"How can this be happening in the name of the Light?!"

Within the theocracy of the Church of Light, a devout believer stared in disbelief at the catastrophe unfolding in the kingdom's heart. His lips trembled as he prayed and questioned the very god he worshiped. Why would the divine bring such calamity upon them?

"Please, Priest! Please save us!"

"If you can't, at least take our children!"

On the street before the priest, several ordinary civilians, neither faithful nor blessed, were fleeing in panic toward the outskirts of the kingdom.

The node that the God of Light had torn free with divine force was spreading outward from the center, distorting the material realm in the process. Those caught within the affected zone were corroded by the void and transformed into voidspawn.

This gave the illusion that those further away still had time to escape. The people before the priest were among the few fortunate enough to witness others being warped into voidspawn, only to be immediately purified by pillars of holy light. Terrified beyond reason, they had run blindly until they spotted the priest, clinging to him like a lifeline.

"I..."

The priest opened his mouth, instinctively reaching out in prayer: seeking the divine power he had always received, seeking a miracle to save these pleading souls.

But this hope was no more than a façade. As more of the node was dragged into the material realm, the warped environment expanded at an exponential pace. Mere seconds later, the creeping tide of void-touched matter engulfed the citizens who had reached him.

"Please... help... grr—chir—kraa—"

Their frantic pleas dissolved into meaningless howls. Their bodies twisted, bones snapping, flesh dissolving into dark void matter. The matter pulsed, writhed, and grew in chaotic, lawless patterns, birthing abominations with no trace of the humans they once were.

None were spared. Not the mother clutching her infant, nor the man shielding his family. Not the youth who had only just realized something was wrong, nor the lame middle-aged blacksmith who ran with all his might yet still lagged behind the rest...

Before the priest's horrified eyes, they became creatures of the void. Even the five- or six-year-old girl the mother had hurled toward him—still suspended in midair, still unaware—met the same cruel end.

Then a familiar radiance fell from the sky. A column of pure, sanctified light, the unmistakable power of the God of Light, obliterated the newborn abominations in a heartbeat, scattering them as ash on the wind.

"...I will... do all I..."

His unfinished words were arrested in his throat. There was nothing left to save. The world had turned to cinders. Then, the spreading void reached him as well.

"What is...?"

Just as despair and confusion began to swallow his thoughts, another feeling dawned upon him.

A thin, translucent veil of golden light, warm and gentle, enveloped his body, shielding him, protecting him from the very corruption devouring the world around him.

It was a power he knew intimately: the divine protection that was granted through prayer. But why would his god shield him while refusing to answer him?

This was no isolated tragedy. Everywhere within the theocracy, other devotees of the God of Light endured the same horror. The void swept through the land, turning countless residents into twisted horrors—only for divine judgment to descend and reduce them to dust. The theocracy of the Church of Light had become a living hell.

Yet the faithful—priests, clerics, and all who derived their strength from the God of Light—could no longer call upon divine arts. Their prayers met only silence.

Even so, the god protected their bodies from the corruption.

Many among them were not mere worshipers, but rather seasoned warriors: knights, magicians, and above all the battle-hardened paladins whose valor was the pride of the Church.

One such paladin raced across rooftops, clutching several children. He bounded from house to house, landing hard on the ground and skidding several meters with a harsh scrape.

But before he could keep running, the tide caught up to him. The void overtook him and the children in an instant.

In his arms, something indescribable bloomed. Several bodies fused together into one grotesque mass. It screeched and writhed across his chest and shoulder, baring newly formed fangs as it tried to tear off his head and arms.

A pillar of holy light struck, consuming him and swallowing him whole. When the radiance faded, the paladin stood intact and unharmed. But the creatures born of the children he carried were gone, annihilated without a trace.

The paladin stared blankly for a moment. He raised his hands, now wrapped in golden brilliance, before lifting his gaze toward the distant center of the realm. There, towering over the collapsing nation, was the God of Light Himself, still dragging some unfathomable thing out from the depths of the void. From behind his visor, the paladin's eyes flickered with a roiling wave of emotions.

