Dark Parasyte
Chapter 51: Divinity Dismantled

Chapter 51: Divinity Dismantled

The thunder of footfalls echoed through the dim tunnels beneath Verranus, each step laced with urgency, each breath soaked in dread.

Five cardinals and Pontiff Malcheron moved swiftly, robes trailing behind them, flanked by ten Paladins in burnished armor and a dozen High Purifiers, their hoods drawn and hands tight on their weapons. The sacred regalia of the Sanctified Council clinked faintly with every stride, a grim accompaniment to their spiraling descent. The narrow tunnel, carved generations ago and sealed with divine wards, was lit by flickering rune sconces, dim blue flame sputtering as if it too feared what stalked the city above.

Malcheron’s heart hammered behind his ribs, each beat heavier than the last. How could it come to this? The City of Saints, the heart of the faith, the bastion of purity in a world devoured by sin... now burning. Not from an outside siege, not from demons breaching the Veil, but from within.

The last runner’s voice still echoed in his skull:

"They’re killing each other. Brothers slay brothers."

He had wanted to scream. To rebuke. To deny. But deep within, beneath the robes and doctrine, he already knew it was true.

"What hatred," Malcheron thought bitterly, "could twist a faithful son of the Holy Flame to raise his blade against his brother?"

It wasn’t natural. It couldn’t be. He wanted to blame demons. Elves. Feralis beasts. Aetherborn heresies. But even that comfort was denied. The enemy had worn the faces of the faithful. They had prayed the same prayers. Their betrayal wasn’t just murder, it was apostasy in its purest form.

He clenched his fists. Not all creatures were people. Not truly. Elves, Feralis, demons, they weren’t different. They were subhumans, hollow pretenders in flesh. Malcheron had preached it for decades. To him, there was no moral distance between a goblin and a dark elf. None. The Sanctified Council was the lighthouse for humans in this dark sinfull planet. Even if the city has fallen, as long as the council, more importantly himself is there. Divinity will be there. He was the shadow of the Divine. He was the sound of Divine. He was DIVINE!

And yet, the Holy City had fallen. Not by fire. Not by siege.

By corruption.

They pressed forward, approaching the final seal. A hidden vault beneath the Cathedral of Saint Aelric’s Spine, carved into the deepest bedrock of the city. Known only to the Pontiff and the inner circle. It had been the final measure, untouchable. They would wait there, safe behind layers of wards, until Arbiter Gareth arrived. The Circle would come. Order would be restored.

Then..

A deafening crack came from behind.

A flash of blue violet light tore through the passage behind them.

Silence followed. Then nothing.

The smell of ozone was the last thing he remembered before losing conciseness.

Malcheron stirred, limbs heavy, bones aching as if pressed under mountains. He tried to move. His wrists and ankles were shackled in arcane steel, etched with runes to suppress mana movement. They pulsed with faint magic.

He was seated on the cold stone floor. Back aching. Mouth dry.

Around him, the surviving cardinals stirred groggily. Garridan Morth slumped sideways, blood at the corner of his mouth. Elyndra Voss sat upright, wide eyed, face pale as chalk. Thalia Corren sobbed quietly. Calistyn Lightwing muttered half sentences, prayers without meaning. Only the Cardinal of War was absent. Most probably dead.

The chamber itself was unchanged, which means the seal had held.

But it had not protected.

Arrayed along the walls were the city’s finest, their own Paladins and High Purifiers.

Yet none of them moved.

Their eyes stared ahead, hollow. Their backs too straight. Their weapons held at perfect rest.

They were breathing.

But not alive.

Then Malcheron saw it.

The figure.

An elf, no, a mountain of an elf stood at the center of the room.

Taller than any Malcheron had seen, with a frame carved from violence. Shoulders broad, limbs coiled in strength. His skin was smooth but pale, his hair silver white, and his eyes...

Steel gray and cold.

Around them, tendrils of bluish mana curled like smoke. As if magic itself feared to settle.

In one hand, he held Cardinal Virelda Samhain.

Not by the arm.

By the head.

Her body twitched in spasms. Blood streamed from her nose, eyes, mouth. Her lips gurgled wordless protest. Her legs kicked once, then twice more, and then nothing.

The elf let her drop.

A husk.

A discarded relic.

Malcheron tried to scream. To speak. Only a rasping gasp left his throat.

The elf turned his head.

And smiled.

