Scar.
That prominent scar, slashing diagonally from brow bone to ear—like a dried-up riverbed or the carcass of a centipede—sat grotesquely on his face.
No matter where he went—the Borderlands, this damn Darenz—it always drew countless gazes, sticky and clinging,filled with scrutiny, disgust, or mere curiosity toward an anomaly,all of them measuring him.
Of course, it wasn't because Scar was anything pleasant to look at.He knew that.
It was because this scar didn't belong on the face of a living man.It belonged on battlefields, in torture chambers,or in corners even more unspeakable.
Scar. Scar.
Called that for so long,even he was starting to forget—what was his real name again?
He seemed to have had one once.A proper enough name,belonging to a young man who might have lived a different life.
Ah, forget it.It didn't matter anymore.
Name. Past.Even the origin of the scar—none of it mattered.
He felt his play was over.
Blood had been shed.Shouts had been shouted.That last shred of reluctance, resentment, unwillingnesshad scattered away with the hand that rose—and then fell.
Good.Exhausting.
…
After a formless, dreamless darkness,it was the sharp, needle-like pain that returned first,exploding from his temple.
Then came the chaotic, overlapping buzzing noises,as if heard through water.
Scar groggily opened his eyes.
The sight before himfroze him in place.
Flickering, blinding points of firelight—not a hearth, but torches.
Many torches.Held close together.
They illuminated countless faces.
Those faces were twisted in the orange-red glow,sweat gleaming,every pair of eyes stretched wide,burning with a fervor he had never seen before—a fervor that chilled him to the marrow.
They surrounded him.Packed tightly together.Breathing heavily.
A suffocating wall of fire.
Hell.
Scar's first thought was surprisingly calm.
Hell.
Well then.
In this life, he had stolen, cheated, conned,and more often than not,looked the other way when someone needed help.
At least, for his final act,he'd used some real blood.
But in the end,he hadn't done many good deeds.
Going to hell felt only fair.
It was just that these little demons…they looked an awful lot likethe poor neighbors from Darenz.
He almost closed his eyes,ready to accept this absurd ending.
"Silence—!!!"
A roar like thunder,ragged and cracking,split the noisy chaos apart,and yanked Scar's resigned thoughts violently back.
The voice sounded… familiar.
Immediately after that shout came another voice—even hoarser,but because it was repeated in unison by countless mouths,it became a heavy, booming tide,surging forward again and again,slamming into his ears and muddled consciousness:
"Salvation…!""Salvation…!""Salvation—for us—!!!"
Scar lay stiff on the tattered sack someone had padded beneath him,his eyes slowly rolling.
He saw Vito standing at the front of the crowd,his face flushed redder than the torchlight,veins bulging on his neck,arms flailing as he led the chant.
With every cry,the surrounding blood-red faces roared in unison,the scalding soundwave threatening to overturnDarenz's filthy night sky.
Their eyes—those eyes filled with fervor, suffering, and the last shred of mad hope—were not looking at Vito.
They were looking at him.
At the hideous scar on his face.At his forehead smeared with blood.At his pitiful, wretched state,just dragged back from the edge of "death."
Salvation?
Scar's mind turned like a rusted gear,grinding,clicking,straining to move.
They…were calling for him to save them?
What a cosmic joke.
Him.Scar.
A washed-up bastard who had nearly lost his own name.A gambler who would smash his own skull open for a mouthful of food.A loser who moments ago was thinking:"The play's over. Time for hell."
Salvation?
What the hell had that kid Vitomade up while he was unconscious?
But the tide-like cries,thick with sobs and desperate longing…the gazes that felt as if they could burn straight through him…the way they encircled him,like an altar…
Scar's cracked lips moved,but no sound came out.
The wound on his temple throbbed violently,pulsing in time with the cheering roar.
Hell didn't look like this.
He seemed to have—by sheer accident—become somethingridiculous… and terrifying.
Darenz's night windcouldn't extinguish the raging torches,and couldn't scatter the chant growingmore unified, more thunderous,all of it pinned ontoa scarred, blood-soaked liar:
"Salvation—!!!"
Scar could barely describe how he felt.
