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Weightless Sin

  Heat.

  That was the only word Luxerio could cling to as sensation returned to his body. Not warmth. Not burning. Just heat — raw, indescribable, all-consuming. It filled the world around him. It filled him. Like being plunged into the core of a volcano, yet cursed to not combust, to feel every blistering second of it.

  The air itself was pain. His skin, his eyes, his lungs — all scorched beyond reason.

  And yet, somehow, he lived. Somehow, he still stood. Or perhaps he was just suspended in torment.

  His vision, barely anything more than flickers of melting color, tried to make sense of the nightmare before him. Blurred shapes bled together in his sight, and only after blinking through the pain did the brightness dim enough to let him see it.

  Where the altar had once stood, there now bloomed a burning fissure of impossible light. A molten radiance that pulsed with unnatural life. The place where the warrior had plunged his hand into the altar's flaming emblem now erupted in writhing tendrils of magma-colored energy, crawling up the armored forearm like living flame.

  The transformation had begun.

  It started with the warrior's hand. Magma-veins surged like rivers of fire beneath the blackened armor, glowing a furious orange as they spread up his arm.

  Luxerio watched in mute horror as the very metal of the warrior's armor melted in some places, reshaping in others, fusing with the fiery veins like molten flesh forming new bone. The shoulder spasmed violently, bursting open in a shower of heat and embers as the light surged into the chest, setting the torso ablaze with searing, pulsing sigils that shimmered like runes of agony.

  Then came the first change in form.

  The armored chest split down the middle, not with a tear, but like a chrysalis cracking open, revealing something underneath. Something far, far worse. Within, there was no man. No soul. Only flame and flesh twisted into a monstrous shape. The torso expanded, bones cracking and realigning audibly as the being inside grew larger and larger. His entire structure seemed to ripple and reform, unnatural musculature forming beneath scales that glowed like burning coals.

  From his back, new limbs tore forth.

  Two massive, clawed arms erupted with an otherworldly shriek, steam and blood-like fire spraying into the air as they unfolded like wings of a fallen god. The claws were obsidian-black, each longer than Luxerio's body, wreathed in heatwaves that distorted the very space around them. The original arms of the warrior had now warped into massive, magma-forged appendages, thicker, stronger, and glowing from within like forges of hell.

  The head was the last to change.

  The helmet, once stoic and cracked with age, began to melt. No, not melt — unfurl. The metal peeled back like the petals of a dying flower, revealing a visage that was not made for mortal eyes.

  No mouth, no nose, just a gaping maw of jagged heat and hollow fire where a face might have been. Eyes — if they could be called that — glowed deep within the sockets, hateful and ancient, like the last embers of a dying world staring directly at Luxerio.

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. But his body betrayed him, frozen in awe and fear, barely able to tremble under the presence of such eldritch divinity. His knees buckled, and he stumbled back, barely catching himself from collapsing. This was no longer a warrior. This was something else. Something older. Something crueler.

  And then — the voice.

  It did not speak to him. It broke into his mind.

  It wasn't sound. It wasn't even words. It was pressure. It was a frequency his thoughts weren't prepared to endure. A vibration that rattled his bones and made his very essence recoil. Yet somehow, impossibly, he understood it. Every meaning, every syllable, carved into his soul with searing precision.

  "You have come with deceit in your soul."

  Luxerio's breath caught in his throat.

  "With thieving ambitions hidden beneath a coward's desperation."

  The beast took a step forward, the very ground beneath it turning to cracked glass from its heat.

  "For such sins... your death shall be fitting. The death... of a thief."

  Luxerio stared, paralyzed by dread, as the monster loomed above him, a nightmare incarnate. Whatever he thought this Tale was, whatever he thought this prayer had awakened... it was far beyond him now.

  And the real horror had only just begun.

  The monster moved.

  No warning. No shift in the molten air. No tensing of muscles or coiling of limbs. One step—and the space between them ceased to exist.

  Luxerio didn’t even process it until he felt his skin sizzle.

  The fiend was right there, its monstrous visage filling his entire world—scaled magma hide pulsing with veins of molten light, jagged teeth of obsidian curling behind the hollow mask of a face. The heat was searing, unbearable. Luxerio gasped, then screamed, stumbling back, his vision swimming in liquid pain. But there was nowhere to go.

  His back slammed into the wall of solid flame that encircled the circle, and the instant he touched it, the ragged coat he wore ignited.

  A roaring pain.

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  The flames ate through the fabric, seared his back, and bit deep into his skin. He shrieked and ripped the burning cloth off with frantic hands, only for a searing weight to fall on him.

  The monster's hand.

  A massive clawed fist of molten stone and living fire clamped around his face.

  Luxerio’s scream was muffled into a soundless gurgle as the burning hand charred his features. His skin bubbled and blackened; the flesh of his cheeks sloughed off in pieces. His eyes boiled behind closed lids, and his hair caught fire, vanishing in a burst of flame. The agony was absolute, infinite, his nerves singing in a chorus of pure torment.

  He clawed at the hand, nails snapping and fingers cooking in the act. The flesh of his hands peeled from the heat, and as he cried out again, the fire slid into his throat, burning his lungs dry. The scream turned hoarse, shallow—then silence.

  Then, casually, the monster flung him.

  His body flew through the air like a broken doll and collided with the far edge of the circular wall. Bones crunched. He landed in a twisted heap, his left arm bent grotesquely in the wrong direction. The ground sizzled under his broken form, and he lay there, smoke rising off his blackened body.

  But the monster was not done.

  It advanced again. Not running. Not lunging. Just walking. Slowly. Methodically.

  Another hand. It gripped his ankle and lifted him like an insect. Then—snap. His leg was bent backward at the knee with a casual flick.

