The Broken Halo

The unease Simon had felt throughout the fight had finally taken shape.

It was behind him, occupying a corpse.

Darius’s nose had been the first warning. It had detected danger beneath what Simon chose to reveal, recognising something his ordinary senses should never have understood so easily.

Then there was his body.

Darius had not simply become stronger because the battle lasted longer. Anger strengthened him. Excitement intensified the change, and the deeper he lost himself in the fight, the more power his body released.

His flames grew hotter with it, but Simon had never believed the phoenix explained everything.

Solace, the divine spear, had provided the final clue.

Divine weapons were weapons of gods. Even Demi-Gods treasured them for the power they possessed. A Level Ninety human did not ordinarily carry one onto a battlefield, much less speak about it as though it were an inseparable part of himself.

Darius might have been extraordinarily lucky. Perhaps he had discovered a sealed Divine weapon and formed a bond while its true power remained inaccessible.

But without that kind of fortune, someone had given it to him.

And a god was the most likely answer.

More importantly, Simon had seen what happened when Solace turned to ash. The destruction had struck through a connection so deep that Darius’s remaining control over his Aether collapsed.

That was not the reaction of someone merely losing a valuable spear. Darius had been bonded to it.

At his rank, establishing such a connection with an unsealed Divine weapon should have been beyond him. Either the weapon had been sealed when he obtained it, or someone powerful had helped him.

A god... Or a Demi-God at the very least.

Those possibilities had passed through Simon’s mind before the wind blade crossed Darius’s neck. Together with the other irregularities, they had led him toward an answer he had not liked.

’Two Blessings.’

The fire phoenix had not been a disguise. Darius genuinely possessed an Elemental Blessing. But he had most likely possessed a Divine Blessing alongside it.

That second source of power would explain his nose, his exceptional physical strength, and the frightening way his body responded to anger and battle. His talent with the spear might also have benefited from it, although that did not make his training meaningless.

Simon had encountered humans with two Blessings during his previous life. They were extremely rare, and depending on the quality and compatibility of their Blessings, they could become talents remembered for generations.

Darius had possessed a powerful Elemental Blessing and, apparently, a Divine one on top of it.

The human had deserved the confidence placed in him.

It also explained why Hollow Sky Eye had consumed so much mental energy. The Divine Blessing would have provided additional protection to Darius’s mind. More than that, a human capable of sustaining two powerful Blessings needed a soul far sturdier than an ordinary person’s.

Despite all these, Simon had found a way to force his false interpretations through both advantages.

He tightened his grip around the Chaos Blade and turned.

Darius’s body lay where it had fallen, but the blood beneath it had stopped spreading. The torn flesh beneath his damaged breastplate stirred.

Edges drew together around the opening left by the Chaos Blade. Deeper inside, where his heart had been pierced, tissue gathered and joined with a precision that made the process seem deliberate rather than natural.

His detached head lifted from beside the barricade.

Red hair slipped across the stone before rising free. The face turned slowly toward the body, its final expression of horror relaxing as the eyelids closed.

Simon watched it drift toward the severed neck.

’Should I have taken the corpse and stored it in my spatial ring?’

The thought came without expectation of a comforting answer.

He could have attempted to place Darius inside his spatial ring immediately after killing him, then found somewhere hidden to use Devour.

However, the moment Simon had this thought, he knew that this would not work.

A god connected to the human might have prevented the body from entering the ring at all. Even if Simon succeeded, enclosing a corpse in another space did not guarantee that the being descending through it would remain outside.

His spatial ring had belonged to Hell’s Sword Daemon, Lilith’s father.

That made it extraordinary, but it did not give Simon a reason to assume it could restrain a god.

The divine power might have destroyed the space within it. He could have lost the ring and everything inside while still facing the same being afterward.

Darius’s head settled against his neck.

The severed ends aligned without a hand guiding them. Fine strands of flesh bridged the gap, drawing muscle and tendons together. The wound narrowed into a red line beneath the jaw.

Then even that disappeared.

Simon shifted his feet, keeping the restored body directly before him.

Devouring it carried another danger. Killing a god’s chosen human was already enough to invite anger. Consuming that human’s remains might have made the response far worse.

And anger was not the worst possibility.

’What if it recognised Devour?’

Simon believed there was a connection between Devourers and demons that he did not yet understand. He lacked information, and his place on the pyramid of power was still far too low to uncover the whole truth.

That ignorance was dangerous.

A god might recognise the ability and decide he carried a Devourer’s bloodline. Whether that conclusion was correct would not matter if the being acted on it.

One god wanting him dead was bad enough. If that suspicion spread, he might draw the attention of many gods.

Perhaps all of them.

He had no intention of exchanging one immediate threat for enemies he could not even count.

Leaving Darius’s remains untouched had been the safer choice in his judgement. But safer did not mean safe.

A god had descended anyway.

Before him, the bruising left by his first slap faded from Darius’s face. The wounds beneath the torn armour closed. Blood dried into thin flakes and slipped from unmarked skin.

The chest rose once.

Simon did not mistake that breath for Darius returning. The presence filling the body was something else.

Its shoulders left the road, followed by its back and legs, until the entire body hung horizontally above the ground.

No arm braced against the stone. No knee bent.

The body simply turned upright, its feet lowering while its head rose. It moved as one unbroken shape, as though something had taken hold of the space containing it rather than the flesh itself.

The boots touched down without a sound.

Every injury Simon had inflicted was gone. Only the broken armour and bloodstained clothing remained upon the restored body.

The hands rested loosely at its sides.

There was no grin. None of the restless movements Darius had made while waiting for another exchange. Even the wind approaching his red hair faltered before touching it.

A god stood before Simon in the body of the human he had killed.

And the god’s eyes remained closed.