Devourer of Sins

The blade hummed, not with any sound one could hear, but with the dreadful resonance of something that should not exist. It wasn't forged from steel or tempered by flame. No divine smith had shaped it with spiritual essence or celestial fire. It had been born from absence—the light stripped from dying stars, the final scream of a collapsed world, the warmth siphoned from forgotten suns. In its presence, even silence had texture. It moved, and the world recoiled.

It came down upon the boy like the judgment of gods, absolute and void.

He twisted his body with seconds to spare, breath catching in his throat as the blade missed his neck by less than a whisper. A strand of his hair drifted to the ground, severed by the edge that didn't cut—but consumed. Behind him, the air didn't ripple or explode. It simply ceased to exist, leaving behind a hollow nothing that defied even the laws of reality.

The hunter advanced without a sound. No breath escaped his lips. No voice echoed from his throat. He did not hesitate or show emotion. He was motion incarnate—a force, not a man.

A few meters back, the shadow who had once knelt to the boy's father trembled with something he hadn't felt in centuries. His porcelain-cracked arm dangled, barely clinging to his form, spiritual essence leaking from the fractures.

This was no celestial warrior. No ascendant from the upper realms. The being before them was born from the deepest stratum of the Abyss, a weapon in the purest form. A Soul Cutter. Not designed to kill the body, but to strip away meaning itself. A blade that erased souls from the narrative of existence.

And it was here because of him.

The boy's blood had called it—the blood of the Devourer. The same hunger that once brought down empires now stirred within him, awakened by fire, grief, and inheritance.

He steadied his stance, aura flaring as he asked with quiet steel, "You don't speak?"

There was no response—only a sudden shift. The air screamed with displaced pressure as the hunter flickered from view. In the next breath, he reappeared beside the boy, blade already descending.

He jerked away, but not fast enough. Pain lanced across his side, followed by a gush of blood. Not from a gash—but from a wound that had not yet formed, as though the blade devoured time itself.

It was not a weapon of war.

It was hunger incarnate.

The boy gritted his teeth, forcing his body to still. Every instinct screamed to run, to lash out blindly, but he crushed those urges. He watched, felt, learned. This enemy was not one that could be overpowered without understanding.

Another attack came, and the hunter moved like ink dissolving in water—formless, shadowy, everywhere at once. This time, the boy was ready.

Flames erupted from his hands, not born of any known element. They writhed and shimmered with unnatural motion—flame without heat, without light.

Voidfire.

The cursed inheritance of his bloodline, fire only the glutton-touched could wield. It danced like a beast long-caged, hissing as it met the voidblade.

They clashed, and the world stopped.

No explosion. No blinding flash. Just—absence.

Within a breath, twenty meters of earth and sky were no more. Trees, stones, spirit energy—all erased from existence. The shadow, still limping, was flung backward across several kilometers, cursing as he stabilized midair.

"Don't use that again!" he shouted through the spiritual link. "You'll tear the realm apart!"

But the boy couldn't stop. Because something inside him was laughing. A voice from long ago, buried deep beneath layers of silence and grief.

So you're finally letting it out.

His breath caught.

That voice. It wasn't a memory. It was him.

The Devourer. His father. Not in flesh—but in blood.

"You're watching me?" the boy whispered inside his mind.

The chuckle that followed was soft, unyielding.

I always was. But this moment? This is yours.

This fight isn't survival. It's a choice.

To become me… or not.

The hunter raised his blade once more, ready to finish what had begun.

The boy exhaled slowly, gaze hardening. He could no longer run. This wasn't a battle he could endure forever.

It had to end.

He called upon the fire again—but this time, not as a weapon. As a shape. A form. Purpose made manifest.

Wings.

From his back burst twin appendages of skeletal voidfire, black and vast, screaming into the heavens. Their arrival cracked the clouds, bending the very sky. Reality shuddered in recognition—or fear.

The hunter halted mid-step.

For the first time… he reacted.

Not in panic. In acknowledgment.

Perhaps even respect.

The boy launched forward, wings tearing through the air behind him. Each beat left trails of scorched space. The hunter met his charge with a rising slash, blade shimmering with erasure.

But this time, the boy didn't strike head-on. He spun at the last moment, allowing the blade to graze his shoulder—sacrificing flesh for position. With his uninjured arm, he drove his fist into the hunter's chest.

Raw force.

No flame. No spell.

Only him.

The impact echoed like a war drum across the realm. The hunter careened backward, smashing through hilltops, carving a line of devastation across the sky.

The boy landed hard, staggered. Blood soaked his side, his shoulder nearly destroyed. But he didn't fall. He wouldn't.

He looked upward—and the world had changed.

The sky was red.

And from above, it began to rain.

Not water.

Blood.

Black, viscous blood.

It fell in slow, solemn drops, each one hissing as it struck the ground. The hunter rose again amidst the storm, mask cracked, revealing a single eye beneath—a star collapsing inwards, furious and infinite.

And then the sky split.

Not in any way physics could explain. It wasn't space. It wasn't time.

It was meaning that ruptured.

A rift tore through existence, and from it came a mouth the size of a mountain—gaping and ancient. It whispered a language older than creation itself, each syllable rewriting the rules of what was.

The boy dropped to his knees, soul buckling under the weight of its voice. This wasn't the hunter's will. It was something else. A greater force.

And it wanted him.

From within his mind, the shadow's voice cracked with panic.

"That's a Calling! A judgment from the Thrones! You must reject it—now!"

But he couldn't move. Couldn't even think. The mouth promised power. Clarity. Endings.

He could be free.

He could stop hurting.

All he had to do was say yes.

But then—

A different voice pierced the chaos.

Gentle. Steady.

"You promised me you'd come home."

His head snapped to the side, and within the spiritual sea, she appeared. His wife. Barefoot on a meadow of stars, their daughter and son nestled at her side.

She didn't cry.

She smiled.

"You are not just his heir. You are ours."

"Come home."

And like glass under pressure, the vision shattered. The Calling screamed in fury, the mouth convulsing in rage—only to be silenced as a colossal hand, wreathed in black flame, crushed it back into the void.

The boy stood once more.

Voidfire wings wide. Gaze no longer wavering. No longer lost.

"I'm not your weapon," he said, voice like thunder muffled beneath ash.

"I'm not his shadow."

"I'm me."

He raised both hands, and the fire answered—not as a tool, but as a god.

The hunter charged, desperate now. But it was far too late.

The flames condensed into a single jagged blade, alive with hunger.

The boy thrust it through the hunter's chest, not in hate, but with resolve.

He consumed the void. The silence. The essence.

And sealed it.

Inside himself.

The storm ceased.

The blood fell no more.

And the sky… healed.

What remained was silence. Not empty—but whole.

He stood at the heart of a crater, broken, bleeding—but alive.

The shadow approached, one knee hitting the ground beside him.

"Master…" he began, but the words fell away. He didn't need to say them.

Because something fundamental had shifted.

This was not the boy who had once run from the weight of his name.

Not the Devourer's heir.

This… was something new.

And from beyond the stars, in the unfathomable distance between moments, the Ninth Throne stirred.

Once.

Then went still.

For now.