Chapter 17 – Crimson Feathers, Burnt Wings

Ash drifted from the heavens like cursed snow.

The once-pristine sky was now a bleeding canvas, painted in hues of crimson and smoke. The city of Lysmire—once proud, once golden—burned beneath a storm of feathers. Not angelic. Not divine. But twisted, malformed remnants of something holy, turned wrong.

A figure walked through the embers.

Barefoot.

Unscorched.

Alive.

“Kairos…” a voice rasped behind him, weak and war-torn.

He didn’t turn around.

His cloak, shredded and singed, billowed in a wind that didn’t exist. His right arm still leaked blood—black, tainted by an Erosion he hadn’t yet fully contained. But his gaze stayed fixed on the cathedral ahead. Its spires were collapsing, one by one, each crumble like the death rattle of a broken god.

“You… destroyed them all,” the voice coughed again.

Kairos stopped walking.

“Destroyed?” he echoed. “No.”

He slowly turned, revealing his face. Eyes—not glowing, but burning—held no mercy. “I unveiled the truth. They just couldn’t bear to live in it.”

Behind him, the creature that had once been Seraph Elyon—the highest guardian of the Temple—trembled. Wings clipped, feathers aflame, divinity leaking like oil from its wounds.

“You were never meant to exist,” it snarled through broken teeth. “You were erased for a reason.”

Kairos knelt beside it, pressing his palm to its charred chest. “And yet here I am. Living. Breathing. Undoing.”

The ground cracked beneath them.

Dark roots erupted from the cobbled streets, wrapping around the cathedral like veins strangling a heart. Screams echoed from below—souls awakened, disturbed, reclaimed.

“Stop… this…” Elyon pleaded. “You’ll collapse the balance…”

Kairos leaned close. “There’s no balance in a world built on silence.”

He stood and turned his back for the last time.

“Burn with your truths, Elyon. The age of gods ends tonight.”

The cathedral roared one final time before imploding into darkness.

And above it all, from the eye of the storm, a new sigil formed in the sky—black and red, etched in flame, the symbol of the Forgotten One.