  Luxerio couldn't even scream anymore. He choked on the sensation, blood and heat flooding his mouth.

  The monster grabbed his other leg. Snap. Twist.

  Then it threw him down again, only to kneel and grip his right arm.

  Crack.

  Dislocation. Fracture. Then the arm was torn from its socket. The wound was cauterized instantly by the molten hand.

  No blood.

  Just the smell of seared flesh and the hiss of steam.

  The monster brought its massive clawed fingers to Luxerio’s face, and with a casual precision, gouged out his left eye.

  He convulsed violently.

  It stood then, surveying the mess it had made. Luxerio was barely a body. A mangled, burnt, dismembered husk—an anatomy diagram drawn by a madman. Fingers gone. Legs broken. One arm missing. One eye gone. Skin gone. Hair gone. Nose charred away. His face was barely a face anymore. His ribs jutted out from beneath seared flesh like jagged cliffs.

  Then the monster knelt again.

  Its claw moved to Luxerio's lower body.

  He realized, too late, what it was going to do.

  A scream tried to escape—but his throat was ruined. Nothing came out.

  Fire. His lower body ignited.

  His nerves caught it, barely hanging on. A thousand knives. A thousand blades.

  Then nothing.

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  He lay there, unable to move. Unable to breathe. His vision was gone, darkness overtaking even the bright hellfire around him. He could feel nothing but the faint outline of pain echoing in his shredded mind. A phantom memory of agony that never stopped.

  What had he done?

  Why was this happening?

  He had lived like a rat his whole life. Never hurt anyone. Never killed. Never stolen—not really. He hadn't offended or crossed anyone with power. He hadn't sought vengeance with cruelty, just one prayer, one stupid prayer to something he didn’t understand.

  He hadn't even known what prayer he had made.

  He hadn't even known where he was following the armored warrior to.

  He hadn't known what would happen in the circle.

  He hadn’t known what the altar would do.

  So why was he being punished like this?

  Was he truly a thief?

  A deceiver?

  What did he steal?

  Who did he deceive?

  Well, something decided to answer.

  Luxerio, though robbed of nearly all his senses, felt the voice enter his mind. Not heard—felt—as though the very thoughts in his head were being drowned in the words of something far beyond him. The monster had not finished with him yet. Not physically, not spiritually.

  You stole the right to live....

  ...and you deceived the world to do it.

  You call this suffering unjust. That you have done nothing to deserve it.

  The voice was not spoken, nor was it shouted. It simply was. It existed in his mind like an ancient scar being reopened, as if his very consciousness had a nerve to be touched and this voice knew exactly where it was.

  But you are wrong. It is not despite your nothingness that you are punished. It is because of it.

  The words seared through his ravaged soul. He could not cry. He could not scream. But he heard—knew—what was being said to him.

  You were born a thief.

  The words echoed like thunder in his brittle mind.

  Your life, a theft. Your breath, a theft. Your mere being was stolen from the world.

  Images, thoughts, judgments flooded in.

  The air you breathe—stolen from someone who might’ve grown strong from it.

  The scraps of food you have eaten—taken from mouths who could’ve used that strength to do something.

  The cold floor you have laid on—someone else might have needed that place to rest before returning to war or work.

  But you?

  You did nothing to even have these things.

  Luxerio felt those words strike at the core of his soul.

  You said it yourself. You did not kill, nor lie, nor cheat.

  But you also never saved, never built, never gave.

  You have not once offered this world so much as a flicker of what your purpose is.

  Luxerio’s remaining thoughts twisted in themselves, contorting into knots of shame and despair. That thought repeated.

  He did nothing.

  You have wandered the realms like a parasite, giving nothing. Taking the right to live without living rightly. Complaining about pain without ever bearing responsibility.

  Do you think even now you are innocent?

  He couldn’t answer. Not because of his injuries—those no longer even registered in his mind. He couldn’t answer because he didn’t know. Maybe… the monster was right.

  You followed me, thinking survival was owed to you.

  You entered the circle.

  You touched the altar.

  You believed you even had a chance to have a place in the Tale.

  That… is theft in the truest sense.

  Luxerio’s soul quivered.

  And what does a thief deserve? Not the ending of a hero. Not even the damnation of a villain. But the absence of end. The erasure.

  You will not be given anything.

  For your entire existence there is nothing you have given.

  The voice faded, but its mark was seared into him like the char of his ruined body.

  Luxerio felt himself slipping. Not into sleep, or unconsciousness—but into nothing. An undoing.

  “Then maybe... I deserve it,” he thought faintly.

  And so, he faded. His mind disappeared into the void, without drama or crescendo. As silent as a sigh in a dead world.

  *****

  The monster stood tall over what remained. A husk. A crumpled, misshapen carcass that no longer resembled anything human. No screams. No twitch. Not even a breath. Just a forgotten mass of charred flesh and bone.

  It looked down at the thief with utter disdain. Not rage. Not satisfaction. Just cold, disgusted scorn.

  “Not even worthy of a Lorerune,” the beast muttered in its own tongue—one not meant for mortal tongues or minds.

  It turned from the body, its molten arms flexing with restrained fury as it walked back toward the remnants of the shattered altar. The ground shook beneath each step as it approached the center once more. The flames surrounding the circle still blazed high, a towering inferno of wrathful orange.

  The beast raised one arm, preparing to restore the altar. But then… it froze.

  Something shifted.

  Its gaze turned sharply toward the wall of flame surrounding the area.

  The hues… had changed.

  Not entirely. Not obviously. But subtly—like a whisper hiding in a scream.

  Among the furious orange… was crimson.

  A deep, blood-red flame had slithered into the inferno. Quiet. Sinister.

  The creature narrowed its eyes.

  Something… was wrong.

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