The world outside the sanctuary of the church was a tapestry of screams and the sickening thud of bodies.
Each blast that rattled the stained-glass windows sent a fresh tremor through Ryuu's bones, a visceral reminder of the carnage unfolding just beyond her sight.
"Asfiiiii?!" Ryuu shrieked, her voice tearing through the hallowed air of the chapel, a desperate, raw sound swallowed by the distant cacophony of destruction.
Her knuckles were white, pressed against the cold stone of the altar as if praying for an impossible intervention, her sky-blue eyes stretched wide with terror and a dawning, terrible understanding of the evilus atrocities.
From the shadows, a figure emerged, bathed in the lurid glow filtering through the crimson and silver hues of the window – a light that seemed to mock the violence it illuminated.
This was Erebus.
He moved with an unsettling grace, his eyes fixed not on Ryuu, but on the macabre spectacle outside, a faint, almost imperceptible smile playing on his lips.
"Oh, Olivas," he murmured, his voice a silken rasp that seemed to caress the very air, devoid of empathy, yet oddly appreciative.
"You really don't hold back, do you? But at least you're out there, making a difference."
His words, spoken with a chillingly detached admiration, made the heinous acts unfolding outside sound like a meticulously choreographed performance.
It was as if he were a critic in a grand theatre, offering an approving nod to particularly effective staging.
People were dying out there, their final cries echoing faintly even within the thick walls of the church, yet while Ryuu gasped, choked on her grief, and cried out for her friend, Erebus simply smiled, a low, guttural chuckle rumbling in his chest.
The magnificent stained-glass window, depicting serene saints and celestial beings, might as well have been a portal to another, horrifying dimension, or indeed, a theatre screen displaying a tragedy for his perverse amusement.
Ryuu, trapped within the archaic structure, felt like an unwilling spectator, forced to witness a play of unimaginable horror.
But the searing screams that sliced through the air were not an actor's lament; they were real, laced with agony and despair.
This wasn't a play, a vividly crafted illusion, or a bad dream from which she could simply awaken.
This was the raw, unvarnished reality of her world, brutally laid bare.
Every fibre of her being screamed at her to act, to run, to help, but her feet felt rooted, her limbs heavy with an unshakeable dread.
Then, with an abruptness that made Ryuu flinch, Erebus's attention peeled away from the vibrant, horrifying tableau outside and landed squarely on her.
His smile, though still present, subtly shifted, becoming something sharper, more predatory, like a hunger suddenly identified.
His eyes, dark and inscrutable, held a glint of perverse delight.
"Why don't we play a little game, elf," he said, the inviting lilt to his voice chilling Ryuu to the core.
It was the tone of a master manipulator, one who knew exactly how to twist threads of fear and duty into a knot of despair.
"Have you heard of the trolley problem?" he asked, a hint of genuine curiosity in his tone, as if assessing her intellectual capacity.
Ryuu, her mind still reeling from the visceral horror outside and the bizarre callousness of the being before her, could only manage a blank stare.
The question, so incongruous with the immediate reality, momentarily stunned her.
"The what?" she questioned, her voice a reedy whisper, barely audible above the distant rumble of collapsing structures.
Erebus's smile widened, a predatory gleam in his eyes.
He seemed to take a morbid pleasure in her confusion, relishing the opportunity to introduce her to his twisted concept of entertainment.
He leaned forward slightly, his posture one of a storyteller about to impart a fascinating, if not disturbing, fable.
"Imagine, if you will, a rail cart that suddenly loses control while in motion. Ahead of it are a group of people at a worksite, all of whom will surely die if the cart continues along its path. Luckily, there is a switch. One that can divert the cart onto a different path. But if you do, the cart will hit someone else. Hmm, let's say… a young girl."
He chuckled then, a dry, almost dusty sound that grated on Ryuu's ears, and glanced out the stained-glass window again, as if surveying the immediate landscape for a convenient example.
"Yes, there's a single girl on the other track for some reason. Perhaps she's lost, or simply foolish. Now, what is the correct course of action in this scenario? Do you pull the switch, condemning the girl to death, or do nothing and let the working group meet their end?"
Ryuu blinked, trying to process the abstract scenario.
Her brow furrowed, her mind struggling to bridge the gap between this theoretical conundrum and the very real, very present horror.
"Huh?" she questioned again, her voice still laced with genuine bewilderment, or perhaps, a desperate attempt to feign ignorance, to buy herself time.
The thought experiment felt utterly divorced from sanity in the face of the blood-splattered realty.
Erebus merely shrugged, unfazed by her apparent incomprehension.
"It's just a little thought experiment, Ryuu. Honestly, you mortals come up with the most interesting diversions." His tone was light, dismissive, as if discussing a trivial parlour game, yet his eyes held a calculating depth that sent shivers down Ryuu's spine.
He clearly wasn't finding this a diversion, but rather a tool for something far more insidious.
Ryuu didn't understand where Erebus was going with this, but a terrible, icy feeling had begun to coil in the pit of her stomach.