Meanwhile, within the vast orb of light suspended in the void, Sulla conversed with Kiran through some unfathomable means.

"Perhaps I ought to offer an apology. It was never our intention that these ordinary folk should die. Still, your bond with the God of Light runs deeper than even I imagined. That radiance shielding His faithful surely exists because of you, doesn't it?"

"..."

Kiran did not reply.

"Believe me: once the Utopia is established, such helpless tragedies will never occur again. Even if the believers of the God of Light were spared by that divine protection, standing by and watching their people die is a suffering no one should endure. The Utopia's purpose is precisely to prevent that kind of powerless despair."

Sulla continued, stating his principles without hesitation. Whatever irony others might hear in these words, Kiran's fading consciousness knew well that Sulla truly believed what he was saying.

He no longer knew how to judge the Utopia. Were they scholars driven mad by their own research and theories? Fanatics whose minds had been wholly consumed by obsession? Or enlightened visionaries whom the world had failed to understand?

Whatever they were, he could never acknowledge the ideals of the Utopia's adherents. He would not speak of right or wrong—those were matters for spectators and survivors to debate. His task now was simple: to ensure that more lives could survive.

"It seems that your understanding of the Church of Light is far more outdated than you realized..."

After a long silence, Kiran finally spoke with a trace of weary satisfaction. Then he fell into eternal silence.

"Hm?"

Sulla frowned in mild confusion, but the meaning of Kiran's words soon became clear.

The followers of the Church of Light were, at their core, simple folk. What they pursued and upheld were the plain and universal desires of all rational beings: they sought truth, not blind obedience. And in this, even their god was no exception.

At this moment, having witnessed the God of Light's deeds, and the countless innocents slain in the process, not one of them fell into the confusion common to other faiths: Why has our god forsaken us? Why does He not answer our prayers?

"The God of Light is engaging in wrongdoing!" That thought erupted in the hearts of the faithful without hesitation, an unthinkably blasphemous judgment delivered with perfect clarity.

After all, the Church of Light had always been the most peculiar of the continent's churches: its believers were at once the most and the least devout of all faiths.

The moment their god strayed from the path they sought to follow, the moment those acts violated their principles, deicide by denial would occur. They would never delude themselves into believing a god's actions righteous simply because He was their god. The instant He did such things, He ceased to be the object of their faith.

"Go! I'll see if I can stop that thing..."

The paladin ran as he addressed a priest sprinting beside him. His gaze was fixed on the massive figure wrenching a node up from the fabric of the Church's territory. That being was no object of faith, merely a monster committing atrocities.

"I'll leave it to you. Don't be reckless. I'll try to save the ones farther out. Skyborne City has arrived, and they should be lending aid as well."

The priest gave a quick nod and vanished in a flash of magic as he teleported toward the outer districts.

By now, the golden shields protecting the faithful of the God of Light were flickering and fading bit by bit, as was only natural. Having chosen to abandon their god and condemn Him, they could no longer receive His power.

Yet as the paladin charged toward the center, the dying radiance suddenly flared bright once more. In the sky, the God of Light hauling the node out of the void began to blur, His movements faltering, slowing.

"A truly unimaginable act of blasphemy... You have even stripped a god of His very meaning."

In the void, Sulla regarded the unfolding spectacle with genuine emotion in his voice.

The immense sphere of light split apart. Power surged outward, coalescing into a new sphere, while the one influenced by Utopia shrank rapidly...

The believers of the Church of Light had cast aside their god without a moment's doubt. Their faith did not vanish: it merely shifted, as one, toward a new locus. The divine power that had once belonged to the God of Light was likewise diverted in the process.

The original God of Light, deprived of nearly all His believers save for the scant few adherents of the Utopia, saw His power collapse.

Kiran's efforts had gone beyond mere efficacy. What sort of pope had he been, to be able to cultivate followers who could conduct such world-shaking blasphemy...?