I never thought I would end my days bound to a stake, staring into the faces of a crowd that had once admired me. They chant for my death now, calling me a heretic, a betrayer of the faith. The scent of burning wood fills the air, mingling with the murmurs of anticipation. It’s strange...why was it again,

The smell of damp stone filled the air as I held the torch aloft, its flickering flame casting jagged shadows across the crumbling walls. The chamber was ancient, older than the Church itself, buried deep beneath the grand cathedral. It wasn’t supposed to exist. None of this was.Yet here I stood, surrounded by carvings that contradicted everything I had ever been taught. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as I traced my fingers across the symbols etched into the walls. They weren’t holy scriptures; they were something older, something primal. At the center of it all was a depiction that chilled me to my core: gods of every pantheon—figures I recognized from forbidden myths and long-lost legends—all gathered together, facing a darkness so vast and consuming it seemed to blot out the heavens.The torchlight wavered, and for a moment, I imagined the darkness moving. I took a step back, clutching the leather-bound journal I’d been using to document my findings. Three years of research had led me here, but nothing could have prepared me for this.  This was the truth. And it was a truth the Church would burn me alive for.

I wasn’t always a heretic. Once, I was the model believer. Born into poverty, given away by a mother who didn’t want me, I had clung to the Church as a beacon of order and purpose. My adoptive parents—a kind but uneducated farming couple—promised me a better future, and I vowed to make the most of it.  I grew up with dirt under my nails and the smell of hay in my lungs, learning the ways of the land. But I wasn’t content to stay there. I devoured every book I could find, driven by an insatiable hunger for knowledge. The Church’s teachings gave me a structure to follow, a logical path to success. It was simple: obey the rules, honor the gods, and salvation would be mine.  My devotion was rewarded. By the time I was twenty, I had risen through the Church’s ranks, admired for my discipline and unwavering faith. When the Archbishop passed away under mysterious circumstances, I was chosen to succeed him. I thought it was divine will, proof that my logical, calculated life had led me to greatness.  But the higher I climbed, the more cracks I saw in the Church’s facade.  It began with a single error. An old record in the archives contradicted a passage from the holy texts. I thought it was a mistake, a misinterpretation. But then I found another. And another. The deeper I dug, the more inconsistencies emerged. Events celebrated as divine miracles had never happened. Saints venerated for their sacrifices had never existed. The Church wasn’t the pillar of truth it claimed to be—it was a monument of lies, carefully constructed over centuries to control the masses.  I tried to ignore it. I told myself it didn’t matter. The Church brought order to the world, didn’t it? What harm was there in a few embellishments if they kept society stable? But my curiosity wouldn’t let me stop.  

The forbidden archives beneath the cathedral held answers I couldn’t ignore. Locked away were ancient texts, predating the Church itself. They spoke of gods—not the benevolent caretakers we worshipped, but warriors. Rulers. Beings of immense power who once governed all existence. And they had fought a war so catastrophic that even their immortality had been tested.  This wasn’t the petty squabbling of gods from myths and legends. This was an existential battle, a united front of every pantheon—Greek, Norse, Egyptian, and more—against a force so vast and consuming it defied comprehension. The enemy wasn’t named in the texts, only described as a void, a hunger that devoured worlds.  The carvings I found deep beneath the cathedral confirmed the story. The gods hadn’t won the war—they had barely survived it. The enemy had been sealed away, not destroyed. And the cost of that fragile victory was written in the heavens themselves: stars snuffed out, realms shattered, and entire pantheons lost to time.  This was the truth the  Church had buried. They had erased the war from history, replacing it with tales of divine providence and fabricated miracles. The gods were not saviors—they were survivors. And the Church had turned them into puppets, tools of propaganda to keep the people in line.  For three years and three months, I pieced together fragments of the past, traveling to forgotten ruins and decoding inscriptions left by civilizations long erased. My journal became my most prized possession, filled with sketches, translations, and theories. It was my life’s work—and my death sentence.  When the Church discovered what I had uncovered, they gave me a choice: surrender my research or face the flames. They didn’t care about the truth. They only cared about maintaining their power, their lies.  

I refused.  

The crowd gathered before the pyre is restless, their faces a sea of fear and anger. They don’t understand what they’re about to witness. To them, I’m a heretic, a man who defied the will of the gods. But I know the truth.  As the executioner lights the kindling at my feet, I feel no fear. My work is done. Somewhere, in the ruins I left behind, the truth remains. It cannot be burned.  The flames rise, their heat licking at my skin. I close my eyes, not in surrender, but in defiance. Let them destroy my body. The truth is eternal. And someday, someone will find it.  The Church may silence me, but they cannot silence the echoes of the gods’ war.  You ask who am I, They say I am the devil of the church , Saito Orion.

