The sky over the Holy Capital of Solara wasn't blue anymore. It was a suffocating, blinding gold.
General Valerius, the High Seraph of the Third Divinity, floated above the burning cathedral square. Six wings of pure, hard-light mana extended from his back, spanning thirty feet. Beneath him, the "Heroes" of humanity—the strongest mages the kingdom had to offer—lay broken.
"Pathetic," Valerius boomed, his voice vibrating the very bones of the survivors. "You rely on borrowed magic. You borrow fire, you borrow wind, you borrow life. But against a true Divinity? You are nothing but dust awaiting the broom."
He raised a hand. A sphere of concentrated solar plasma, hotter than the surface of the sun, began to coalesce. It was an extinction-level spell.
"Perish."
The mages closed their eyes. The Princess, kneeling in the dirt with her staff shattered, wept.
The sphere launched.
CLANG.
It didn't explode. It didn't incinerate the city.
It ricocheted.
The sphere of holy fire was slapped aside like a tennis ball, crashing into a distant mountain range. The impact vaporized the peak instantly, but the city square remained untouched.
Valerius blinked. For the first time in centuries, the Seraph felt confusion. He hadn't sensed a counter-spell. He hadn't felt a spike in mana. In fact, his sensory perception told him the square was empty.
But there was a man standing on the head of the statue in the center of the plaza.
"Yo," the man said.
He was wearing a tight, black compression shirt that struggled to contain a physique of terrifying perfection—broad shoulders that tapered into a waist of coiled steel, arms defined by veins that looked like hydraulic cables. He wore loose, tactical trousers tucked into heavy combat boots.
He looked bored. Utterly, insultingly bored.
"Who... who are you?" Valerius stammered, his divine eyes scanning the man. "I sense zero mana. You have no aura. You are... empty. You are a glitch."
The man hopped down. He didn't float; he fell with the heavy, undeniable gravity of a physical object, landing with a heavy thud that cracked the marble pavement. He stood up slowly, brushing dust off his shoulder.
As he looked up, the Princess gasped.
He was violently handsome. It was a beauty that felt dangerous—sharp, high cheekbones, skin as pale as moonlight, and hair the color of the void itself. But it was his eyes that froze the blood in her veins. They were a deep, luminescent crimson, burning with a predatory hunger that made the Seraph's holy light look dim.
"The name's Cain," he said, his voice a smooth baritone that carried without magic. "And you're occupying my airspace. I hate noise when I'm hungover."
Valerius sneered. "A monkey with no magic? You deflected my attack with mere luck. Die!"
The Seraph pointed a finger. [Divine Lance: Light Speed].
A beam of light, moving at the literal speed of light, fired at Cain's heart.
It missed.
Valerius's eyes widened. "Impossible."
Cain was no longer standing there. He was mid-air, twisting his body with a flexibility that shouldn't be possible for a human spine. He had moved before the Seraph had even finished the thought. This wasn't magic speed enhancement. This was raw, biological superiority. The sensory reflexes of a monster.
"Too slow," Cain whispered.
He was suddenly behind the Seraph.
Valerius spun around, activating his [Holy Barrier], a dome of impenetrable mana that burned anything it touched.
Cain didn't stop. He didn't cast a counter-spell. He simply reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a jagged, rusty-looking dagger—the Fang of the Exile.
He swung his arm. Pure kinetic torque. The muscles in his back rippled like shifting tectonic plates.
SHATTER.
The Holy Barrier, which had withstood dragon fire, broke like cheap glass.
"No magic?" Cain grinned, his teeth blindingly white, his canines slightly too sharp. "No problem."
He grabbed the Seraph by the throat.
The contact was instant agony for the angel. Cain's grip was absolute. Valerius tried to channel mana to explode his own body, a suicide tactic, but he found he couldn't.
Shadows began to leak from Cain's skin.
They weren't normal shadows. They were a living, writhing darkness. Thousands of screeching, spectral bats materialized from the black aura surrounding Cain, biting and tearing at the Seraph's mana flow.
"What are you?!" Valerius screamed, thrashing as his divine light was consumed by the swarm. "You have the body of a beast and the soul of a devil!"
Cain pulled the Seraph close, their faces inches apart. The difference was stark: the terrified, glowing god, and the dark, smirking human who held him like a toy.
"I'm just a guy," Cain whispered, the crimson in his eyes flaring. "A guy who took the darkness you threw away and turned it into a weapon."
Cain hurled the Seraph downward.
He threw him with so much force that the angel broke the sound barrier on the way down. Valerius impacted the city square with the force of a meteor, creating a crater twenty meters deep.
Dust billowed. Silence reigned.
Cain landed softly on the edge of the crater. He didn't even look winded. He rolled his neck, a sickening crack echoing through the silent plaza.
The Princess, trembling, stood up. She looked at the man—this monster who was arguably more terrifying than the god he had just crushed.
"You..." she whispered. "You saved us?"
Cain looked at her. He didn't offer a hand. He didn't bow. He looked her up and down with an unashamed, appraisal-like gaze that made her blush furiously despite the fear.
"Saved?" Cain scoffed, running a hand through his dark hair. "Don't be dramatic, sweetheart. He was just too bright. Hurt my eyes."
He turned to walk away, the shadows swirling around his feet like obedient hunting dogs.
"Wait!" the Princess cried out. "Where are you going?"
Cain stopped. He glanced back over his shoulder, the sunlight catching the sharp angle of his jaw and the devilish curve of his lips.
"To find a drink," he said. "Unless you have something better to offer?"
The shadows surged, and for a split second, his body dissolved into a cloud of mist and bats, reforming instantly ten meters away—a impossible blend of physical speed and supernatural evasion.
He was the Vessel of the Void. And the world had just realized that its gods were no longer at the top of the food chain.