The sword that defends heaven

The silence after Rael's roar weighed heavier than the destruction itself. The blood-red sunset poured its crimson light onto the ruins of Elberath, casting everything in infernal silhouette. Amidst it all, two focal points stood in stark contrast: one on the ground, broken by grief; one in the air, magnificent in its cruelty.

Still clutching Selie's cooling body, Rael stared at his father. The figure, cloaked in a black uniform that seemed to absorb hope, hovered with sickening majesty. The cold, wordless gaze finally broke.

"Stand," Velkarion's voice resonated, not with anger, but with the calm of a teacher about to begin a lesson. "Mourning will change nothing. This is your first lesson in reality."

"W-why?" Rael whispered, his voice hoarse with tears and dust. "They… they worshipped you. I… I worshipped you."

Velkarion descended slowly, his feet landing silently on the ground, a few meters from his son. "Their worship is a testament to failure. Your softness is your greatest flaw." He gestured around them, at the shattered corpses. "Look at this world, Rael. Fragile. Filled with unnecessary emotions, contradictions, and weaknesses they call 'humanity.' It is a disease. And I am the cure."

The explanation made no sense. It was the ravings of a madman. "You're a monster!" Rael screamed, anger finally burning away his grief.

"I am the savior," Velkarion corrected, his tone flat. "I was sent here to prepare Virelya for the 'Unification of Will.' To reshape this flawed reality into something stable, something worthy. This village, with its false love and kindness, was the first tumor to be removed."

He looked at Selie's body in Rael's arms. "And your attachment to this mortal," he said with a chillingly contemptuous tone, "is proof that you are a failed experiment. The Velmorth blood in your veins should have made you a god, not a sniveling child. You disappoint."

Those words, sharper than any sword, ripped through Rael's remaining sanity. Something inside him snapped. With a cry that no longer sounded human, he gently laid Selie's body down, then lunged forward.

In the central continent, Asterin, Cassien of the Order of Protectors, was meditating in the Temple of Light. Suddenly, he gasped, his hand clutching his chest. The aether around him vibrated violently, not from magic, but from a surge of raw emotion so powerful it felt like a physical scream in the spirit realm. Beside him, Kara Ironflame, sharpening her hammer, stood up straight. "Did you feel that?" she growled. "This power… wild. Brutal."

The fight couldn't even be called a fight. It was a massacre.

As Rael charged, his anger-fueled fist met Velkarion's casually raised palm. There was no impact. Rael's entire momentum vanished. Velkarion grasped his wrist, and with a weightless movement, slammed Rael into the ground.

CRACK!

The ground beneath him shattered, and Rael felt his ribs crumble. Before he could scream, Velkarion dragged him with one hand, Rael's face plowing through blood-soaked earth and splintered wood. He was dragged across the square, past the corpses of his friends, a tour of hell guided by his own father.

"Power without purpose is meaningless rage," Velkarion said as he continued walking, dragging his son like a rag doll. "Our purpose is perfection. Order. And that demands sacrifice."

With a roar, he threw Rael. Rael's body shot like a projectile, crashing into the remains of Old Man Hrolf's blacksmith shop, shattering the remaining stone walls before finally coming to a stop. Rael coughed, spitting blood and dust. Every inch of his body screamed in agony.

He tried to rise, but Velkarion was already before him, hovering slightly above the ground. "You want to be a hero to them? These creatures couldn't even save themselves. How could they possibly be an anchor for someone destined to rule the stars?"

Velkarion lunged, seizing Rael's neck and lifting him into the air. They ascended with terrifying speed, the destroyed village shrinking to a tiny dot below. The wind roared past Rael's ears, but all he could hear was his panicked heartbeat. Then, they stopped, suspended between a fractured moon and a dying world.

"Lesson two: gravity is our plaything," Velkarion whispered.

Then he dropped him.

Rael fell. He slammed into the peak of the nearest mountain with the force of a meteor. Rocks shattered, an avalanche of snow and rock burying him alive. In the suffocating darkness, surrounded by the pressure of thousands of tons of rock, his bones ground to dust. Darkness began to creep at the edges of his vision.

Then, on the brink of death, something else rose.

The Velmorth blood in his veins, dormant until now by love and humanity, finally surged. The excruciating pain transformed into an alien fire that burned. His brutal regeneration began, not as gentle healing, but as a violent process that forcibly knit his bones and flesh back together. The black mark on his chest burned. His violet eyes now blazed with a cold golden light.

With a mountain-shaking roar, Rael burst from his rocky tomb. A new and terrifying power—a power of reversed gravity, of energy annihilation—flowed within him.

In the Temple of Time's Flow in Kyreth, Yharnas Seerblind opened his blind eyes. "A knot of fate," he whispered. "Just forced open. Not by choice, but by destruction."

Rael shot into the sky, pursuing his father. He was no longer sniveling. He was no longer human. He was rage given form. He slammed into Velkarion with all his newfound power.

For the first time, Velkarion looked slightly surprised. He raised his arm to block, and the impact created a shockwave that ripped apart the clouds around them.

"Ah," Velkarion said, a slight smile playing on his lips. "There it is."

Their brief fight tore at the sky. Each of Rael's hate-filled blows was easily deflected. Each of his wild energy blasts was effortlessly turned aside. He was fast, but his father was lightning. He was strong, but his father was absolute power.

In desperation, Rael focused all his power into one blow. He managed to break through his father's defenses and land a solid hit on Velkarion's face.

BAM!

The sound echoed like thunder. For a moment, everything was silent. Velkarion's head tilted slightly to the side. He wasn't injured. He wasn't even scratched. The impact was utterly meaningless.

He slowly turned back to Rael, his smile gone. His eyes blazed with icy disappointment. "Are you finished?"

Before Rael could react, a fist slammed into his gut. The air exploded from his lungs. Velkarion then proceeded to pummel his face, his back, his legs, a barrage of blows so fast Rael couldn't even see them. It was utter humiliation.

The final blow sent Rael back to earth. He fell like a stone, crashing right into the middle of the ruined village, creating a small crater where he landed.

He lay there, every bone in his body shattered for the second time. His newly awakened regeneration slowed, overwhelmed by the immense damage. Velkarion landed softly beside him. He looked down at his battered, bloody son's face. Then, he raised his foot and stepped on Rael's face, pressing it into the ground soaked with Selie's blood.

CRUNCH.

"Remember this lesson, Rael," Velkarion said, his voice coming from above. "In this universe, there is only one law: the strong will shape the world to their will. You are weak. And as long as you let your human feelings poison you, you will always be weak."

He lifted his foot. "I will return for you. At that time, you will choose: join me as a Velmorth, or die as the last defect of this old world."

With that, Velkarion soared into the sky, shrinking to a tiny black dot before vanishing completely, leaving his son alone in the midst of his own hell.

Rael lay there, broken and helpless. His agonizing regeneration slowly worked, each cell knitting back together a torment. Around him, total silence. Within him, too, silence. The boy from Elberath was dead. The young hero who dreamed was gone.

Only one thing remained, one feeling that burned hotter than any sun, colder than any void.

Hatred.

And a new promise formed in the silence of his shattered soul. Not a promise to become stronger to protect anyone.

But a promise to kill the god he once called father.