It wasn’t cruel nor was was it kind. It was as if a predator acknowledged the gaze of prey. Nothing more.

He made a simple gesture with his hand.

One of the Paladins, stepped forward.

Malcheron barely had time to register before his hair was seized in a vice like grip and his body dragged across the floor, scraping stone.

He couldn’t resist. His limbs wouldn’t move. He could only stare at the floor passing beneath him, then up, into those eyes.

He didn’t know this creature’s name.

But he knew, in the marrow of his sanctified bones, that this was the one. The force. The shadow that had shattered Verranus.

The butcher who had twisted the faithful.

The heretic who had turned the light into a weapon.

For the first time in his long, unyielding life, Pontiff Malcheron felt fear.

Not the anxious worry of loss.

Not fear of failure.

Real fear. Cold. Ancient. Absolute.

The fear of standing before something that doesn’t want to defeat you.

It wants to end you.

And then forget you ever existed.

His lips trembled.

The elf stepped closer.

And still, he said nothing.

Only smiled.

--

The Shadows of the Synod stood far above the chaos, cloaked in veils of silence and watching from the broken ridgelines beyond Verranus. Their eyes did not blink. Their quills did not hesitate.

They observed the twelve legions of Holy Verrenate die not by demon claw or elven arrows, but by their own brothers. Faith turned upon itself. The taste of irony was sweet. Centuries of sanctimonious preaching, all undone in a single, savage night.

And at the center of it all... a Raven.

Corvin Blackmoor.

One of theirs. Not officially. Not declared. But his shadow bore the scent of the Synod, his methods echoed theirs, twisted and perfected. His silence, his precision, the clean execution of the grand dismantling. He was more Synod than most who bore the title.

Their scopes observed every detail, every formation, every attack wave. The metal shards that moved like windblown razors, silent and brutal. The lightning cast from the sky and from Corvin’s hand alike, guided with terrifying accuracy. The movements of the so called rebel army, coordinated, efficient, merciless. Not a single wasted motion. Not a single missed opportunity.

But it was not just the power that fascinated them. It was the obedience.

Thousands of human soldiers obeyed him without hesitation. No collars. No fear. Only purpose. A deep, instinctual order that bordered on religious fervor.

"Psychic domination," one of the Shadows whispered and wrote it down.

"Subtle yet undeniable." another added, voice hushed in academic awe.

The final moment, when Corvin absorbed the war hardened Cardinal Tyranus Holric, was committed to ink as well.

"Subject disintegrated. Possible Space Magic. A total eradication," was the report.

Still they remained, even as the echoes of death faded, as Verranus’ gates groaned open like the jaws of some slain titan.

One of the Shadows lingered, watching Corvin disappear through the gates with his army.

"Textbook," he muttered.

Then they dispersed. Like smoke on wind, back to their veins of shadow, to carry the word home.

North of the devastation, three scout teams rode hard under Iron March banners. General Kaelen Dros had sent them to observe and unsettling silence from allied channels. These were hardened men, veterans of skirmishes. But even they gritted their teeth when the wind carried with it the scent of scorched sanctity.

They crested a high dune just as the first rays of dawn touched the charred landscape.

Smoke, ash and broken bodies. There was nothing else from the war in fornt of the northern gates of Verranus. Twelve legions dissolved. Nothing was left. Even their cardinal was gone. The Elf, whom was walking as if he own the rebel army was strange. Verrenate’s doctrines could not agree to such a thing. More importantly Iron March could not allow such a force under an Elf’s command. This above all else needs to be reported.

Thick, unbroken columns rising from Verranus. It wasn’t siege smoke. It wasn’t chaos.

It was execution smoke.

The eastern team pushed closer, threading between abandoned road shrines and blackened trees, but they got too close. Net snares laced with arcane tethers lashed out from hidden groves. Screams cut short. The trap was clean. Precise.

The remaining two teams split. One vanished eastward, hoping to trace a safer arc around the region. The other doubled back immediately.

By the first rays of dawn, that rider, his face ash streaked, his eyes wide with silent horror stood before General Kaelen Dros and reported the unthinkable:

"Verranus has fallen. By the hands of Purifiers, Paladins, Verrenate soldiers.."

Kaelen said nothing for a long while. Then, softly:

"Prapera a carrige. I have to report this."

Elsewhere, within the now half ruined Branch Hall of the Merchant’s Guild in Verranus, the stewards and scribes moved with furious precision. Their ledgers were ash, their walls cracked, but their hawks still lived.

