The rain had ceased hours ago, but the manor's cracked marble steps still bled with the filth of a dying city. Plague-stained banners flapped in a wind sour with rot and incense. Moonlight filtered through the broken dome above, casting a pale halo upon the derelict inquisitor's manor—a place once sanctified, now haunted by hypocrisy.
Zevrak stood cloaked in the tattered robes of the dead hero he had skinned like an offering. The stolen face twitched unnaturally, stretched over his own—held together by minor runes etched in blood, old magic born from the forbidden rites of his mind palace.
Tonight was not a night for whispers.
It was a night for screaming.
The inner sanctum was a grotesque masquerade of holiness. Velvet-draped inquisitors lounged among broken pews, wine flowing from cracked reliquaries, their laughter echoing with the false piety of men who'd murdered more than they'd ever saved. Candlelight flickered against decayed saints' statues—every one blindfolded, every one weeping wax tears.
At the head of the long, warped table sat Inquisitor Malgros, the butcher bishop of the slums, his robes stitched with glyphs that once shimmered with divine light—now dull, like dying embers.
"I smell rebirth," he said, voice thick with wine and madness. "Our saint has returned, reborn by grace and plague alike."
They rose to toast Zevrak, still believing him to be the hero-slain butcher-king. Zevrak gave them a shallow bow, eyes lowered, hiding the hunger behind them.
They worship monsters because monsters wear the right mask.
Serana watched from the shadows of a shattered confession booth, arms folded, expression unreadable. Her armor was scratched, her blade cleaned three times over—though she hadn't used it since the catacombs. Not since watching Zevrak tear open a man's skull with a whisper.
Something had changed.
Zevrak no longer moved like a mortal man.
He waited until the sixth toast—the number of rot, as the cults believed. Zevrak raised his goblet, voice calm as a sermon:
"To saints that never bled… and gods that never wept."
The room stilled. An inquisitor chuckled, but it died quickly.
The candle flames all extinguished at once.
Then came the screams.
Black smoke bled from Zevrak's mouth like a reversed exorcism. The runes along his false face ignited, burning away the mask, revealing eyes like smoldering coals and a grin too wide for a man.
From beneath the table, corpses crawled out—slaves he'd poisoned days prior, reanimated with soul crystal fragments and nailed tongues. They tore into the robed zealots with fang and claw, screaming in eleven voices. Flesh hit stone like wet parchment.
Malgros tried to draw his relic blade.
Zevrak's chain wrapped around his neck before it left its sheath. He whispered an old name, and iron turned red-hot. The inquisitor howled, his own skin melting like tallow.
"Mercy," Malgros gurgled.
Zevrak leaned in close. "Mercy is a fiction written by the losing side."
And he fed him to the crawling dead.
When the blood stopped dripping, when the fires died down, Zevrak walked barefoot into the chapel chamber, every step leaving a print in blood. He ascended the altar built from broken saints and raised his arms.
Cultists gathered outside the shattered cathedral windows, drawn by whispered omens and the smell of holy slaughter.
"I am no saint," Zevrak declared, voice echoing across crumbling stone.
"But I am the fire that will burn this divine farce to ash. I am Zevrak, crowned by thorns not gifted, but earned."
He lifted Malgros's severed head, crowned it with a ring of broken halo metal, and placed it atop the altar.
"I am your Saint of Death. Kneel not for mercy. Kneel for power."
One by one, the cultists did.
Later, as the dead cooled and smoke rose like incense, Serana stood beside him, watching the flames consume centuries of twisted faith.
"You're not just a man," she said finally.
"No."
"You're not a god either."
"Not yet."
She looked at him then—not with disgust or reverence—but with the wary awe of a soldier who recognizes the battlefield before it happens.
"If I follow you, I'll become a monster."
Zevrak's smile was thin.
"We all become something, Serana. Better to choose the shape than have it chosen for you."
She said nothing.
But she did not walk away.
As the last embers of the manor died out, Zevrak stood alone in the blood-streaked chapel. His mind palace pulsed behind his eyes—rooms of locked doors, old memories shuddering like caged gods.
In one of those rooms, the black sun flickered again. Larger now. Closer.
And something was missing.
A face.
A name.
Something—or someone—that should have been reborn with the rest.
He whispered into the smoke, "Who did they erase… and why?"
The smoke did not answer.
But the shadow beneath the altar grinned.
"A saint is just a killer with a crown. And tonight, I wear both." – Zevrak Kain
To be continued…