His unending, unreadable smile made him seem less like a being of power and more like a cunning hunter eyeing his unsuspecting prey, measuring its every twitch.
His thought process was entirely alien, a labyrinth of twisted logic and morbid curiosity that was entirely beyond her comprehension.
A cold sweat began to prickle on her skin, and her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
It was here that Erebus chose to yank the veil away, to make his point chillingly, brutally clear.
"It's a simple conundrum," he continued, his voice dropping slightly, gaining a dangerous resonance that made the very air seem to thicken around them.
"But no example more perfectly encapsulates the situation I place you in now."
The world flickered before Ryuu's very eyes, the vibrant colours of the stained glass blurring into a kaleidoscope of terror.
A fire, not of outrage but of pure, existential dread, began to rage in the back of her mind, threatening to consume her sanity.
She felt her heartbeat reverberate throughout her entire body, a frantic, thunderous drum against her eardrums.
It was as if her own circulatory system was screaming at her the horrifying truth.
"…You don't…mean…" Ryuu stammered, her voice barely a whisper, ragged with burgeoning horror, the realization of what he was implying threatening to shatter her composure.
Her eyes darted from his smiling face to the window, then back again, desperately searching for a loophole, a sign that this was a cruel jest.
"Oh, but I do. Now, make a choice." Erebus replied, his voice still deceptively calm, yet laced with an undeniable edge of command.
All the colour drained from Ryuu's face, leaving her skin ashen, ghostly pale.
In stark contrast, Erebus's smile seemed to broaden, his eyes sparkling with a dark, triumphant light.
He was relishing this.
"One girl's life in exchange for all those people," he said, each word a hammer blow to Ryuu's soul.
He paused, letting the weight of his statement hang in the air, allowing the full horror of it to settle upon her.
"What will it be, Ryuu?"
An unbearable, crushing fear descended upon Ryuu, causing her to shudder violently.
Her entire body trembled, a leaf caught in an unseen gale.
At that moment—truly, irrevocably, she knew—there could be no clearer, more perfect embodiment of pure, unadulterated evil than the being who stood before her.
This was not merely a monster; this was a fundamental force of malevolence, gleefully toying with life and death.
Erebus continued, his voice now taking on the hypnotic cadence of a snake charmer, each word twisting deeper into Ryuu's core.
"You can leave this building right now and run to save your dying friend. But if you do, if you choose to pursue that selfish, attachment, it will be the end for all those innocent people."
His words were the words of a god, not just powerful, but unbreakable, absolute, shaping reality with their utterance.
He was not threatening; he was stating an undeniable fact that would come to pass.
"You have my word," he added, a chilling assurance that only deepened her terror.
"Whatever it takes, I will not rest until each and every one of them is dead. My followers will hunt them down, one by one, until every last heartbeat is silenced." A sadistic, predatory smile traced his lips, highlighting his sharp, almost fanged teeth.
"Or," he continued, his voice suddenly shifting, taking on a more merciful, even benevolent tone, a stark and unsettling contrast that was far more terrifying than his earlier threats.
"Stay here. Let that girl die as if you had killed her with your own hands, for it will be your inaction, your adherence to a greater good, that seals her fate… and in return, all those poor, innocent people will be free to go."
His offer hung in the air, seemingly compassionate, yet what the dark god suggested was anything but merciful.
It was a bargain with damnation, a pact forged in suffering.
"No lies, no tricks. I promise. I swear on my soul they will not come to harm." Erebus sweetened the proposal further, his voice a low, soothing balm that promised salvation at an unthinkable price.
It was a holy, yet incalculably dark pact, an inverse of all that was sacred.
"Let her die, and I will order my followers to stand down. They won't so much as touch those bystanders. They will be free."
Concealed within his deceptively simple words, the evil god had made some subtle but considerable misdirection's.
The original trolley problem, asked whether it was better to let the many die through inaction, or to take matters into one's own hands.
But what Erebus was proposing was slightly different.
Ryuu could do nothing and let Asfi die, allowing the numerous citizens to go free.
Or, by acting, by leaving the church to save her friend, she would be condemning the countless innocents to death.
There was, in this case, no true moral conundrum for the utilitarian.
The answer, from a cold, logical perspective of maximizing lives saved, was quite clear.
The crux of Erebus's new problem, therefore, was not about cause and consequence, or active versus passive harm, but about duty.
It was about whose lives Ryuu valued more: the many she had sworn to protect, or the one she held dear to her heart.
There was no doubt what the 'correct' choice, the 'just' choice, should be according to the principles Ryuu held so fiercely.
But was Ryuu strong enough to pursue it?
Or would she instead act contrary to what her principles demanded, sacrificing the many to rescue her friend?
It was the ultimate test of Ryuu's commitment to upholding justice, to truly embodying the ideals she cherished.
It was a trial by fire, one she couldn't run away from, couldn't evade.
