Devourer of Sins

It had been quiet for too long.

Not the kind of quiet that brought peace, but the kind that followed a scream—one that still echoed in the bones of the world, hanging in the air like smoke that refused to lift. Everything looked normal, at least to the untrained eye. The small neighborhood where he lived still bustled by day. Children played tag between parked cars. Shopkeepers barked out prices, and neighbors waved politely from porches they never invited anyone to step onto. The routine remained, but the rhythm had shifted.

He noticed it in the glances—too long, too wary. In the conversations that stuttered into silence when he walked by. In the way laughter tried to live in the air but died before reaching his ears.

Word was spreading.

Not facts. Not yet. Just fragments. Whispers curling into the corners of people's minds, shaping a truth their hearts already suspected. No one had proof. They didn't need it. Fear didn't wait for evidence. It recognized something wrong before the mind could name it.

And the shadows—his shadows—they had started to stir.

They didn't speak in ways that could be heard. But they pressed against the edges of his mind, brushing against his spine, brushing against the walls of his sleep. He felt them every time he blinked. They watched. They waited.

He woke up past midnight, drenched in sweat. Not from nightmares—he'd grown numb to those—but from a presence that tugged him from sleep like a hook beneath the ribs.

The room was dark, unmoving… except for the flicker in the far corner.

Barely visible, but it hadn't been there before.

He didn't reach for a weapon. Didn't flinch. Just stared as the flicker pulsed and grew, pulling itself into shape. A shadow—thin, stretched unnaturally tall, no features, just a void where a face should be. The air around it shimmered like heat haze.

It stood still. Silent. Until it bowed.

He narrowed his eyes. "Why are you here?"

No voice came. Only an impression, sinking into his mind like a slow drip of ink: The seal is weakening.

His breath slowed. "Which one?"

It didn't answer directly. Instead, it raised a hand. And there, suspended in its palm, flickered an image. Distorted. Faint. But unmistakable—a city floating in the clouds, crowned by spires of crystal, encircled by gates made of pure light.

The Upper World.

His jaw tightened.

"Who touched it?" he asked, though part of him already knew.

The shadow tilted its head. A priest. A fool. A key.

He exhaled, low and long. Of course.

Someone had stumbled across one of the ancient seals. One of the locks forged by divine hands to cage what he used to be. What he might still become.

And every time one broke… more of him returned.

Not the part that drank coffee in the morning, that watched his sister struggle with math problems and pretended he didn't already know all the answers.

No.

The other one.

The one that turned the sky to ash and made angels scream.

At first light, he left the house.

No note. No hesitation. He'd be back—if things didn't spiral. If they hadn't already.

The energy called to him, quiet and steady like a heartbeat buried in stone. It pulsed from the northeast quadrant of the city, far beneath the streets.

He slipped into silence like slipping into an old coat, moving through alleys and beneath streetlights that flickered when he passed. It led him to a crumbling temple buried beneath an abandoned metro line—forgotten, dust-choked, haunted by its own silence.

The scent hit him first. Burnt offerings, stale incense, old blood. Something had happened here. A ritual, maybe. A failed one.

He stepped inside.

Acolytes lay dead across the floor, their robes scorched, their faces twisted in silent screams. Hands frozen mid-prayer, fingers outstretched toward the altar.

The seal pulsed at the room's center.

Cracked. Melting. The divine sigils that once bound it glowed faintly, then flickered out like dying stars.

He approached, knelt before it, and pressed his fingers to the ruined surface.

Pain shot up his arm like lightning.

Then—memory.

A woman's voice, cold and sharp: "This is your cage, monster. Sleep until the stars turn black."

He pulled away, breath ragged.

Her face remained hidden, but her hatred had sunk its claws deep. The memory left a burn behind his ribs, a phantom wound that hadn't healed in centuries.

He emerged into daylight as the sun rose over the skyline, casting long shadows across rusted rooftops. The air smelled of ozone and iron, like the prelude to a storm.

Instead of returning home, he wandered. Let the city unfold beneath his feet until he stood before a ramen shop tucked between two laundromats. The bell above the door chimed like an old clock with a tired heart.

The man behind the counter didn't look up from his chopping. "You look like someone who's seen a ghost."

He sat without speaking.

"Or maybe worse," the man mused. He ladled a bowl of broth, slid it forward. "Eat. You'll think better when your stomach's full."

The silence between them was companionable. Grounding. The broth warmed his throat, the noodles soft enough to remind him he was still flesh, still part of a world that could taste and feel.

The old man leaned forward after a while. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one people get when they're pretending too hard."

He raised an eyebrow. "To be normal?"

"Yeah." The man's gaze was steady. "Some people ain't built for normal. Doesn't mean you're evil. But pretending to be something you're not? That always breaks you in the end."

He paid and left without a word, the bell jingling behind him like a whisper from another life.

The wind outside had teeth now. Cold. Real. Cutting.

He spent that night on the rooftop, watching the city pulse below—lights blinking like a million heartbeats trying not to stop.

He closed his eyes and sank inward.

Deeper than thought. Deeper than memory. Into the part of him that wasn't human anymore.

Where the Devourer slept.

He reached it. And for the first time, didn't flinch.

What met him there wasn't fire. Or chains. Or torment.

It was a throne—vast, cracked, floating in a sea of stars.

And sitting on it… was himself.

Barefoot. Skin cracked with glowing veins. Eyes burning like twin suns, calm and terrifying.

"Finally," the figure said. "Took you long enough."

He stepped forward, slow. "I'm not here to kneel."

"You don't need to. You already took the crown the moment you stopped lying to yourself."

"I'm not you."

"You are me."

"I'm more than that."

The throne-bound version smiled. "Then prove it."

A tide rose—black, screaming, hungry. Voices clawed at him from every angle, an ocean of shadow trying to swallow him whole.

He didn't run.

Didn't fight.

He opened his arms.

And for the first time, the hunger didn't consume him.

It welcomed him.

He woke with a start, collapsing from the rooftop. But before the ground could meet him, a shadow reached up—caught him. Lifted him.

When his feet touched down, he felt the difference.

The hunger wasn't an invader anymore.

It was listening.

And somewhere far above, beyond the clouds, beneath the gates of the Upper World, the priests gathered in trembling silence.

Alarms had echoed through the sacred stones. The seals were breaking. Each one falling like a whisper from time.

And in the hush that followed the final chime, a name passed from lip to lip like a prayer too heavy to finish.

"Kamazaki… the Devourer… has begun to stir."

High above them all, deep within the cosmic firmament, a great bell tolled once more—a sound not heard since stars were young.

Its echo rippled through the void, stirring old powers and older hungers.

The realms would remember.

And this time… they would kneel.