Fire breathed into the bones of the village—swirling, twisting, running rampant like a living curse. The old church, once beautiful and devout, cracked and snapped as it came undone. Its bell, which had once rung out for marriages, sermons, and the rising sun, fell with explosive fury—its toll no longer sacred, but an omen.
It struck the earth like judgment, and from its shattered frame, flames erupted—too beautiful to be holy. In their radiance, the village was plunged into its final hell.
From the hill, Aven hurled himself into the blaze.
His body scorched, the tattered insignia of the faith clinging to his shoulder, he moved through screams and smoke without pause. He pulled a young man and a girl from the rubble of their home. For a moment, they looked at him with hope.
Then—rage.
One spat words—bitter, broken—but Aven didn't stay to hear them.
There was always someone else. Another cry. Another collapse.
He kept moving—deeper into the inferno, toward the church he once called sacred. He didn't count his wounds. He didn't look back.
Again and again, he reached out—only to grasp ash where a body had been.
The silence of man rang in his ears, swallowed by the voice of flame. The heat was like nothing he had known—cleansing, damning.
At the center of it all, beneath the fractured bell, Aven dropped to his knees.
The fire, which should have claimed any ordinary man, encircled him in smoke, silence, and guilt. He raised his eyes to the night sky—eyes that once held faith in the church, now reflecting only stars and sorrow.
Tears streamed down his face until even they were taken by the heat, reduced to vapor, then to nothing.
"I'm sorry I couldn't reach you," he whispered—to the ash, to the dead, to the church that had done nothing. "But I will carry the burden. The suffering of flames you endured will be quelled in the hearts of everyone here who lived through it. In the afterlife, you will find peace—not in the god who abandoned our church, but in your own sincerity, your connection to the earth, and your family."
Aven clenched his fists, shaking with grief for all who suffered the flames of the new church.
"You never listened," he said to the ruins of the old god's temple—the god he had once embodied in prayer. "Or perhaps you were—and simply didn't care."
His voice wavered like his faith, both crumbling. But even then, he clung to one thing: the principle of selflessness.
Aven sharpened with regret.
"I thought goodness was enough. That if I gave everything, it would be returned to me. That saving others meant I would be saved."
He laughed—quietly, bitterly.
"I was a fool. I gave my heart to Sanctbridge, this very village. I ruined my once pristine body to be a warrior of faith, giving up years of my life in service to what I believed was sacred."
He looked to the heavens, eyes dry now.
"I prayed to you. I begged you for kindness. And what did I receive? What did you give me?
Nothing."
He lowered his head. His whole life—every vow, every prayer, every sacrifice—meant nothing.
"Everything I've done has turned to ash."
Then, through clenched teeth—through rage and ruin—he spoke a vow:
"Today will be the graveyard of hope, of selfishness, and of the old church I tried to save."
And slowly, trembling from pain but not weakness, Aven rose to his feet.
"But it will not be my grave."
He could have died there. He should have. But someone had to remember. Someone had to rebuild.
Not the church.
Not the dogma.
Something else.
Something true.
True sacrifice.