

The creature leapt, maw wide, fangs the length of daggers. Time slowed.

In that suspended moment, Ercolash laughed.

Not in joy. Not in madness.

But in release.

"I'm tired," he whispered. "Tired of choosing."

He raised his right hand-and the darkness curled around it like a glove of screaming ash.

"I am not salvation."

He caught the beast mid-air, his hand plunging through its throat as if through paper.

"I am not judgment."

The creature gurgled, spasmed. Lightning wracked his frame, but he stood fast, the heat melting part of his arm.

He leaned close to the dying beast's ear.

"I am wrath."

He tore the soul from the body-siphoned through his palm, into the ever-hungry spiral across his chest.

The light in the antler died. The storm ended. The glade fell silent.

And in the echoes of that silence, the voice returned.

> "Well done."

But this time, it was not from within.

It came from the trees.

Ercolash turned, body steaming, blood boiling.

And from the smoke stepped a figure clad in robes lined with runes, a sword strapped to his side that shimmered not with light, but with purpose.

Leon Manus.

His eyes held the sky within them-distant, unshaken, and cruel in their clarity.

"You've come far," he said.

Ercolash narrowed his eyes. "To be judged?"

Leon shook his head once.

"No. To be chosen."

"Why have you betrayed everything you once stood for?"

The voice was calm-serene as a mountain spring, unwavering despite the weight of the silence that clung to the air like a blade sharpened on stone. Leon Manus stood still amidst the gathering storm, as though the chaos swirling around him could not touch him-could not even hope to.

Ercolash advanced, each step crushing the dry, cracked earth beneath his feet. His breath steamed like poisonous vapor, vague and seething. The eyes that once bore the light of justice now mirrored only a black void-bottomless, treacherous, unrecognizable.

"Protect?" Ercolash let out a hollow chuckle, black blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
"Do you know what it's like to watch your loved ones burned alive by a system that parades itself as justice? I didn't betray ideals. I shattered them."

Leon said nothing. He merely nodded.

A hush swept over them, like the shroud of a funeral cloth.

Then-the kick landed.

Ercolash didn't see it coming. He couldn't. His body was hurled like a lifeless doll, blasted through ancient trees as if they were parchment. In less than a blink, he had flown over a hundred meters-leaving behind a trench of devastation, shattered trunks, and ruptured soil as if a meteor had descended upon the earth.

He crashed. The impact pulverized the land beneath him. Yet Ercolash stood again-bones cracked, rage burning. And with a scream, he lunged-fist aimed for Leon's chest, channeling every ounce of hatred and divine corruption he possessed.

A strike forged of fury.

But it never happened.

Not blocked.
Not dodged.
Erased.

Frozen mid-air-not by Leon's strength, but by something else. An illogical sensation-as if his very act had never existed. Reality itself refused to acknowledge it. And within that infinitesimal moment... he was slammed into the earth, arms wrenched behind him, knee pressed to his back like the weight of fate itself.

"Your reaction time is impressive," Leon said softly, voice inches from Ercolash's ear.
"But this... is faster."

He released his hold and stood-effortless, detached. Ercolash writhed. But it was useless. Leon looked down at what was once a comrade, now twisted into something barely human.

"You wonder what just happened?" Leon murmured.
"No need. My skill is called 'Null and Affirm.'"

Ercolash struggled, muscles trembling, teeth gritted.

"Null-negates all that is or ever was. Not blocked. Not slowed. It simply ceases to be. Your action just now? I nullified it. Not because I was faster, but because the world-
-no longer accepted it."

Leon raised a single finger.

"Affirm-chooses one outcome, the one true path. I select it, and the rest? They vanish. Forgotten by reality."

He clenched his fist. The space around it fractured like shattered glass, and a blade of pure judgment split the air-not launched, not conjured-simply occurred.

Ercolash was struck. But there was no blood. Only light piercing through his chest and fading into nothingness. He dropped to his knees, breath stolen. His soul ripped not through death, but by an absolute command imposed upon his being.

"Do you know how fast this skill is?" Leon stepped closer.
"Less than 0.1 thousandths of a millisecond. Faster than thought. Faster than synapse. So fast that even I no longer need to trigger it. Because-it is always active. At all times. Everywhere."

He stopped before the fallen warrior.

"'Null and Affirm' is not just speed. It is a reality proposition. It denies everything: motion, strength, speed, intellect-anything that exists."

Leon touched the air. It rippled.

"Just like a mathematical equation. If the theorem is true, it's applied. If false-it's deleted. Nullified. Instantly."

Ercolash looked up, blood pooling beneath him, yet his eyes hadn't dimmed.

"You think you can live in a world where you write the equations?"

Leon tilted his head slightly.

"I don't need to write them. I only need to choose the one answer that's right."

A new pillar of light erupted from the earth, a spike of judgment driven straight through Ercolash's spine.
But this time-he rose.

By hunger.
By rage.
By the whisper of an Evil God.

And because some things... cannot be nullified forever.