CHAPTER 127: A PRAYER

I barely had time to register it—that sickening, gnawing realization that the mage hadn’t fallen to my marks, hadn’t bent to my command like every other poor zealot I’d carved into before.

No transformation, no velvet obedience, no sudden pivot to eyeliner and a corset. Nothing. Just obsidian, still and silent, his body humming with a refusal that seemed older than gods.

Which, if you ask me, was very unfair. I put a lot of effort into those marks. A bit of blood, a dash of timing, a sprinkle of panic—that was artisanal spellwork right there.

And what thanks did I get? His boot. His very large, very obsidian-covered boot ramming straight into my ribs.

The world folded in on itself, all breath, bone, and oh shit in chorus as I went sailing like the world’s unluckiest carnival prize.

I had the vague impression of cobblestones beneath me one second, then nothing but air followed by the satisfying crunch of a building deciding to catch me with the enthusiasm of an angry aunt catching a wedding bouquet.

My body bent at angles it wasn’t fond of. The wood splintered around me, stone bit into my back, and my soul left a brief forwarding address in the clouds before slinking back into my wheezing chest.

Silence, for half a heartbeat. Then pain—deep, blossoming, radiant pain, the sort of pain that makes you contemplate what organs are strictly necessary and whether you could get by on a skeleton and a winning smile alone.

My lungs screamed mutiny, my ribs whined like overworked violin strings, and my head was so dizzy it tried to convince me that maybe this was all a dream and if I just went back to sleep, I’d wake up somewhere sensible. Like a nice prison cell. Or hell.

The plaza reacted before I did.

I heard it, the sound that rolled through the chaos like a collective gasp from an audience that hadn’t realized the play was bloody improv. A stunned shock rippled outward, voices breaking, weapons pausing mid-swing. Not for me—saints no, I’m not that lucky—but for what came next.

Rodrick.

Saints preserve me, Rodrick, my loyal companion, the one who’d held my lines together when all else collapsed, the one who barked orders even when his teeth rattled, the one who insisted on honor when the rest of us had long since sold ours for spare change and survival—Rodrick took the mage’s backhand.

I saw it. Through the haze, through the blur of my half-conscious sight, I saw it. The gauntlet swung with the casual disinterest of a man swatting a fly.

Rodrick raised his blade too late, far too late, and the strike crashed across his face with a noise that didn’t belong in this world.

It was wet. It was sharp. It was final.

He crumpled—no, not even crumpled. He collapsed, body folding like a tent struck by wind, his voice cracking into a mangled cry that lanced through my chest worse than any wound I’d suffered tonight. My heart stopped, staggered, and then roared back to life in my ears.

"Rodrick!" I shouted, my throat raw, my lungs aflame. "Get up, you bastard, don’t you dare—don’t you—"

But my voice cracked apart, drowned by the hammering in my head. I tried to rise, to stagger toward him, but my legs gave out almost instantly.

I was crawling at best, dragging myself across the broken stones with the dignity of a worm who’d had a really bad week.

My pen clattered somewhere to my right, my stopwatch to my left, both just out of reach, both mocking me with their silence. The mage towered, obsidian frame gleaming with violet light, his blade already raised again.

I screamed, not words but rage, raw and useless, my voice cracking through blood and spit. I think I cursed every saint I knew by name and a few I invented on the spot, offering their divine heads for the mage’s piss pot if he dared strike again.

My body thrashed against its own weakness, but saints above, I was failing, I was failing him, failing all of them.

Then, salvation wore fangs and fury.

Salem.

He didn’t step, didn’t walk, didn’t saunter in with one of his usual smirks. No. He erupted into existence, a blur of steam and violence, twin blades flashing as he intercepted the descending arc with a shriek of steel.

The impact shook the entire plaza, sparks hissing outward, the world cracking beneath him.

And then he shoved.

With every ounce of wrath his body could muster, he shoved the King-Class mage back. His roar split the air, a feral, animal-like howl that seemed to claw at the pits of the world itself.

The mage actually faltered then, his perfect balance cracking under the hurricane that was Salem unleashed.

The sight was both awe-inspiring and deeply, profoundly stupid, which, in all fairness, described Salem perfectly.

I tried to shout encouragement, some witty quip about stabbing harder, but my lungs refused to contribute. All I managed was a cough that might’ve been mistaken for applause if you were very generous or very deaf.

