The boy moved again.
And the world began to shift.
Not by force.
By invitation.
The silence didn't stay.
Not in Ex.
It clawed inside him—slow at first, like coals beneath skin. A kind of fury he didn't recognize, because it wasn't loud. It didn't scream. It… watched.
The air around the cross felt thicker now. Denser. Like it was holding its breath—but Ex had none left to hold. His chest rose sharp. His fingers twitched. Something inside him—old, buried, monstrous—had begun to stir.
Then—
The red came.
His vision fractured. Like glass splitting behind his eyes. His Sin Perception erupted.
The boy didn't look. He didn't need to.
But Ex saw it.
Everyone.
Everything.
Soaked.
Soaked in red.
Hatred and sin bled from their forms like oil slicking through water. The soldiers who hammered the nails—they burned in it. The crowd—they reeked. Even those who wept glowed with stains they didn't even know they carried.
The world looked diseased.
No—corrupted.
Ex gritted his teeth. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache. The boy's presence beside him felt thinner now—like even this moment bent under the weight of what Ex was becoming.
"They're all drenched in it…" Ex said, voice dark, rasping. "All of them. They don't even see it."
He staggered a step forward.
"I see it."
The boy didn't answer.
Ex's eyes burned. His breath came too fast. His hands trembled—not with fear, but the kind of rage that made your bones want to split open.
"They cheered for this," he growled. "They screamed for it. They wanted this."
The red deepened.
It ran down every face. Every hand. Every footprint on the ground. Like the world itself was bleeding backwards, confessing every hidden crime all at once.
Sin Perception wasn't just active.
It was screaming.
Ex stumbled to a knee. Clawed a hand through his hair. His heart pounded, but it wasn't rhythm—it was war.
"This is mercy?" he spat.
The boy finally turned. But not to calm him.
To let it happen.
"Mercy," he said, quietly, "wasn't given to them. It was offered."
Ex looked up at the cross.
And the man still hanging.
Still bleeding.
Still loving.
"I'd burn them all," he muttered.
A crack split the dirt beneath him.
"I'd drown this whole place in shadow and watch it rot."
The boy's voice was steady. "And what would that make you?"
Ex's vision flickered again—red, red, red—until even the sky seemed to bleed.
He didn't answer.
Couldn't.
Because the truth was in his silence.
Let's go deeper—Ex's fury blooming like a slow, unstoppable fire beneath his skin, the red overtaking his senses, the weight of it cracking his composure piece by piece:
The sky—
was bleeding.
Not rain.
Not light.
But the kind of red that stains the soul.
It poured from above. Dripped from clouds like rot, slow and beautiful and damning. The cross stood tall in the center of it all, yet nothing looked clean anymore. No part of the world. Not even the wind.
Ex couldn't breathe.
It wasn't air that filled his lungs. It was ash.
It was rust.
It was rage.
"Why does He stay up there?" Ex's voice was low. Too calm. Too cold. "He could end this. I feel it… I know it."
The boy didn't speak.
"He could tear them apart. Every last one of them."
Still, no answer.
Ex's hands curled to fists. The ground around him began to crack. Not from shadow—not yet. This was deeper. Older. From a place not even he had touched.
"They hate Him," Ex said. "I see it. I feel it. They love their sin more than their own breath."
His Sin Perception surged again. Veins of red ran across the sand like arteries, alive, pulsing. Every time someone jeered, or laughed, or cursed… it flared.
It was like standing in the middle of a world already judged.
And they didn't even know.
Ex's breath hitched. Then shuddered. Then stilled.
He stood.
Slowly. Unblinking. His gaze never left the cross.
"You feel it too, don't you?" he asked. "This rage?"
The boy's face was unreadable. But his silence said more than words.
Ex's voice dropped.
"If you say this is love—"
"It is," the boy said, finally.
"But look at them!"
"I am."
"They hate Him. They deserve—"
"More than you think."
Ex's pupils dilated. His limbs tightened. The red pulsed like a heartbeat across his vision now—each aura bursting like flames caught in wind. It wasn't just visual anymore. It sounded. A low hum beneath everything. A drumbeat beneath the bones of the earth.
He took a step forward.
"I'll make them see," he muttered.
The boy didn't move.
"I'll make them feel every piece of what they did. What they are."
He raised his hand, but it shook.
Not from weakness.
From restraint.
Because deep down, something else stirred.
His shadows were clawing. Begging. Demanding to be let out.
They pressed at his ribs like caged beasts, snarling against the divine silence that held them back.
"You're not here to punish them," the boy said.
"I should be."
"You're here to understand."
Ex turned to him. Slowly. Eyes wild. Voice dead.
"I don't want to understand."
The voice.
It was ragged. Soft. Like breath dragged through broken lungs.
And yet it carried.
"Father…"
Ex froze.
That word—
It didn't come from the crowd.
It didn't come from the boy.
It came from the man on the cross.
Jesus.
His body was ruined. Torn. Flesh peeling in places that should've been protected.
But there was no protection.
Not here.
Not for Him.
Blood ran down his arms like rivers turned crimson. Dripped from His feet in slow, unrelenting drops. The crown dug deeper into His skull every time He moved. Thorns biting into bone.
Ex didn't understand how He was still breathing.
"Forgive them…" Jesus rasped, barely audible.
