Chapter 20: The Chains That Roared
The ground trembled beneath the weight of silence.
Smoke coiled above the shattered coliseum, broken statues of the gods crumbled like forgotten memories. The divine tribunal stood paralyzed—celestial guards, robed prophets, highborn executioners—all surrounding a bloodied platform where a boy was meant to die.
But the boy stood.
Kaien Valis.
Head bowed, arms slack at his sides, and chains still wrapped around his body—chains meant to suppress a Heavenbreaker.
They groaned now, those ancient divine restraints, as if they knew… their time was up.
The High Cleric of Judgment took a step back. "No… this is impossible. The Oaths of Solitude bind even the Fallen!"
Kaien raised his eyes.
His pupils were like burning cracks in obsidian.
"You should've killed me," he said softly. "But you wanted a show. You wanted a warning. So let me return the favor."
Then he moved.
A blur of shadow and light. A scream of metal as divine chains—forged in the heart of the sun—snapped like paper.
A wave of pressure exploded outward.
The entire coliseum was slammed with it. Guards were launched into the air. Marble cracked. Reality staggered. The air itself seemed to hum with an otherworldly pitch—as if existence didn't know how to process what it was seeing.
Kaien stood in the center.
Cloak torn. Hair wild. His bare chest marked with sigils that pulsed like dying stars. In his right hand, Fellchain—the cursed blade forged from the soul of a fallen god—dragged against the ground, leaving behind glowing claw marks on stone.
"Gods judge us," Kaien growled, voice echoing with layered timbres, as if something ancient now spoke alongside him. "But who judges the gods?"
BOOM.
He vanished again.
Reappeared above the archbishop, blade raised, eyes wide with feral glee.
The strike didn't land.
It shattered the space between them.
The divine barrier—something no mortal had ever cracked—split into a thousand shards. Kaien spun midair, kicked off one of the shards, and plunged Fellchain downward.
The archbishop screamed, summoning a wall of living scripture to protect himself.
Too late.
The sword pierced through words, faith, and bone alike.
And then it happened.
The Aura.
A blast of pure pressure erupted from Kaien's body—like a black sun flaring for the first time. It was not divine. It was not infernal.
It was human will pushed past every limit, breaking into something the gods never intended.
Everyone fell to their knees.
The highborn collapsed, choking. Celestials trembled. Even the statues—massive god-carved colossi—cracked at the joints, their eyes dimming as if they, too, feared what had just been born.
Above them, Kaien rose slowly from the blood and ruin, sword resting on his shoulder.
His aura licked the air like living fire—black with streaks of crimson and silver, unstable, electric. Time felt slower around him. Reality folded inward. He wasn't just Kaien anymore.
He was the Heavenbreaker incarnate.
And he was done playing.
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