Caius stayed frozen against the shattered window frame for exactly three seconds, staring at the warning text still burning cold and blue in front of his eyes, before his survival instincts finally overrode his shock.
A Heretical signature.
Beyond the wall.
Right now, while a Thornwood Warden and his brother were still tearing chunks out of each other somewhere in the smoke, something that didn’t answer to any of the Thirteen Major Gods had apparently decided to make an appearance.
In the lore of [God Reborn], Heretics were vanishingly rare.
Devils didn’t hand out contracts to just anyone, and the few mortals who managed to secure one were either monstrously powerful or monstrously insane, usually both.
The original Caius himself had been destined to become exactly that, decades from now, driven mad by decades of humiliation.
Decades from now.
Not tonight.
Not in the middle of some random border skirmish on day seven of his new life.
Something was very, very wrong with the timeline.
Caius forced himself to his feet, wincing as the movement pulled at the gashes along his forearm, and turned back toward the ruined doorway where Kaelan had disappeared into the smoke.
He should have run.
Every rational survival instinct screamed at him to find the maid and her daughter, confirm they’d made it out, and get as far from this burning building as his newly upgraded legs could carry him.
Instead, he found himself moving toward the breach in the wall.
He told himself it was reconnaissance.
Information was survival currency in a world this hostile, and if a Heretic really had shown up on House Draxos’s doorstep the same night his system awakened, he needed to know why.
He needed to know if this was connected to him, to the game’s script trying to violently correct itself back onto its intended rails.
He absolutely was not admitting that some reckless, adrenaline-drunk part of his borrowed body simply wanted to see it with his own eyes.
The courtyard beyond the dormitory was a war zone.
House Draxos’s soldiers had engaged the retreating Warden in full force now, crimson auras lighting up the smoke-choked night like flares, and Caius kept low, hugging the shadow of the estate’s outer buildings as he worked his way toward the breach. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
He found Kaelan first, planted directly in the gap torn through the ancient wardstone wall, greatsword buried a full foot into the Warden’s collapsed body.
The creature lay motionless, its bioluminescent eyes finally dimmed to lifeless gray, smoke still curling faintly from the deep scorched wound across its flank.
But Kaelan wasn’t looking at his kill.
He was staring past it, out through the breach, into the darkness of the border wilds beyond, his greatsword still raised defensively, every line of his massive body coiled tight with tension Caius had never once seen in his brother before.
Caius crept closer, following his brother’s line of sight, and his breath caught in his throat.
A man stood just beyond the breach, silhouetted against the burning wreckage of the Warden’s rampage, utterly unbothered by the chaos around him.
He was tall, unnervingly still, dressed in a long coat of a black so deep it seemed to actually drink the surrounding firelight rather than simply absorb it.
Where his eyes should have been, there was only a faint violet glow, twin pinpricks of unnatural light floating in an otherwise featureless shadow where his face ought to have been.
He wasn’t attacking.
He wasn’t even moving.
He simply stood there, watching the estate burn with the mild curiosity of a man observing an anthill someone had kicked over.
“Identify yourself,” Kaelan barked, his voice carrying the full authoritative weight of House Draxos behind it, though Caius could hear the faint tremor buried underneath.
“You stand on Draxos land.”
The figure tilted his head slightly, as though the words genuinely amused him.
“Draxos,” the man repeated, his voice a low, unplaceable murmur that seemed to arrive from several directions at once, sliding uncomfortably against the inside of Caius’s skull rather than simply reaching his ears.
“Yes. I imagine that name means quite a lot to you.”
“I asked you to identify yourself,” Kaelan snarled, shifting his stance, greatsword angling to interpose itself between the stranger and the rest of the estate.
“Did you drive that Warden through the wardline? Answer, or I will treat you as a hostile combatant.”
The figure’s violet eyes drifted past Kaelan entirely, sweeping slowly across the smoking ruins of the courtyard, and then, with a lazy, deliberate motion, settled directly onto the shadowed alcove where Caius was crouched.
Caius’s entire body went rigid.
There was no way the man could have seen him, not through smoke this thick, not from this distance, not with Ashveil’s passive concealment still faintly humming around his skin.
And yet the violet glow held perfectly still, fixed on him, as though the intervening darkness and smoke simply didn’t exist for whatever this creature actually was. New chapters come out on NovelPing first.
“There you are,” the man said softly, and though his voice hadn’t risen at all, Caius heard the words as clearly as if they’d been whispered directly into his ear.
“I felt you the moment you signed your ash contract, little Draxos. Faint as a candle in a hurricane, but persistent. I do so admire persistence.”
Kaelan’s head whipped around, following the stranger’s gaze, and his crimson eyes landed on Caius crouched in the shadows with an expression caught somewhere between fury and disbelief.
“Caius? What in the Thirteen Hells are you doing out here?”
The figure took one unhurried step forward, and the moment his boot crossed the threshold of the shattered wardline, every remaining rune carved into the broken stone around the breach flared briefly and then died entirely, snuffed out like candles caught in a passing wind.
“I am not here for your border, Draxos heir,” the man said, still addressing Kaelan though his violet gaze never left Caius.
“Warbeasts make excellent distractions, and distractions are so useful when one wishes to speak with someone privately. I merely borrowed your Warden for the evening. I do apologize for the property damage.”
“You,” Kaelan said, his voice dropping into something low and lethal, his greatsword blazing brighter, “are a Heretic.”
“A crude word for it,” the man replied without a hint of offense, “but accurate enough for tonight’s purposes.” His violet eyes finally crinkled at the edges, an approximation of a smile on a face Caius still couldn’t properly see.
“Caius Draxos. Ashra’s forgotten little candle flame. I have traveled a very long way, across paths older than your Thirteen Gods’ petty pantheon, specifically to make you an offer.”
Caius’s blood ran cold, every instinct in his body screaming that whatever came out of this creature’s mouth next was going to reshape the entire trajectory of his fragile new life.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Caius managed, forcing steel into his voice that he absolutely did not feel.
The stranger’s violet eyes glowed brighter, amused.
“You will,” he said simply.
“Because in exactly forty-nine days, the boy your world calls Helion’s Vessel will awaken his second Bloodline Trial, and when he does, he will come looking for the one soul on this entire continent capable of standing against him.” The man tilted his head, and for the first time, something that might have been genuine respect flickered behind that violet glow.
“I know precisely who you are, little Heretic King that was. I have simply arrived a few decades early.”
Kaelan’s greatsword trembled in his grip, and behind Caius, the sound of running boots and shouted orders signaled the arrival of House Draxos’s full military response, dozens of Blessed soldiers converging on the breach with weapons already drawn.
The stranger in black glanced almost lazily over his shoulder at the approaching soldiers, entirely unconcerned, and then looked back at Caius one final time.
“Think carefully on my offer, little candle flame,” he said, his form already beginning to dissolve into curling wisps of violet-tinged shadow.
“The Protagonist does not know you exist yet. But he will. And when he comes for you, ash and mist will not be enough to save you.”
The shadows swallowed him whole, and he was simply gone, leaving nothing behind but the lingering scent of ozone and the horrifying knowledge that somewhere out there, a devil already knew exactly who Caius Draxos used to be destined to become.