The sanctuary was a graveyard of golden ambition. Three of the Theogarchy's most powerful Bishops lay broken on the marble floor, their divine weapons extinguished, their sacred armor defiled. Ravi stood over the fresh corpse of Valerius, blood dripping from his fingertips. He felt nothing. No triumph, no satisfaction. Only the cold, clean logic of a task completed.
Behind him, his followers began to filter into the vast chamber. They were a battered, bloodied mess, but their eyes held a new, unholy light. They stared at the slain Bishops, then at their silent leader, and the last vestiges of their slave mentality burned away, replaced by the fervor of true belief. They had not just fought for their freedom; they had stormed the heavens and found them empty.
Velvara rushed to his side, her face a mixture of relief and anguish. "You are unharmed," she breathed, her eyes scanning him for any sign of injury, despite having witnessed his impossible regeneration.
Ravi simply wiped his bloody hand on his ragged tunic. The act was so mundane it was profane, a god treating the blood of a holy man like common grime.
But their victory was a stone dropped into a very large, very dark pond. The ripples were spreading far beyond the Ruinspire Ward. The death of three consecrated Bishops was an act of war not just against the local Temple, but against the entire High Theogarchy. It was a challenge that could not be ignored.
As if summoned by the thought, the air in the sanctuary grew thick and heavy. The light from the oculus dimmed, and a pressure descended that made the very air difficult tobreathe. It was a presence of immense, suffocating power.
A figure descended from the oculus, floating down to the temple floor as if gravity were a polite suggestion he was choosing to ignore. He was not a priest or a guard. He was a warrior of impossible stature, clad in obsidian armor so perfectly polished it seemed to drink the light. His helmet was shaped like the snarling visage of a dragon, and from its slits, two eyes glowed with the intensity of firelight. Strapped to his back was a colossal greatsword that seemed too large for any mortal to wield.
This was no mere servant of the gods. This was one of them. Or the closest thing to it.
"Serikan Vaul," Velvara whispered, her voice tight with dread. She instinctively stepped in front of Ravi, her dagger held ready. "Bearer of the Apostolic Sin of Pride. The Unbroken General of the Southern Expanse."
Serikan landed on the marble floor without a sound. He surveyed the scene—the dead Bishops, the ragged army of slum dwellers, and finally, Ravi. His firelight eyes narrowed.
"A rat king leading his plague-bearers into the halls of lions," Serikan's voice boomed, amplified by his helmet into a sound of rolling thunder. "I felt the death-cries of these weaklings from my citadel a hundred leagues away. I came expecting a demon lord, or a rival god. I find... this."
He gestured dismissively at Ravi. "A parasite in beggar's rags. You have the stink of power on you, filth, but it is a stolen, bastardized energy. You are nothing."
Serikan's power was a tangible force. His pride was not a simple emotion; it was a law of his being. His aura projected an overwhelming sense of superiority that crushed the wills of those around him. Ravi's followers buckled, many falling to their knees, their newfound courage dissolving under the sheer weight of Serikan's presence. Even Velvara trembled, her defiant stance costing her dearly as she fought the crushing psychic pressure.
Ravi, however, remained unaffected. He looked at the glorious, terrifying general as a man might look at a loud, colorful insect. He was an interesting specimen, but ultimately, insignificant.
"I have slain true gods," Serikan continued, his voice dripping with contempt as he took a thunderous step forward. "I have shattered armies with a single swing of my blade. You are a footnote. An amusing anecdote I will tell after I have flayed the skin from your bones. Tell me your name, parasite, so that I may remember what to carve on the latrine stone I make of your tomb."
Ravi was silent. He did not prepare a stance. He did not summon a weapon. He simply watched the demigod approach.
Serikan took this silence as cowardice. He laughed, a harsh, metallic sound. "Nothing to say? Then die in the ignominy you deserve!"
He reached for the greatsword on his back, his pride swelling to a crescendo. In his mind, in his very soul, he was invincible. His power was absolute. Defeat was a concept as alien to him as humility.
It was in that moment, as Serikan's pride reached its zenith, that Ravi acted.
He did not speak a decree. He did not move to attack. He simply raised his right hand to shoulder height and snapped his fingers.
The sound was small. A simple, dry click.
The effect was cosmic.
A sphere of absolute, perfect blackness erupted from Ravi's position. It did not explode with fire or energy; it expanded with the chilling silence of the void. It was not darkness; it was the utter absence of space and law. Within that 50-foot sphere, the fundamental rule of gravity was rewritten. It did not weaken or reverse. It multiplied. A thousandfold. A millionfold.
Serikan Vaul, the Unbroken General, the Apostolic Sin of Pride, was caught at its edge.
His arrogant posture vanished. His body was slammed into the marble floor with the force of a falling moon. The divine, obsidian armor, which could withstand the breath of a dragon, crumpled and cracked under the impossible pressure. The marble beneath him shattered, creating a crater as his body was driven into the stone.
He let out a choked, agonized roar as his own pride—his own concept of self—was crushed along with his bones. The firelight in his eyes sputtered and died, replaced by the sheer, uncomprehending terror of a being who had never known helplessness.
The black gravity vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Serikan lay in the crater, a broken mess of shattered armor and shattered bone, whimpering. He was alive, but only just. His invincibility, the very core of his power and being, had been broken by a snap of the fingers.
Ravi walked to the edge of the crater and looked down at the broken demigod. He could have killed him. He could have erased him from existence as he had the Warden. But death was a mercy. Humiliation was a message.
He looked up, his ashen eyes sweeping over his own terrified followers, over the cowering form of Serikan, and out into the world beyond, as if addressing all the false gods at once.
He bent down, picked up a pebble from the shattered floor, and tossed it into the crater. It landed softly on Serikan's cracked breastplate.
"Go tell your false gods," Ravi said, his voice quiet yet carrying to every corner of the silent sanctuary.
"I'm coming."