Upon hearing Nagash's resolve, Maki only shook his head. He drove in like a hammering storm, each step a drumbeat on the earth.

Which weighs more, a fist hung with killing intent, or one that pulls back before skin meets skin? The answer was a stone, not a question.

Besides, as an Arcane Engineer, Nagash was no brawler. He'd burned the Heretic Inquisitor with surprise spells, but he himself was brittle glass, weaknesses lit up.

A mage needs distance to breathe and bite. Maki had hunted mages like a wolf culling deer; of course he knew.

So, once he read the tempo of Nagash's bombardment, he stayed close as a shadow. In the split-second of cast or recoil, he stepped into the Godspeed Realm and landed a killing strike.

Twenty minutes in, more than half of Nagash's body was arcane machinery. His left hand was gone, erased earlier by Maki's Divine Art, Assimilation to Null.

Even a prosthetic wouldn't move, because the arm's essence was gone. From thought to flesh, the limb had been rubbed from the world's ledger.

Maki twisted away from the Elven springstep spell, Exploding Thunderblade. The blast rolled past like a breaking surf, heat licking his back yet never touching.

He set foot in the Godspeed Realm. His speed outpaced light, and cut quicker than thunder. He smashed a shoulder through Nagash's guard and chopped for the heart.

He invoked the Divine Art, Evil, Be Severed.

Among all Divine Arts, this was the heaviest blow. Its range was skin to skin. It only worked when you touched the foe.

Even so, it was the strongest. Its effect was a guaranteed kill, a black stamp from Death.

Maki let the motion fall still. He used a Divine Art to wipe the blood from his claws and coat, then straightened his pointed hood like a neat blade.

Nagash spat a gale of blood, painting the ground a rusted red. His life and strength flickered like a candle in wind, yet he stood, defying the pull.

"It's enough. Fall," Maki said, voice flat as rain. "Whatever you fight for, whatever you die for, it's enough."

"My enemy isn't you... cough," Nagash rasped, pride like a knife in his throat. "So, Maki, don't let it weigh you."

He gritted his teeth and forced his chest up, like a spear refusing to snap.

"Divine Beings! High and aloof Divine Beings! Come! If you've got the spine, come kill me yourselves!"

"Uncle! Stop! Don't say it!"

Stini was madly shaking the arcane restraints. They creaked like old ice and looked ready to crack.

But so what?

What could she do? Only feed sorrow like water into a drowning pond.

All of this was already set. She could only watch and make small, useless motions, dust in a storm.

Better, then, to stay locked here. Better to pretend it wasn't that you couldn't save, or refused to save, but that a sneak attack pinned you in place.

Then you can lie to yourself with an easy face. You can pin your failure on a neat reason. Life moves lighter with that paper talisman.

However... Vega says ease doesn't cancel pain. The mouth smiles, but the bone still aches in the rain.

Whether you live light or heavy depends on whether your heart swallows it. As for me, whatever comes is fine. Whatever comes, I win.

But what about you, stupid Stini?

I can't wait to see your destined-to-fail performance bloom. Let that ruin open like a night flower.

"Divine Beings! I curse you all! Come, come kill me!"

"Don't let me die by my own kin's hands. Come judge me! Aren't you justice?"

"Come! Come, you bastards!"

Until his blood ran dry, Nagash kept howling at the sky like a lone wolf baying at a cold moon.

----------------

"All right, the baby is safe now."

The woman wrapped the newborn's fragile body in a towel, a white cloud around a pink dawn. She happily handed the child to the weak mother.

"She'll grow into a lovely girl," she said, a spring breeze through a window.

"Thank you, thank you. If it weren't for you..."

The mother hugged her child and cried. Tears of joy beaded and fell onto the infant's cheek, and the infant squirmed in protest.

"It's fine. The hard labor's past. You and the child being safe is my joy," the woman soothed, voice soft as warm milk.

She stroked the sleeping infant's brow. A real smile opened like sunlight through leaves. Though she'd just delivered the baby, no speck stained her robe or her hands.

A faint light bloomed on her face, a halo like morning mist. She seemed familiar from a dream, and yet wholly unknown.

She pushed the door and left the birthing room. The passing Divine Healers bowed like wheat bending to wind.

No one knew who she was. But one glance told them she was sacred and great, the kind mortals should revere like a mountain.

She—Liv—smiled and nodded to the Divine Healer. Then her expression shifted like a sky cut by thunder.

"Sane... why did he come too?!"

The Divine Healer straightened, ready to greet his Divine Being. He blinked, and the woman before him was gone like a candle snuffed.

----------------

The sheen of the Divine Beings spilled onto the mortal earth, a dawn poured from a second sun.

Radiance flared. Their vast forms cast themselves into the world like mountains stepping out of cloud.

