The church members lunged forward, black weapons raised high, their heavy robes snapping in the air as they closed in.
Veldra smiled.
This time, he acknowledged the voice. He no longer resisted it. The presence that whispered to him at random moments had spoken again, and as always, it had chosen the perfect time. Acceptance came easily now, as though it had always belonged to him.
One step.
Two steps.
Veldra vanished.
He reappeared directly before one of the church members. His hand clamped around the man's face, fingers sinking in with crushing force, gravity itself seeming to obey his grip. Bone twisted. Flesh gave way. With a sharp, brutal motion, he tore the man's neck from its socket and hurled the head forward.
It became a projectile of death.
The head tore through the air at blinding speed, punching through skulls and abdomens alike. Bodies collapsed before they could even scream. Blood splashed across the church floor and climbed the walls in dark arcs.
From that spreading pool of blood, Veldra lifted his hand. The liquid answered him, rising in thin streams that coiled between his fingers. Then he vanished again.
He reappeared amid the remaining church members.
Hands struck. Torsos twisted unnaturally, bones snapping under raw, merciless strength. Bodies folded inward and were discarded like broken tools. What had once been people became misshapen weapons, hurled away without hesitation.
Three church members charged him together. They were closer than the rest, their movements sharp, coordinated. In their eyes burned certainty. They believed victory was already theirs.
It was a beautiful illusion.
Their heads fell almost simultaneously, striking the stone floor with a deep, hollow sound. Their faces still wore expressions of triumph, smiles frozen in place, malice and faith tangled together. Death had arrived too quickly for realization to follow.
Veldra did not spare them a glance.
He continued his massacre, seizing broken bodies and flinging them like spears. Each throw shattered the air itself, ripping past the limits of sound, pulverizing anything in their path. Stone cracked. Flesh burst. The church became a slaughterhouse soaked in echoes and blood.
Still, the church members kept coming.
They clutched their weapons as if devotion alone could shield them, as if obedience might bend fate in their favor.
Veldra's smile widened.
His eyes sank fully into void-black depths, unnatural and bottomless, as though darkness itself had taken root within them. He narrowed his gaze, and the smile that followed was twisted, grotesque, carved from pure horror.
"Look at them," he said softly. "Running like dogs sent by their masters, chasing a predator they were never meant to face."
He lunged forward.
"They give everything they are," his voice continued, calm and almost curious, "for a god that would not even look back."
Veldra approached, face returning to its calm, human guise. He knelt beside Aeron, watching him as the final moments of resistance approached.
And then, just as Aeron's eyes were about to close, he spoke.
"You, having lived for only a short while, appearing before me with neither sorrow nor joy on your face. Tell me, Veldra, have you ever felt happy?" Aeron asked, small tears forming in his eyes.
"Yes, indeed. The material things of this world are bound to fleeting happiness. But in my last experience, it lasted for quite a while. It was joy like summer warmth, like fire giving comfort in winter, like success leaning in to place a gentle kiss on your cheek. In that moment, there was no struggle, no doubt, no thought of an enemy. Only certainty. Only joy.
But it is dangerous. Like madness, it consumes you. You begin to hunger for the same feeling you once believed would last forever. The dedication and hard work you pour into something, only for it to abandon you in solitude, becomes a cleansing of the soul. Because once you taste it, you realize how fragile it is, how eternally fleeting. Whether it is love, happiness, joy, belief, spirituality, or faith, it is short-lived and easily broken by a stronger belief, another faith, criticism, or discouragement.
And when it leaves you, you suffer. You cling to its trail, to memories. Then even those memories blur, and everything you once held onto slowly slips away.
So yes, I have experienced happiness. But it does not last. It only shows you what life could be, a dream that can never be true, an imagination that can never become reality. And before it fades, it reminds you that you are only one among billions, that belief and happiness are emotions given by the gods, not out of mercy, but for entertainment."