The Room of Ascension was still, but Roy trembled.
He curled into himself beneath the eternal glow of the chalice, limbs weak, bones brittle, divinity flickering like a dying flame. But it wasn't the cold that made him shiver. It was the remembering.
His mother's touch still lingered on his skin. Her voice, though silent, still echoed behind his ears. He clung to her memory the way a drowning man clings to driftwood desperately, fearfully.
"You were the only one who loved me without condition," he whispered.
His words barely left his lips, like secrets told to dying stars.
He had grown up in silence. Not the kind that brings peace, but the kind that strangles.
The temple never mourned her. No eulogies. No incense. Only whispers and sideways glances. The baby, her baby, was cursed, they said. Born of shame. Of impurity. Of blood stained in secrecy.
They treated him like a relic, too holy to touch, too shameful to claim. The divine in his veins did not protect him. It isolated him.
He watched boys laugh with their fathers, girls embrace their mothers. He watched people fall in love, make mistakes, break and heal.
And he envied it all.
"Why was I made divine if it meant being unloved?"
"Why give me breath if only to choke on it?"
He carried her shame like a second skin.
When he was old enough, he left the temple.
But the world outside did not open its arms.
He wandered from village to village, hiding the light in his eyes, the strange glow of his blood. Humans feared what they did not understand, and those who understood it wanted to use it.
Some tried to worship him.
Some tried to kill him.
One tried to own him.
A nobleman once bought him a meal and asked questions with a smile too wide to trust. Roy had let his guard down for just a moment. That night, shackles burned against his skin as he was sold to a collector of "divine remnants."
A plaything for rich men who sipped wine and asked him to bleed for entertainment.
He ran…again and again.
Always running. Always alone.
And always, always, he asked:
"Where were you, father?"
He looked up at the heavens each night, not in prayer, but in resentment. The god of seven heavens. The god who had temples in every city, whose priests still sang hymns of justice and love.
The god who had let her die.
The god who had let him suffer.
That's when the hate began to root itself deep.
He masked it well, smiled when he had to, nodded to avoid trouble. But it lived beneath his ribs, coiled like a serpent.
He hated the temples.
He hated the word "holy."
He hated the memory of priests and offerings and glowing altars that did nothing but take.
But most of all... he hated his blood. The part of him that made him less than human.
"I just wanted to be loved."
"I just wanted to belong."
And when he heard whispers of the Chalice, the Purifier, he knew.
If he drank from it, he could strip the divine from his veins.
Or worse take another's and become something else.
Anything but what he was.
He had crawled to this room for that very reason. For freedom. Or for power. Or perhaps both.
But now… a voice stirred again.
The god.
The one who had brought him here, not the one in the heavens, but the one with eyes that bled stars and a voice like prophecy.
"You hate your blood, child. You hate the silence, the shame, the loneliness."
"So much pain, buried like corpses in your chest. Would you do anything to bury it all?"
Roy looked at his right arm, the one that had once reached out for help. The one that had begged the heavens. The one that had held a dying woman and done nothing to save her.
"I swore…" he whispered.
"I swore to my mother's grave I would get revenge. Even if it meant cutting the shame from my own body."
His fingers trembled.
His arm began to glow.
He stared at it with loathing, and love, and regret.
"Take it," he whispered. "Take the arm that failed her."
And the god said
"So it be."
There was no scream. Only light.
And then silence.
When it faded, Roy collapsed forward his right side now dripping with blood and absence.
But for the first time... his hatred had weight.
And it had begun to move.