His words still hanging in the air, creating an oppressive weight in the silence, Erebus silently awaited Ryuu's decision.
His dark eyes, bored into her, demanding an answer that would define her very soul.
To Ryuu, the momentary silence felt like an eternity, each second stretching into a vast, agonizing void, a chasm she felt herself plummeting into.
But to a god's infinite being, it was nothing more than a fleeting breath, a brief pause before the next delightful twist of fate.
At last, the final vestiges of justice, wrenched her reluctant lips apart.
A guttural sound tore from her throat, a choked cry of pure, unadulterated anguish.
But all she could do was unleash her emotions in a desperate, vain attempt to make it all go away, to somehow unravel the impossible choice placed before her.
"…You're mad… You're insane!" she screamed, her voice raw, cracking, echoing through the empty church.
"What do you think you're doing?! Does life mean so little to you?!"
Her body trembled, her hands clenched into fists, futile gestures of defiance against an unfeeling omnipotence.
But try as she might to disguise them, to present them as an act of moral outrage against injustice, the flames of outrage in her heart were not nearly hot enough to sway Erebus's course. They flickered, pathetic and weak, against the impenetrable wall of his indifference.
"I'm not interested in hearing you spout clichés," he said, his voice flat, devoid of any genuine engagement, as if swatting away a bothersome fly.
"I asked you to choose."
There was only one thing he wanted to hear, one specific answer, one confirmation of his twisted experiment.
"Show me your answer, Ryuu. You can't dodge my question this time. I'll make sure of that." His words were not a threat, but a promise, delivered with an unsettling calm.
Ryuu froze.
Her breath caught in her throat, a painful constriction, like her lungs simply gave up and stopped working.
The air, thick with the scent of old incense and creeping doom, refused to enter her body.
And starved of air, the fire in her heart fizzled out, replaced by a cold, numbing despair.
There was nothing more she could do or say to avoid the horrifying choice presented to her.
No clever retort, no moral argument, no desperate plea would change his mind.
"…I can't choose," she said at last, the words wrenched from her, thick with despair and utter defeat.
"You can't make me choose! How could I?!" Her voice cracked and quivered, a fragile thing on the edge of breaking entirely.
She couldn't move a muscle, like her feet were stitched to the ground, heavy and unresponsive, while her blood raced so fast through her veins, a frantic torrent, it felt like it would burst out of her skin.
She had only the strength to manage a single step back, a barely perceptible tremor of her body. She couldn't move her head at all, only shake it almost imperceptibly left and right in denial, a silent, desperate negation while her lips shivered uncontrollably.
But the god did not laugh at her feeble state.
He did not mock her terror.
He only spoke, his voice patient, almost professorial, outlining the inescapable logic of his game. "You can choose, Ryuu. But you refuse to. That in itself is an evil act."
"What?!" Ryuu was speechless, her mind recoiling from the accusation, her eyes wide with disbelief and fresh horror.
His words felt like a violation, a twisted logic that sought to paint her own moral anguish as complicity.
The dark god continued his rhetorical advance, pressing the advantage, digging deeper into her soul.
"I mean, just look at me," he said, gesturing vaguely at himself, as if inviting her to observe a simple, undeniable truth.
"I could save them all with a wave of my hand, stop Olivas's rampage, silence the screams. But I don't. Everyone agrees that it's evil to let people die while you have the power to save them. No ethical or philosophical argument, no matter how sophisticated, could ever justify that to the world at large. And the same goes for you, Ryuu. Do nothing, choose inaction in this moment, and everyone will know you stood idly by while innocent people suffered."
Ryuu felt as if she were being pushed closer and closer to the edge of a bottomless chasm, an abyss of moral compromise and personal failure.
She heard a terrible noise, not from outside, but from within her own mind, like the last few cracks of a glacier before shedding a massive block of ice into the sea.
Her sanity felt as if it were breaking apart, shards of her identity scattering into the void.
Tears welled up in her sky-blue eyes, hot and stinging, as the sheer, agonizing stress of the choice threatened to crush her utterly, to reduce her to nothing but a weeping, trembling shell.
"Come on," Erebus urged, his voice growing a little sharper, a sliver of impatience finally entering his tone.
"Hurry up. There won't be a choice left to make at this rate. The girl will die, and it'll be your callous indifference that killed her. You wouldn't like that, would you, my little follower of justice?" Erebus grinned, a truly vicious smile that ran all the way to his dark eyes.
And then, he repeated the question, the ultimate demand that had led the two of them here, now with more anticipation than ever before, his voice filled with a chilling eagerness.
"Tell me, Ryuu! Make a choice! What will your justice be?"
Ryuu's sky-blue irises, usually so clear and resolute, contracted to a pale, almost invisible speck. The world spun, the ground beneath her feet seemed to tilt.
While the scales of justice within her trembled precariously, balanced on the knife-edge of an impossible decision, she let out an ear-piercing shriek, a raw, primal sound ripped from the depths of her tortured soul.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaghhh!!"