The God's killer

The Whisper of Ash and Wings

Chapter 7: The Whisper of Ash and Wings

Night came swiftly to Darn Hollow.

The village slept uneasily. Doors were bolted tighter. Candles burned longer. Elders muttered prayers to gods who, until now, had been little more than faded names in harvest songs.

But gods were stirring. And they were not pleased.

Kael stood at the edge of the village, beneath the oldest tree in the woods. His white hair shimmered like ghostlight in the dark, his abyssal-black irises fixed on the horizon.

He could feel it—a ripple in the weave of the world. A presence cutting through the mortal realm like a blade through silk. It wasn’t a beast. It wasn’t a man. It was something born of divine spite.

Lira joined him, her cloak drawn tight. “You sense it too?”

He nodded slowly. “They’ve sent someone. A hunter. A warning.”

“Should we run?”

Kael turned to her. “No. If we run now, we’ll be hunted forever. I need to see how far they’ll go to destroy me.”

---

Far above, carried on wings not made of flesh but woven from silence and ash, the divine threat approached.

The villagers would not see her—not unless she willed it. She was the Herald of Silence, a celestial executioner once used only for rogue demigods and gods who broke divine law. Her face was hidden beneath a crown of woven bone, and from her back trailed six ribbons of shadow—each one humming with a different divine commandment.

She bore no sword. She was the blade.

In her left hand was a relic of annihilation: The Hourglass of Unbeing, dripping dust that erased anything it touched.

In her right, a sealed scroll bearing Kael’s name in glowing red ink.

A single sentence beneath it:

“Silence the blasphemer. Break the mortal chain.”

She descended.

---

The moment her feet touched the outskirts of Darn Hollow, the trees withered.

Leaves curled inward and crumbled. Birds screamed and fled. Foxes and deer bolted deeper into the forest, only to fall dead before they passed the glade. The ground beneath her turned to blackened glass with every step.

Kael straightened. His spine felt the pressure first—like the weight of another sky settling upon him. Then came the scent: burnt offerings, stone, and something colder… the smell of forgetting.

Lira reached for his hand. “She’s here.”

“Stay close to me,” Kael said. “But no matter what happens, do not touch the sand.”

They walked together into the darkness.

---

The clearing opened before them, lit only by the pale glow of the moon. The Herald of Silence stood at its center, motionless—her ribbons hanging around her like broken wings. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

Lira could feel the silence pressing against her chest like an iron weight. It wasn’t just soundlessness—it was the absence of reality. As if sound itself had died in this place.

Kael stepped forward.

“I wondered which one of you they’d send first,” he said, voice calm. “You always were the obedient one.”

The Herald tilted her head.

A voice entered his mind—not spoken, but imposed:

“You are forbidden. Return to dust.”

Kael smiled darkly. “I’ve already returned. And I’m not dust. Not anymore.”

The ribbons moved.

They lashed forward, faster than light, slicing through the air toward Kael’s throat. He barely moved—just a step to the side, a slight turn of the wrist—and the shadows passed him harmlessly.

But the ground where he stood evaporated.

The ribbons looped back, weaving a cage of divine law around him. Runes shimmered into existence mid-air, spelling ancient commandments:

“Obedience. Order. Obscurity.”

Kael gritted his teeth. “You think chains scare me?”

From his back, the Root Flame sword sang free.

It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t clean. But as he raised it, shadows split from its edge like ink in fire. He swung—not at the ribbons, but at the commandments.

They shattered.

The Herald’s crown tilted in surprise.

Kael advanced.

Strike after strike, his blade met the Herald’s ribbons in a clash of silence and thunder. Each blow sent ripples through the forest, distorting trees, bending time. Lira could barely breathe from where she stood, the very air trembling with divine fury.

Then—too fast to follow—the Herald released the Hourglass.

It tipped.

A grain of sand fell.

Where it landed, the earth ceased to exist. No explosion. No flame. Just… nothingness.

Lira screamed. “KAEL!”

He turned just in time.

The second grain was falling. It would land where she stood.

Kael moved.

Faster than thought, faster than reason—he shifted, not just in space, but through the weave of reality itself. One step, and he was before her, arms wrapping her body, the blade spinning behind him to cut a circle in the air.

The grain landed—and stopped.

Held within his shadow.

Kael’s eyes blazed, no longer only abyssal. There was light now—the first light, deep within the black.

He whispered a name. Not hers. Not his.

A name older than creation.

The Herald flinched.

Kael rose, one hand gripping Lira’s tightly. “Tell them this,” he growled. “I’m not hiding. I’m not broken. And I’m not alone.”

With a final slash, he drove his blade down into the glassy soil.

Power surged outward—not flame, but memory.

The Herald stumbled. Her ribbons writhed, and for the first time in a thousand years, she retreated.

She vanished with a soundless crack of air, pulled back to the heavens by unseen hands.

Silence returned to the forest—but now it was different.

Less like an execution. More like a question.

Kael exhaled, finally letting go of Lira’s hand. She stared up at him, breathless, heart racing.

“You protected me,” she whispered.

He looked down at her, and for a moment, the abyss in his eyes softened.

“I always will.”

And above them, in a place where divine eyes watched the mortal realm, a circle of gods stared at the broken law with unease.

“He remembered the Old Name,” one whispered.

And in the distance, beneath the world, the true enemy began to smile.