They drafted and dispatched no fewer than seven sealed messages. Their quills scratched madly against parchment as runners prepped the birds.

To Goldhaven:

Verranus breached. Local forces in collapse. Unknown elf leads force of loyalist over five thousand strong troops. No clear origin. No known affiliation with Aurelian or Synod.

The birds were launched before the the Elf disappeared in the chaos of the city.

By the time the dawn would come, Gilded Dominion would know.

And when night fell upon Verthalis, the Aurelian Dominion and Umbral Synod would recieve their own reports and understand...

Holy Verrenate had fallen.

Not to demons. Not to outsiders. Not even to the Synod.

To an elf, at the helm of their own army.

And none could say what would follow.

--

Corvin held Pontiff Malcheron’s chin with an eerie tenderness, his touch precise and deliberate. His steel colored eyes locked onto the elder man’s terrified gaze, searching not just his expression, but deeper, far deeper.

Without a word, Corvin initiated the Mind Walk.

The barrier he encountered was formidable, stronger compared to an archmagus. But not impenetrable. It reminded him of weathered ice shielding an ancient depth. Slowly, methodically, he pushed. He focused his will, sharpened his intent, and bore down until, Malcheron’s defenses splintered with a mental crack like thunder across a frozen lake.

A river of thoughts, memories, and deeply rooted convictions rushed into Corvin’s awareness. Malcheron was delusional at best. Considering himself ’divine’ was a clinical diagnosis. Similar to all the religious leaders of his old world. Centuries of rigid doctrine, fanatic ideology, cruelty dressed as salvation. But buried beneath the layers, something surprising: power. Malcheron was standing at the threshold of becoming a Planarch. He had not croseed yet, but the shape of his potential made Corvin pause.

"Useful," he whispered to no one.

He extended a spore, one of thirty he could form per day. It was the first of five he intended to test. Each one would attempt to siphon Malcheron: his affinity, his memories, his magical and physical potential. He kept mind walking active, he needed to ’see’ Pontiff’s reaction.

The moment the first spore latched, Malcheron jolted. His eyes went wide. He felt it, foreign, invasive, wrong.

But he didn’t purge it.

Corvin watched. "Fear. Good."

He gestured silently. The guards brought forth Cardinal Garridan Morth, the Cardinal of Doctrine. The aged cleric held his prayer beads like a lifeline. Corvin placed a hand on the man’s chest and absorbed him. The Cardinal’s body collapsed inward, vanishing in streaks of arcane essence and agonazied screams. The beads clattered to the floor.

Next came Cardinal Thalia Corren, the Cardinal of Mercy. She didn’t resist. Her lips moved in silent prayer as Corvin erased her.

Then Cardinal Calistyn Lightwing, the Cardinal of Rites, absorbed with as little effort as breath.

Corvin returned his gaze to the Pontiff and a second spore latched. Malcheron flinched again, but the sensation was weaker. He noticed, but he didn’t react with the same alarm. His defenses had been tested, compromised.

"Two," Corvin whispered. "Let’s continue."

The final two Cardinals, Elyndra Voss, Cardinal of Wisdom, and Virelda Samhain, Cardinal of Judgment stood with silent defiance. Both radiated Archmagus level power, just like the rest of the cardinals. Corvin moved through them with grim reverence, absorbing them as if drinking from divine fonts. Their minds folded into his with rich clarity.

Then came the third spore.

Malcheron barely stirred. He sensed something, but not enough to act. Not enough to even place direction or intention.

Corvin’s smile curled darkly. "Almost there."

He walked toward the Pontiff and reached with calm finality. "You’ve served your purpose."

He grasped Malcheron by the throat. The siphon began.

The Pontiff screamed, but it was brief. The divine shields meant nothing. The psychic resistance crumbled. With each second, another layer of fanatic conviction was stripped away, catalogued, consumed.

By the time Malcheron’s body began to dissolve like paper set to flame, Corvin could feel it: the threshold. Planarch wasn’t a fantasy anymore. It was a shape on the horizon, clearer than ever.

The last gasp of the Sanctified Council scattered into nothingness.

"That was for a death owed," he whispered. His own death. His own and each and every living being sacrificed to extremists and fanatics of backward doctrines, savage beliefs.

And then he turned, sending a mental command to he troops to start to loot this damned place.