The words struck harder than any scream.
Harder than any thunder.
"…for they know not what they do."
Ex's chest twisted.
Forgive them?
He saw the way the soldiers laughed.
The way the priest smirked.
The way the people turned their backs.
He saw the red, every soul soaked in the stench of sin, the ugliness of pride, hatred, perversion. They knew what they were doing.
And yet.
Those words fell from broken lips with more power than any army.
No fury.
No cursing.
Just—love.
It didn't make sense.
His Sin Perception was screaming now. Red flaring so violently it blurred the edges of reality. The sky bled with it. The earth trembled under it. Every nerve in Ex's body felt like it was being carved open.
But Jesus—
Jesus kept going.
"Why?" Ex whispered.
The boy looked to the cross, not answering.
"Why would He forgive them?" Ex's voice cracked. "They don't deserve it. They should burn for this."
The boy's face was calm. Not cold. Just… knowing.
"Because this is the only way."
Ex's jaw clenched.
"That's not strength," he growled. "That's weakness."
"No," the boy said. "That's surrender."
Jesus gasped again—each breath more agonizing than the last.
But His eyes were still open.
Still looking down at them.
At us.
No hatred.
Only sorrow.
Only… love.
Ex couldn't take it. Not the sight. Not the sound. Not the mercy that poured out like blood.
He dropped to his knees.
Not from worship.
Not from reverence.
From something else.
A pressure inside his chest that couldn't be screamed away.
The fury was still there. Roaring, howling. But underneath it—
A silence.
Heavy. Eternal. Like standing before something so holy it shattered every excuse. Every wall. Every chain.
The words echoed again.
"Forgive them…"
Ex's hands dug into the dirt. His head hung low. Shadows pooled at his back, trembling—waiting to explode. But they didn't move.
Because this moment didn't belong to them.
It belonged to Him.
And in that moment, Ex was nothing but a witness to the unbearable weight of mercy.
The light above the hill dimmed even further, as if the heavens themselves recoiled. The air hung heavy with despair and yet… something else. A weightless, pure agony—almost tangible—bore down on Ex's heart, suffocating him in the same way the cross suffocated the man above.
The red haze, the sin, the fury—it was all still there, pulling at him, threatening to consume him whole. But now… it felt different.
The man's words—those final words—had pierced through the maelstrom. They'd become a weapon that couldn't be ignored.
"My God… My God… why have You forsaken Me?"
And Ex felt it. He felt the weight of those words like a thousand broken chains falling upon him. He felt the depths of the cry—not for vengeance, not for retribution—but for something worse. Something beyond human comprehension. A plea that did not beg for rescue but for understanding.
The universe held its breath.
Ex felt his heart beat faster, his body trembling with an energy that wasn't his own. It wasn't the soel driving him. It wasn't rage.
It was something else—an echo of something ancient. Something that felt like it should have always been there, yet was now rushing into him, tearing apart the walls he'd so carefully built to keep his demons at bay.
Jesus's voice had silenced everything.
He didn't need to hear the words again. He felt them in his very bones. The agony, the sacrifice, the choice—the ultimate descent into darkness to pull them all out.
And in the background, a soft but undeniable sound:
The shudder of the earth.
The ground beneath him cracked, groaned—like it couldn't bear witness any longer. The earth that had carried life was now torn, splitting open, as if mourning the death of this life.
Ex's eyes snapped wide as the world seemed to buckle—but… it wasn't the world he felt breaking. It was him.
The weight of those words settled upon him like a thousand years of sin. The red haze swirling around him thinned for a moment, not because it vanished, but because something deeper had stepped in.
Something older. Something purer.
The shadows inside him stirred. Their hunger, their twisted desire to devour and destroy, was almost unbearable. But they no longer had the power to consume him.
Not like before.
A great, final cry erupted from above, louder than anything else. The earth groaned in response, and with it came the loudest, most violent shudder Ex had ever felt.
Jesus's final breath.
Ex's world stopped.
A long moment. A pause.
And then—
A violent shaking. The sky itself cracked open with a fury that was impossible to ignore, and the earth split wide beneath Ex's feet.
It felt as if the world itself had reached its limit and was finally cracking—releasing all of the pain, all of the injustice, all of the suffering. But also, something else. Something long buried. A promise.
Ex stumbled back, his vision spiraling, not from the chaos outside but from the tidal wave of emotions crashing against him. He fought to hold himself together. Fought against the trembling, the sobs that threatened to claw their way out of him.
But the weight of those words—the sacrifice—it was more than he could hold.
He felt the red rage swirling, struggling to drown out the other feeling that had crept in. The light, the agony, the understanding of what had been done. A bridge, built across the expanse of centuries, carrying with it the weight of all human frailty and divine power.
And for the first time, Ex felt… small.
Human.
The shadows in his soul twisted and writhed with hunger, but now, for the first time, Ex did not feel as if he needed to obey them. Not anymore.
Ex dropped to his knees. His hand hit the earth beneath him, trembling.
The voices in his head—the countless cries and screams that had echoed in his mind for so long—began to fade. They didn't silence entirely. But for a brief moment, they were no longer his.
And Jesus's final words, still echoing in the storm—My God, my God… why have You forsaken Me?—would forever haunt him. Not because of the pain. But because of the truth.
In that truth, Ex was undone.