Chapter 50: The Way Forward.
The battlefield was littered with corpses.
Mana beasts, split down the middle. Cultists and slavers, carved as if the air had become a sword. Blood soaked the cracked temple stones, leaking into the dirt, spreading like a silent scream.
And in the center of it all stood Lan.
Devil’s Lie hung loosely from his hand, its black blade steaming as if thirsting still. His fingers were stained with blood—some his, most not.
He wasn’t moving. He was seeing.
A haze clung to the edge of his vision, less from fatigue, more from something... deeper. The blade was humming, almost whispering into his hand. And as it drank the blood that clung to its edge, something strange began to happen.
Visions. Flickers. Shadows behind the eyes.
"They called us monsters..."
"I had no choice."
"This world has no gods. Only wolves."
Lies.
Each of the Ash Tongues had died with false truths lingering in their hearts—coward’s dogma, butchered philosophies, perverted meaning—and Devil’s Lie fed on every last one.