THE GOD WHO FEARED A SOLDIER

The War God's confidence broke quietly.

Ren'ō noticed it in the angle of his shoulders.

On La-Sol 7, the god had looked at him as an inconvenience. At the Throne, he watched Ren'ō like a door that should not have opened.

"Why me?" Ren'ō asked as they circled through the debris of timelines. "Why erase every world that learned what Laana learned?"

"Because divinity requires distance."

"From mortals."

"From limitation. From doubt. From decay. Gods rule because they are beyond the instability of choice."

Ren'ō glanced toward Izanara, who was holding three realities together with bleeding hands.

"You built an entire empire because people making choices frightened you."

The War God's pupils rotated faster.

"You are evidence of contamination. Mortal grief inside divine architecture. A contradiction that spreads."

"A man."

"A defect."

Ren'ō smiled.

"There it is."

The god attacked.

Ren'ō let the strike enter his chest.

Red geometry spread through him, targeting the Divine Remnant's core. The War God reached for the architecture Laana had built.

Ren'ō closed both hands around his arm.

"You still think the power is what made me dangerous."

The War God tried to withdraw.

Ren'ō held him.

"It was never the Remnant. It was never the Void."

Golden light moved through the red symbols, not erasing them but changing their meaning.

The War God's eyes widened.

Ren'ō pulled him closer.

"You destroyed a world full of ordinary people and taught one soldier exactly what you were afraid of."

He drove his forehead into the god's face, the same crude human strike he had used in the laboratory.

The geometric pupils cracked.

The War God screamed.

Ren'ō followed with a gut punch that folded the Throne inward, then a backhand carrying five thousand years of darkness.

The god flew through the remains of his own empire.

Across the connected worlds, the red marks vanished from the sky.

Ren'ō pursued.

This time, the War God ran.