Maki stepped respectfully aside, a blade sheathing itself.

"As you wished, Nagash."

Sane's eyes burned with an eternal blaze. Everyone knew that light now was anger.

Sun, the Solar God. Trial, the God of Judgment. Narrow, the God of Narrow Meaning.

Three Divine Beings descended.

"Then ask! What is my sin?"

Nagash laughed instead, a cracked bell ringing. All his arcane machinery and even his wounded flesh began to burn, except a device at his brow.

That device bore the Lunarfolk sacrifice spell, Kindling.

Burn life to buy strength and power. Nagash traded his breath for a heartbeat of vigor.

"Your very thought is sin. Filthy thoughts drive the world toward ruin."

"Wait, Sane..." Trial tried to stay the Solar God, but Sane cut him off with a wave sharp as a blade.

"Nagash, you can't save the world, nor make it better. You know it. Even if your theory works and the gods retreat, mortals will suffer worse."

"I know. I can't win."

"Then why..."

"Because I hate you. I hate that you pile every sin on mortals, yet keep every crown for yourselves. You did nothing, yet you sit high."

"Nagash, you..."

Sane tried again. This time Narrow spoke. As one of the twelve Primordial Deities, her station stood above Sane's, and he held his tongue.

"Nagash, what did you meet? What do the Divine Beings owe you?" She narrowed her fine eyes, measuring him like a blade in light.

"I've watched your life. There's nothing there. Why choose rebellion?"

"The Divine Beings owe me nothing. But I've seen examples that prove you're not holy. Anyone in the Truth Seekers Assembly can name them."

"Divine Beings can't deliver fairness. Absolute justice is dead. At best, you can do something relatively fair."

"You fail to give to humans, yet you ask humans to give. That's too unfair."

"We only give. We've never asked."

"But to mortals, offering gifts to the Divine Beings is proper and ordinary. So by contrast, those cut off from gods are branded rebels. What means nothing to you strips unbelievers of room to live. Isn't that unjust?"

"To save the many, we abandon the few. What we do far outweighs what we harm. Where's the wrong?"

"What you do, mortals can achieve. What you harm, mortals can't heal."

Half his body had burned away. Nagash thrust out his only right hand and clenched it, knuckles white as bone.

"Divine Beings, leave. If you truly love mortals, then leave. This world doesn't need you to win. Let mortals choose. Win or lose, it's not on you. Win or lose, we'll carry it ourselves. What's wrong with that?"

"You think you alone can speak for the world..."

"Sane, you're already wearing guilt. Don't interfere with the judgment. Trial, your opinion?"

Narrow cut Sane off again, businesslike as a judge with a gavel.

Sane glared at her, eyes like coals, but said nothing.

Ah. I get it. Sane broke the gods' pact in the Slaughter Demon King defense and descended alone to strike the Demon King. Why wasn't he punished, and why can he descend now to hound Nagash?

Head... that one didn't judge Sane at once.

But why?

The defense wasn't so long ago, yet this is too long to prep a punishment. Head is arranging something. The guy plays at ghosts, but as the gods' leader, he rarely wastes motion.

Facing heresy, Divine Descent isn't required. Usually, a Heretic Inquisitor kills the heretic and it's done. So three Divine Beings descending to Nagash must be their own will.

And Trial is here too. That means the gods treat Nagash as grave. They want a right and righteous verdict.

"I judge that Nagash shouldn't die," Trial declared, voice iron.

"Don't joke, Trial. Doesn't Nagash count as a heretic..."

The three fell silent. They were likely speaking by domain resonance, their voices under a bell we couldn't hear.

But it wasn't hard to guess. Something like this: Nagash can't die.

Why.

Because this era's Hero is standing nearby, and though Nagash's idea is evil, his good outweighs his ill. We can't hand humanity's hope a verdict that the gods are wrong.

Fine. It's sudden. For now we do it this way. We can't even let Nagash die.

The details differ, sure. But when a Divine Being lowers their rank enough to have an outline, their minds move close to human.

And human thought and speech are bounded fields, whether they tilt toward light or shade.

In other words, if Divine Beings want to speak with mortals, they're no longer towering. They become readable.

"The judgment is as follows. You won't die. You'll be imprisoned by the Heretic Inquisition. They will debate you until you recognize your error and use your strength for the world. Or you may persuade the Heretic Inquisitors that you're right."

After discussion, Trial announced it like hammer on anvil. By the law the gods set, Nagash should have died.

Thus even the judgment that stands for absolute fairness bent its knee to reality.

Ridiculous. To stop the spread of the idea that Divine Beings aren't holy, the gods stepped down and proved Nagash right.

This kind of justice, caught on a blade's edge, makes me, the villain, laugh till the ribs ache.