The flames had gone out.
The Iron Citadel was now a ruin, its molten core cooled to black stone. The tyrant was dead. The people had not cheered. There had been no triumph.
Only silence.
Rein had vanished the moment it was done.
He didn't return to the city. Didn't wait to be thanked. There were no thanks. No celebrations. No mourning. Just ash.
And the ash followed him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else.
A room.
Spacious. Silent. Clean.
The walls were smooth and white, made of a material he couldn't name. The floor was dark, polished stone. Furniture was minimal — a low table, a single chair, a bed that had never been used. The ceiling rose high, with soft ambient light that came from nowhere.
But it was the view that struck him.
Floor-to-ceiling glass panels stretched across one wall, showing a city that didn't belong to any world he had ever walked.
Skyscrapers rose like titans of steel and chrome. Lights pulsed across their surfaces like veins of magic. Drones drifted between the towers, silent as ghosts. Far below, roads twisted in patterns that defied logic. Far above, stars hung suspended in a sky so vast and so clear it made his chest ache.
He approached the window.
The stars didn't move.
It was as if the entire world had been stilled.
Frozen.
Preserved.
A waiting room.
The god appeared without a sound.
A presence before it was a form.
And then — Arios stood behind him, wearing the shape Rein had come to recognize: robed in starlight, faceless, glowing.
"You've done well," Arios said.
Rein didn't turn.
"Is it done?"
"One target. One victory. One thread cut."
Rein closed his eyes. "You said I would see her again."
"You will."
He turned. Slowly.
"When?"
The god tilted his head. "When her sins have been paid."
Rein's fists clenched. "I've paid enough."
"Not yet."
Silence.
Arios drifted closer. "Her soul is preserved, exactly as promised. But such souls carry weight. Guilt does not vanish with death."
"Then what am I doing here?" Rein asked. "Am I her executioner? Her redeemer? Or just your dog?"
"You are a path."
Rein stared at him. "A path to what?"
"Balance."
The room shifted.
Not physically — but conceptually. Something in the air changed.
Arios raised one hand.
A sword appeared.
It hovered between them — massive, two-handed, edged with jagged obsidian and glowing with traces of emberlight.
Valen's sword.
Rein didn't move.
"This is your reward," Arios said. "The Tyrant's blade. Purged of corruption. Still heavy with meaning."
Rein stepped forward slowly.
The weapon lowered into his grasp. It was warm. Familiar. The handle still bore the indentations of Valen's grip.
He hated how natural it felt.
"I killed him," Rein said.
"Yes."
"But he was broken by what you allowed."
A pause.
"You forged him through silence."
Arios said nothing.
Rein's voice grew harder. "What happens to him now?"
"His soul is not erased," the god said. "He will be reborn. In a world without fire. He will live quietly. He will know peace."
Rein looked down at the blade.
"Then why not me?"
"Because you carry her sins."
The blade burned faintly in his hands.
Not in heat — but memory.
He remembered Valen kneeling.
The look in his eyes before the end.
Regret. Not madness.
He had been human, all the way down.
And Rein had ended him.
By divine order.
"I want to see her," he said again, softly.
"You will," Arios replied. "When the scales are even."
"And if they never are?"
"Then you will keep killing."
Rein walked to the window again.
The stars hadn't moved.
He wondered if they ever would.
"So," he said. "Who's next?"
A soft pulse in the air.
A panel opened in the wall.
A new name floated in golden script. A profile. A world.
Another target.
Another "hero".
The sword of Valen lay against the glass wall, its edge reflecting a thousand stars that no longer felt like home.
Rein stood alone, his orders burned into his mind.
Next target:
A girl. Sixteen. Mortal… in theory.
Crime:
Deification of self. Total control over her world's laws of nature. Worship enforced. Free will revoked.
A child with a god's power.
A god with a child's heart.
Rein closed his eyes.
"Not another tyrant," he whispered. "A victim… or something worse?"
The floor beneath him pulsed. Light surged. Reality unraveled.
And once again—
He fell.
Next World: Edenfall.
Next Name: Myra the Radiant.
Next Judgment: Unknown.