The mage regained his footing quickly but Salem didn’t let up. His blades blurred, slashing, stabbing, carving arcs of steel that forced the obsidian monster backward step by step. For once—just once—it wasn’t us clinging to survival. It was him.

And then, in the cruel way of all things, the mage shifted.

A gauntleted hand slammed into Salem’s chest. I saw it—the way the violet light pulsed outward, the way the air itself tilted wrong.

And then—

Salem’s body began to rise, dragged upward as his field of gravity inverted. His feet tore from the stones, his body lifting like a puppet on invisible strings.

"Shit—!" I croaked, my nails scraping stone.

But Salem didn’t panic. Instead he grabbed. His hands clutched the seams of the mage’s armor, fingers digging into obsidian cracks, anchoring himself with sheer, furious defiance.

He snarled, spitting in the mage’s face, refusing to drift away like the rest of us would have.

The mage, perhaps annoyed, broke the spell. And then—because the gods adore cruelty—he caught Salem from behind as he fell. One swift twist, one smooth rotation, and the entire world blurred as the mage spun full-circle and hurled him across the plaza.

Salem flew like a bullet, like a star, a comet mid flight, his body streaking through smoke and fire before slamming into the far wall of another building with a thunderous crash. The stones cracked. The wall caved. Dust and debris collapsed over him in a plume.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

A broken, wheezing laugh, because in that second I knew that everything was falling apart. Rodrick was dying, Salem had been flung, Dunny was on his knees muttering desperate prayers,

Nara’s ears pressed flat in terror, cradling the knight still bleeding out in silence from his previous injury. It was the sort of collapse that begged for a cosmic drumroll before the final curtain.

And to make matters even worse, that was when I heard it.

A grunt.

Deep, guttural, the kind of sound that makes your skin remember every bad decision you’ve ever made.

I turned—or rather, rolled half onto my side, because standing was a luxury I no longer understood—and saw him.

The stitched man. He was back.

Gone was the docile stare, the pitiful patience of a beast tugged along on the lady’s leash. His eyes burned now, raw with bloodlust, a quiet fury stitched into every seam of his monstrous body. His chest heaved, his muscles twitched, his maul hung heavy at his side like a thunderbolt waiting for the release of a storm.

He wasn’t looking at me. Saints, thank the stars, he wasn’t looking at me.

He was looking at the mage.

The air seemed to shudder at the weight of it, at the inevitability of those two...things...colliding.

However, the mage didn’t even look at the stitched man. Not really. He glanced at him the way a man glances at the weather—acknowledging it only long enough to know if he needs an umbrella.

His focus remained on Rodrick, on the pathetic heap of flesh and armor writhing in the dirt, still trying to rise even though one half of his face seemed to be caved in.

There was a hunger in the mage’s stance, a precision. He didn’t simply want to kill Rodrick—he wanted to finish him, to polish the edge of his cruelty until it gleamed.

And my heart... it dropped. Not gently, not like a coin into a fountain. No, it plunged like a stone tossed from a cliff, dragging everything in me with it.

Because I knew. In that instant, in that brief flicker of terrible clarity, I knew: if I didn’t do something, Rodrick would die. He would die alone, under the crushing weight of obsidian and steel, forgotten in a plaza of corpses while nobles laughed overhead.

I tried. Saints, I tried to reach him.

But my leg—gods, my leg lit up with pain so sharp it felt like lightning had decided to roost in my thigh. I bit down on the scream, my teeth cutting into my tongue until the taste of copper drowned me.

And then they moved.

The mage began his slow, deliberate march toward Rodrick, obsidian boots scraping softly against broken cobblestone. Every step sounded like a clock ticking down to death.

The stitched man moved differently. No patience, no measured grace—just raw, bounding violence. He tore across the plaza, his maul dragging sparks as he crushed zealots and competitors alike.

Flesh splattered. Bones cracked. People screamed, their cries cut short as he barreled through them with blind, seething rage.

Damn it, no. Please! Not like this!

I began slamming my forehead into the stone beneath me. Once. Twice. Again and again. I wanted the pain to be louder than my thoughts, wanted the sting to drown out the shame burning inside me.

Because I knew what was happening, and saints help me, I knew I had nothing left. No tricks. No time. No hope.

So I did the only thing left to do. The thing I’d mocked my whole life. The thing I swore I’d never lower myself to.

I prayed.

