Chapter 4: False Crowns and Hollow Cheers

The sky above was torn silk—red, black, and gold threads swirling in unnatural patterns.

He stood at the edge of the forgotten battlefield, staring at the floating citadel in the distance. It pulsed with divine energy. A place where only the chosen were allowed to walk. The place where his name had been stripped, his fate devoured.

The World Tree of Ascension.
The seat of the “True Heroes.”

He remembered it well—because he had once climbed it.

Not as a savior. But as a sacrifice.

The ground trembled as a caravan of knights approached the ruin trail.

Gold armor. Crests of purity. Faces full of arrogance.

At their center rode a girl in white—youthful, with light blue eyes that shimmered like blessings, yet pierced like blades. Her name? Seraphina Luxhart, the current Saint of Radiance.

She looked straight ahead. Never down. Never at the dead. Never at the broken.

Behind her, townspeople cheered and waved flags embroidered with her sigil.

"Behold the blessed!"
"All hail Seraphina! The Light of Salvation!"

He watched from the shadows of the broken statue where his name once stood.

The crowd had forgotten him. The world had overwritten him.

Only ruins whispered his story now.

A boy beside him, barely thirteen, clutched a rusted pendant.

“She saved my village,” the boy whispered. “She’s amazing.”

He didn’t respond. His fingers trembled slightly.

Not from anger. Not yet. From the overwhelming hollowness of it all.

He once saved villages. He once stood in that same light.
And when he bled for them—no one remembered.

“Do you think their light heals everyone?”

The voice inside him—calm, ancient, and cruel—rattled the edges of his sanity.

“Light casts the deepest shadows.”

He closed his eyes.

A whisper of Tsuyoi coiled around his spine—gentle as sorrow, sharp as regret.

Suddenly, the ground beneath the cheering crowd cracked.

Gasps. Panic.

But before chaos could bloom, Seraphina raised her hand.
A divine sigil glowed behind her—Scripture of Dawn.

Holy energy surged from her body like waves of gold, mending the cracks, calming the quake.

The people cheered louder. Louder than ever.

No one questioned where the quake came from.

No one saw his eyes glowing faint crimson beneath the hood.

He didn’t cause it.

But he didn’t stop it either.

The world worshipped false legends now.

And so, he walked away—not to fight them, not yet.

But to build his own mythology.

One not written in prophecy, but carved in betrayal, grief, and unholy power.

“Let them cheer. When they cry, it will be real.”

He vanished into the mist, the Tsuyoi sigil etched faintly behind him.

No prayers would protect them when he returned.

Only truths.

And blood.