Elrion sat in silence, his knees pressed into the holy marble of the war chamber beneath the Grand Cathedral of Origen. The stone was cold, unforgiving just as it should be. He welcomed its bite. He needed it. He needed something to ground him.
But nothing could erase the image now carved into his soul.
That figure.
That gaze.
The overwhelming pressure.
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Not a prayer. A purge.
'He shouldn't exist. Not anymore… not after everything we gave. Everything we destroyed.'
He had studied the scriptures for three decades. He had trained under Archpriests. He had walked across burning coals, survived divine storms, and seen heresy in its darkest forms.
But nothing had prepared him for the being that stepped from that coffin.
Zyneth.
The name was forbidden. It had been erased from the records, struck from every sermon, blackened on every sacred wall where it once stood. Elrion had only read it once, in a hidden tome locked beneath twelve layers of seal and sanction.
The Supreme God.
The original one.
The one the New Gods had replaced.
'No… not replaced. Sealed. Suppressed. Buried beneath time and fear.'
And now, awakened.
He felt his hands tremble again.
Only two other Apostles had survived the retreat from the ritual site. The others were gone wiped from existence. Not burned. Not wounded. Gone. As if they had never been born.
He could still hear the whisper in his mind from that moment silent, yet deafening:
[Judgment Initiated.]
It hadn't been a curse.
It hadn't even been a threat.
It was a sentence.
One carried out by something far beyond comprehension.
"Elrion," came a voice from behind. The door creaked as it opened, and he instinctively stood. Straightened his robes. Hid the tremor in his breath.
A tall figure entered the High Adjudicator of the Celestial Church. His white robes bore twenty golden sunbursts, each one signifying a war won, a heresy stamped out. His face was ageless and his eyes cold.
"You faced it," the Adjudicator said, voice smooth as silk and just as sharp. "Tell me what you saw."
Elrion hesitated. His tongue felt heavy.
"I…" he began, "I saw what the ancients feared. What our forebears bled to seal. I saw the Judgment incarnate."
The Adjudicator narrowed his eyes.
"Elaborate."
"He didn't cast a spell," Elrion muttered. "He didn't chant, nor summon, nor speak. He merely… existed. And existence answered him."
There was a long silence.
Finally, the Adjudicator turned and approached a wall lined with relics each one a blade, a staff, or a chain blessed by the Divines themselves.
"We knew this day might come," he said. "But not so soon. Not when the Seals were still active."
"They were," Elrion said, almost defensively. "He was still bound… weakened. But even that was enough to wipe out three Apostles and over forty templars."
"And yet he did not pursue you."
Elrion clenched his fists. That truth haunted him more than the loss.
"No. He let us go. That was intentional."
The Adjudicator's eyes glittered like obsidian. "Then he knows who we are. What we did. What we stand for."
Elrion nodded slowly.
"He remembers enough to know that we are his enemies."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then the Adjudicator walked to the center of the room and lit a censer. Incense rose in threads of gold and violet.
"The Council will convene," he said. "The other Apostles must be warned. And the High Church must prepare for the next phase."
Elrion looked up.
"The War of Return…"
"Has begun."
Elrion lowered his head. There had always been rumors. Whispers that the Old Gods would one day awaken, that the Sealing was incomplete, imperfect. He had dismissed them all as propaganda, the rantings of Clan remnants and rootless rebels clinging to lost faiths.
But now…
Now he wasn't sure if the Church was the savior of the world or its usurper.
'We silenced their names, burned their symbols, hunted their worshippers like animals... But did we ever stop to ask why the Ancients fought us so fiercely?'
His stomach twisted.
"Elrion," the Adjudicator said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts.
He snapped back to attention.
"You are not to speak of what you saw to the lesser clergy. Not even to the other Apostles, unless sanctioned. Understood?"
"Yes, High Adjudicator."
But as the man turned and left, Elrion remained kneeling in the dark, the incense smoke curling around him like phantom chains.
He no longer prayed.
He remembered.
The way Zyneth had moved calm, deliberate, sovereign. The way reality had bent around him, like a throne made of law and time.
'He did not scream or strike. He did not posture like a god. He simply… was. And the world obeyed.'
That, more than anything, terrified him.
Because if Zyneth had truly returned, then perhaps everything the Church had built…was a lie.