Not to any saint—no, they’d already spat in my direction enough times. Not to the gods of Soloris, whose priests I’d murdered with pen and wit in equal measure. Not even to fate, that cruel mistress who delights in stringing me along just to watch me trip.

No. I prayed to her.

The woman in the cube. The one whose humming I had heard in my worst moments, whose presence lingered at the edges of my survival like the scent of smoke after a fire.

The one who had guided me, whispered through the marrow of my being with something that was neither mercy nor cruelty, but both at once.

"Please," I rasped, voice catching in my throat, "please, if you’re still there, if you’re listening—"

My words choked. My chest heaved. My hands trembled against the stones.

"I don’t deserve it. Gods, fuck—I don’t deserve anything. I’ve lied. I’ve stolen. I’ve used. I’ve taken men and stripped them down to pretty things because it amused me. I’ve built my strength on lust, on cruelty, on sins no priest could ever absolve."

The words spilled faster now, ugly, jagged, and raw.

"And I liked

it. Saints help me, I liked it! I laughed while I broke them, while I bent them, while I made them mine! And if that damns me, then let me be damned, because I can’t pretend it wasn’t me. It was. Every sin, every indulgence, every wicked little thought—I wore it like a crown, draped it across my shoulders, painted it across my smile, hid behind it like a mask of perfection. The clever man, the flawless manipulator, the one who never faltered. All of it is a goddam lie, a costume stitched together from my sins so no one would ever see how hollow I truly was!"

Tears began burning into my eyes.

"I’ve sinned, yes. But they didn’t...Salem, Rodrick, Dunny, Nara—they don’t deserve this! Not them. They’re innocent, gods damn it, they’re innocent! They followed me into this mess because I dragged them along and told them that it mattered!"

My voice cracked into a scream.

"Rodrick’s face is shattered because of me. Salem’s body is breaking because of me. Dunny’s prayers are going unanswered because of me! Nara’s throwing his rabbits into the fire because of me. They’re dying in this cursed plaza for me—for my selfish dream, my pathetic hunger, my pride. They never asked for this! They never deserved this!"

I slammed my fists against the stone, pain radiating through my arms.

"So damn me! Damn me a thousand times! Drag me to hell, tear me apart, bind me in chains—I don’t care! Just let them live! Please, let them live!"

My voice had become a roar now, torn from the pit of my chest, scraping raw with self-hatred.

"I was the one who wanted power. I was the one who wanted the throne. I was the one who thought I could play gods and kings like pawns. If there’s a price to pay, it’s mine! If there’s blood to spill, it’s mine! Not theirs! Never theirs!"

The plaza roared around me—screams, steel, thunder—but in that moment, I barely heard it. My own prayer drowned everything. My screams clawed against the heavens, desperate, pathetic, pitiful.

And then, silence.

No—not silence. Humming.

Soft. Old. Familiar. It resonated not in my ears but in my bones, a vibration in the marrow, a lullaby for sins. I froze, my chest heaving, my eyes wide, tears streaking my blood-stained cheeks. The sound filled me, wrapped me, pulled me into a warmth I didn’t understand.

And then the voice came.

Not loud. Not soft. Simply certain.

"You have been forgiven."

The words shattered me. Forgiven?! Me? Forgiven for the lust, the cruelty, the selfishness, the endless parade of sins I’d worn like jewels? No. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. But the words didn’t care for my protests. They sank deep, deeper, into the cracks of my soul, filling them with light I had never believed I deserved.

And then came the power.

Pure, raw, and unrestricted.

It didn’t just flow into me. No, it erupted. My veins burned, every nerve alight with the sheer force of unfiltered energy.

My chest arched, my mouth tearing open in a scream that wasn’t pain but release. My body convulsed, not breaking, but reforging, every muscle, every bone, every ounce of flesh flooded with strength that had no mortal origin.

The plaza itself seemed to quake, the humming echoing outward, rattling through stone and steel.

It was then that a devastating wind tore suddenly into existence, shrieking around my figure in wild, punishing gusts, whipping dust and ash into the air.

Banners ripped from their poles, cloaks snapped like thunder, the very breath of the city dragged into the storm of me.

Men froze mid-swing. Nobles above paused in their laughter, faces frozen in disbelief. I staggered, trembling, but I did not fall.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t running on wit, spite, or hubris. I was running on something older, deeper, and terrible in its grace.

Forgiveness.

And gods help me—I was going to make them choke on it.