Where the roof should have been, there was only a void not the darkness of night, which holds stars and the promise of dawn, but the suffocating black of a grave that had never known light. The pillars surrounding Ryan were cracked and ancient, wrapped in shadows that pulsed with a life of their own.
Ryan stood in the center of the ruin and tried to understand what he had become.
He was not alive; he had seen his own corpse in the cave, cold and bristling with arrows. But he was not dead, either. the shadows lean toward them like hungry, curious animals.
At the far end of the temple, seated upon a throne of shattered stone, the old man watched him. He watched Ryan.
"Who are you? Why me? And what is the price?"
Laughter echoed through the chamber. It didn't come from the old man's throat; it rose from the walls, the pillars, and the floor itself. It was a hollow, rolling sound that carried no warmth .
The old man rose. He was taller than he had appeared, his dark robes falling around him like shadows given weight. He descended the steps of his throne, his movements unhurried and lethal.
"Help you?" The laughter died. His voice became a low, terrible rasp. "No, boy. I do not help people. I make deals."
He stopped a few feet away, studying Ryan. "Tell me, what do you know of spirit energy?"
Ryan blinked, the question catching him off guard. "Stories," he said carefully. "Nobles who wake their spirits to gain the power of the elements. Healing. Strength beyond mortal limits. In my village... we were just hunters. We used our hands."
And they killed us anyway, the thought went unspoken, but it hung in the air like a whetted blade.
The old man began to circle him. Ryan turned with him,
"Spirit energy exists in everything," the old man said, his voice rhythmic. "In the dirt, the wind, and the gods themselves. Before there were kings or names for things, fourteen gods fought a war that nearly ground this world to dust. Humans were nothing but insects caught in the crossfire."
He stopped in front of Ryan.
"Then, a man named Doreso looked at the gods and realized a truth: if they could bleed, they could be surpassed. He was the first human to wake his spirit. He didn't hide the knowledge; he spread it. No gold required. No noble blood. Just the iron will to reach inside and find the spark. He built empires. He started wars. He changed the fundamental nature of existence."
The old man turned back toward his throne. "Every human has a spirit. Most let it sleep until the day they die. But you... you are not here because your spirit is asleep."
Ryan's jaw tightened. "You still haven't told me what you want."
"I want the body of twelve gods."
Ryan let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "My family is dead. My village is ash. I am a ghost talking to a corpse in a ruined temple. And you want me to kill gods? Book says only two gods have ever died, and they killed each other. No human can do this."
"A normal human cannot," the old man agreed.
He reached into the depths of his robes and pulled out an object that fit in the palm of his hand.
The temperature in the temple plummeted. The shadows screamed. The darkness at the edges of the room seemed to inhale.
In the old man's hand sat an eye. It was a deep, sickly green. It cast a light that made the ruins look like the bottom of a drowned ocean.
"This," the old man whispered, "is the Eye of Azrael. The Angel of Death."
Ryan stared at the orb. It felt like it was staring back.
"I have forged it into something new. A weapon and a prison. The one who carries this eye cannot truly die. Your body can be shattered, burned, or cut to pieces and it will rebuild itself. But immortality has a cost. Every 'resurrection' will drain years of your life, drawn from the souls you have harvested."
"When you kill, the spirit of your victim does not pass on. It is pulled into this eye. Into your mind. Their memories become yours. Their skills become yours. Their very life-force becomes your fuel. But you will carry them all. Every scream. Every memory. Every life you extinguish will live inside your head forever."
The old man's black eyes locked onto Ryan's. "Four men carried this before you. All of them went mad. The weight of a thousand voices broke them until they begged for the death the eye wouldn't give them. So, I ask you: Do you want to become a walking hell?"
Ryan went silent..
Something shifted in Ryan's chest. The grief didn't go away it just hardened into something sharper. Something with an edge.
"My life ended in that cave," Ryan said, his voice flat and cold. "There is nothing left to lose. If I am going to die, I'd rather die moving toward my enemies than rotting in the dark."
He reached out. His spirit hand closed around the eye.
The cold was instantaneous.the fire started.
Green flames erupted from his hand, racing up his arm and into his chest. It felt like his soul was being rewritten with a jagged needle. Ryan fell to his knees, a silent scream tearing through his spirit-form as the green light consumed him.The fire consumed him.
Ryan tried to scream, but the cold fire stole the breath from his lungs.
He fell to the stone floor of the ruined temple, writhing and twisting. His ghostly body contorted in ways that should have broken bones. The green flames licked at his skin, burrowing into his eyes, searing his very soul.
The old man watched.
, no satisfaction, , ancient and entirely still, watching the boy burn.
And then, Ryan opened his eyes.