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Ryu’s life, from the earliest fragments of memory, was shaped by desperation, cruelty, and survival. He was barely three when he floated downstream, bundled in dirty, torn rags, a nameless shadow on the river’s surface. The slave couple who found him—a weary man and woman with eyes as hollow as their hopes—took him in, naming him Ryu. Their lives were already cursed with backbreaking labour and punishment, but in the warmth of their hovel, they sheltered him with what little tenderness they could offer, teaching him words, watching him stumble through his first steps. The village he lived in wasn’t much of a village. It was a cluster of shacks near a sprawling gold mine, surrounded by endless fences and the ceaseless ring of hammers on rock. The slaves here were faceless to the guards—just worn-out bodies bound to the mine. Ryu grew up watching his adopted parents beaten over minor mistakes, food rationed so tightly that hunger was his constant companion, and all around him the sick and dying worked until they could no longer move. The mine itself was a damp, airless place of shadows and metallic dust that settled into the lungs, mixing with the blood and sweat that never quite washed off. For those few years, Ryu followed his parents wherever he could, trailing in their footsteps, learning to move quietly, to stay unnoticed, and to survive on scraps. His parents would give up bits of their own meagre food to feed him, their bodies growing weaker as his grew stronger. And it was in their last act of rebellion—an attempt to escape, when he was barely five—that they were caught and killed. Ryu, little more than a child, was forced to watch their execution, helplessly absorbing their suffering, every scream carving a permanent scar into his memory. Their bodies, alongside Ryu's, were thrown into the dark heart of a vast forest—a wasteland from centuries of war and disease. The land was littered with skeletons, bloated corpses, and the decaying remnants of thousands who had met their ends in violence, famine, or plague. Alone, starving, and traumatised, Ryu learnt to survive as a creature of instinct. In his earliest days in the forest, he scavenged whatever edible scraps he could find from the dead, rooting around the corpses of fallen soldiers, broken slaves, and diseased peasants. The forest became his tutor in cruelty: he drank rainwater pooled in skulls, hunted rats, and even gnawed on the bark of trees, his teeth scraping raw from hunger. As weeks turned to months and years, Ryu became like a ghost haunting the forest. He wore shreds of cloth, his skin covered in grime, and his limbs were scratched and bruised. His only companions were the vultures, ravens, and wolves that scavenged the dead, and he learnt to watch them carefully, claiming his share before theypicked the bones clean. In time, he fashioned crude weapons—sharpened stones and sticks—and grew lean, his muscles shaped by hunger and struggle. He learnt to hunt small animals, set traps, and move in complete silence, stalking his prey with a predatory focus. Despite all this, memories of his parents haunted him. He often had nightmares, visions of their final moments flashing before him, each dream forcing him to relive their screams and begging. Alone in the darkness, he would wake shaking, clinging to the remnants of warmth he felt from them long ago. Yet these memories also hardened him, driving him to keep pushing forward, to stay alive in their honour . After five brutal years of living as little more than a beast in the woods, Ryu was finally caught by slave hunters. Ragged, starving, and half-feral, he fought like a cornered animal but was overpowered, bound, and dragged back to the mine where he’d spent his earliest years. Now he was old enough to work, and he was tossed into the labour pool, his hands forced to crush stone under the same relentless gaze of the guards who had once killed his parents. The mine had grown worse in his absence—exploitation deeper, punishments harsher. His childhood memories returned with haunting vividness, reminding him of what he’d lost and deepening his hatred for those who ruled over him. Ryu’s years in the mine were a continuation of his nightmare. Each day blurred into the next, sweat and blood mixing with dust as he worked from dawn until dusk, his body pushed to exhaustion and then some. His hatred festered, taking root in his bones, sharpening his will to survive. He learnt to endure the whip, to ignore the gnawing pain of hunger, and to hide his anger behind a blank expression. He became an empty shell by day and a seething storm by night, his resolve steeled by years of hardship. Then, one day, a group of bandits attacked the mine. Chaos erupted as guards and bandits clashed, the din of swords and shouts filling the air. Amidst the fighting, Ryu saw his chance. Rage boiled up in him, years of torment flashing before his eyes, and he took up a broken pickaxe as his weapon. In the melee, he fought like a demon possessed, striking down bandits and guards alike, his body moving with the ruthless precision he’d honed in the forest. When the dust settled, Ryu was free—standing alone amid the wreckage, bloodied but alive, having claimed his freedom through sheer force and desperation. He fled into the wilderness once more, a boy hardened by brutality, shaped by suffering, and driven by a single purpose—to never again be a prisoner.