The Dark Saint

Aciel was born with eyes that bled darkness. Marked by stigmata in a form believed impossible, he was cast aside by the very Church meant to embrace him. Raised in the hollow of a sunlit temple, Aciel lived not as a child of prophecy but as a heathen and a slave—his every breath a blasphemy, his gaze a curse. The faithful whispered he was touched by something unholy, that the Light could never brand a soul so wrong. They were half right. Unbeknownst to them, Aciel’s blood is the last thread of a forgotten bloodline—one forged in ancient power and divine defiance. Since birth, he has been shadowed by a God not of Light, but of secrets: a being whose dominion spans throughout the World itself. This god has never spoken aloud, but it has watched. Waited. Whispers of its will echo faintly in Aciel’s thoughts. When Aciel is conscripted into a holy crusade alongside, he dares to believe he has a place. A purpose. But when the mission falls to ruin, and the Paladins abandon him in the depths of a cursed forest, all illusions shatter. Reborn in darkness, Aciel emerges changed. No longer the boy beaten by faith, nor the heretic they feared—but a force shaped by forbidden magic and divine knowledge. Hunted by the Church, armed with secrets that could unravel centuries of holy lies, he begins a path across a world rotting beneath the weight of its own righteousness. His journey soon brings him into conflict—and uneasy alliance—with Solomon, a sorcerer of Ash and Cinder bound to the infamous mercenary company known as the Bloody Lotus. A man wreathed in smoke and riddles, Solomon burns with both destructive magic and dangerous conviction. He is neither saint nor savior, but he recognizes the fire in Aciel—and the abyss behind his eyes. Whether friend, rival, or something in between, Solomon becomes an anchor in Aciel’s unraveling world. Together, they walk through wars both holy and forgotten, face down relics of a dead age, and challenge the very structure of divine order. But as the truth of Aciel’s bloodline unfurls, and the Voice in the dark grows stronger, one question burns through all others: Is Aciel a weapon of an exiled god—or the beginning of something worse? Because saints are not born. They are made. And Aciel is the last of his kind—forsaken by the Light, forged in shadow, and marked by a divinity the world is not ready to remember.