The first thing he noticed… was breath.
Cold air slid into his lungs like it had never been there before. Sharp. Thin. Mortal.
Auren Vael opened his eyes to a twilight sky torn down the middle—a jagged seam of crimson light bleeding through clouds, as if Heaven itself had suffered a wound. He lay upon blackened soil that pulsed faintly beneath him, as though the ground still remembered the battles of forgotten ages.
He rose slowly. Muscles stiff, bones heavier. There was no divine echo in his veins, no voice of the Tribunal whispering judgment. Only silence. Unfamiliar. Deafening.
He looked at his hands. Human. Flesh and blood. No radiant armor. No glowing sigils. His blade—the Deliverance—was gone.
All of it had been stripped clean from him.
Except… the scar.
A single crimson line etched diagonally across his chest. It glowed faintly beneath the torn fabric of simple traveler's robes. Not pain. Not curse. A mark. Left by the gods not as punishment, but as acknowledgment.
Auren had chosen rebirth. Chosen to fall from celestial heights and walk again as man.
"I am no longer their Knight," he whispered, voice low and unfamiliar in his throat."Let the world judge itself now."
The landscape before him was a valley—scarred, ash-gray, but not lifeless. Strange trees grew twisted toward the light. Small lights flickered in the distance: a village, perhaps. Smoke curled from chimneys.
And somewhere… far beyond the hills… he felt it.
Karma. Tainted. Screaming.
It was subtle, like blood in water. But it was there. Threads of unresolved wrongness slithered through the realm like serpents beneath stone.
Auren closed his eyes.
The instinct returned, primal and uninvited. The urge to raise a blade that wasn't there. To pass judgment. To purge.
But there was no Tribunal now.
There was only him.
He walked for hours. Mortals watched from afar—suspicious, silent. They saw only a pale-haired man with sharp eyes, wrapped in worn robes, moving like a ghost that had forgotten it had died.
He found the village just as the sun bled out over the horizon.
A child screamed.
Smoke. Fire. Panic.
Bandits. Or worse.
Auren didn't hesitate. He stepped forward… and something inside him cracked.
The scar on his chest burned gold.
From the shadows of memory, the Blade of Deliverance shimmered back into form—half-real, forged from the leftover light of divine judgment.
"Even uncalled… it still answers," he muttered.
The villagers watched as the silver-white blade appeared in his hand, humming with power not meant for mortal soil.
His cloak flared behind him like wings catching light.
And then, without war cry or warning, he moved.
The first bandit didn't even see the blade—only the flash of karmic flame as it cleaved through his soul, severing sin from flesh. Auren spun, fast and silent, the rhythm of death flowing back into his body like it had never left.
Soul Purification. Partial. Controlled. Barely.
And then… it was done.
The fires died. The screams stopped.
Only Auren remained, standing amidst smoking corpses and wide-eyed villagers. A child tugged at his robe, whispering:
"Are you… a hero?"
He didn't answer.
He looked at the blade in his hand, and for the first time… felt its weight.
"No," he said quietly. "I am a reminder."
In the heavens, far above the mortal clouds, three eyes opened in the dark.The Karmic Flame had reignited.And the Tribunal stirred.
"He fell from the heavens not to save, but to witness;Where angels turn blind, the ash remembers.No halo above him, only a scar—A mark not of mercy, but memory."
~ Sky_Dragomir