A UNIVERSE THAT FORGOT HIM

Orison's capital was built over an ocean of glass.

When the red symbol appeared, the ocean cracked.

Creatures made from folded metal rose beneath the city and began climbing the support towers. Their bodies carried the War God's geometry. Every movement erased a section of the structure behind them.

Ren'ō landed among fleeing civilians.

For one second, the crowd saw a stranger in black with glowing eyes.

Then the first creature struck.

Ren'ō caught its arm.

The street collapsed beneath his feet, but he did not move. Golden light traveled from his hand through the creature's body. The red symbols failed one after another.

He tore the machine apart and used its remains as a shield over a group of children.

"Run toward the silver-haired woman," he told them.

One child stared at his eyes. "Are you a god?"

Ren'ō glanced at the burning skyline. "Today I am traffic control. Move."

Izanara opened evacuation gates with her staff. Blue rings spread across the district, carrying civilians to the upper terraces. She watched Ren'ō fight with brutal efficiency, but what held her attention was where he chose to stand.

Always between the attack and someone weaker.

Never where he could display the most power.

The largest construct emerged from the glass ocean. It towered over the city, a cathedral of blades and red light.

Ren'ō rose to meet it.

He could have erased it. Izanara felt that certainty in the way space bent around him.

Instead, he studied the lines connecting the creature to the city.

"It is anchored to the support grid," she warned. "Destroying it will collapse the capital."

"Then we do not destroy it."

"What will you do?"

Ren'ō smiled without looking back. "Intimidate physics."

He drove both hands into the construct's chest and absorbed the red geometry into his own body.

Pain crossed his face. The creature fought him from within, trying to overwrite his mind. Images of La-Sol 7 flashed through the sky. The War God's voice entered his thoughts.

You remain yourself. How inconvenient.

Ren'ō pulled harder.

The red symbols turned gold.

The construct stopped.

Then it lowered itself into the ocean like a kneeling giant.

The city survived.

Afterward, Orison's leaders searched their archives for Ren'ō Kagenami.

They found nothing.

No La-Sol 7 military records. No birth registry. No account of the Divine Integration project. The War God had erased his world so thoroughly that history recognized Ren'ō only as an error.

A child from the street solved the problem.

She pointed at the golden lights repairing the city and said, "He is the first light that came when the sky went red."

The phrase spread before Ren'ō could stop it.

By morning, strangers were calling him the First Light.

He hated it.

Izanara found this extremely entertaining.