It was like a pot of burnt offal stew,every flavor stirred togetheruntil only scalding heat and bitter ash remained.
He instinctively raised a handand touched his face.
His fingertips slid across skin—the rough, familiar texture.The familiar place.The familiar, raised and twisted scar.
A little higher—his temple.A new one.Swollen. Split open. Crudely bandaged.
Pain streamed from it without pause,reminding him that all of thiswas real.
Ah. Right.
He remembered now.
Blood.Stone.The fall.Darkness.
And then…it worked?
Not only did it work,it made him the leader?
Made him the "salvation"in the mouths of thesered-eyed, screaming wretches?
He lowered his hand.
His fingertips were smeared withsmall, broken flakes of dark brown scabbed blood.
Staring at that dried trace of himself,almost unconsciously,he brought his finger to his mouthand licked it.
Salty.Foul.Metallic.Dusty.
A familiar taste.
Exactly the same as when blood had spilled into his mouthafter cracking his head open in the street.
This was the taste of the "capital" he had paid.
And now…it really did seem to be paying back.
A feeling both absurd and dizzyingly triumphant,mixed with deeper unease and hollowness,rushed straight to his head.
"Save us—!!!"
Someone cried out again, voice breaking,piercingly loud in the brief lull.
Scar felt as if he'd been scalded by the words,or shoved forward by some unseen force.
He threw his arms wide,dragging strength from somewhere he didn't know existed,and staggered upright.
From his throat burst a cryhoarse yet piercing,so unfamiliar it startled even him:
"Yes! Salva—!"
The word wasn't finished.
The strength propping him upcollapsed like a punctured skin.
Violent dizzinessand searing temple painhit him at the same time.
His vision tilted, blackened.
He heard the crowd erupt in a wave of gaspsas his body pitched forward,utterly beyond his control.
"Don't leave us—!!!"A shrill, desperate wail.
"Salvation…"A weak, unending plea.
This time,there was no Vito to catch him.
He slammed back into the ground,knees and palms cracking painfully,collapsing into a humiliating kneel.
The air was knocked from his lungs.He gulped for breath,stars bursting across his vision,sweat instantly soaking his back.
He felt pathetically weak now—like a dead dog with its bones pulled out.
But the searing expectation around him,that wordless urging,felt like countless handspushing him,holding him upright.
Can't fall. At least not now.
Gritting his teeth, ignoring the pain and weakness screaming through his entire body, he shakily raised that hand again—the one caked with dirt and dried blood.
The arm felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead, trembling violently, but he stubbornly lifted it high, holding it up toward the flickering torchlight and the blurred faces beyond.
He didn't dare raise his head.Didn't dare meet the burning gazes fixed upon him.
He was afraid of seeing even a trace of doubt—or worse, clarity—or worse still, genuine, crushing hope.
In this suspended moment, only his ragged breathing and the crackling of torches could be heard—
"WAAAAAAH—!!!"
A loud, sudden infant's cry tore through the suffocating silence.
What's going on?What are they doing?
Scar's heart clenched. Despite himself, he lifted his head slightly.
Vito appeared in his blurred vision.
Under the torchlight, Vito's face was twisted into a strange mix of fanaticism, resolve, and ritualistic solemnity. With both hands raised high, he held a swaddled bundle.
Inside it, an infant—its face indistinct—was crying with its mouth wide open.
Step by step, Vito walked toward Scar.His knees bent.
He knelt.
And like an offering, he presented the wailing child toward Scar.
Scar froze.
Instinctively, with his free hand—the one that was still relatively clean—he took the bundle.
It was light.But the life inside cried fiercely, the vibrations numbing his arm.
Awkwardly, he adjusted his stance, borrowing that faint, inexplicable strength that came from new life. Gritting his teeth against the dizziness, he struggled to stand again.
Once he steadied himself, he looked down first.
The infant's face was scrunched tight, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide open—a pure, fear-blind cry, unknowing of anything else.
Then Scar raised his head.
Within the circle of torchlight, there were more than just blood-flushed faces and fevered eyes.
There were countless raised hands.
In every pair of hands was a child.
Some still swaddled.Some already able to walk, held high by their parents.
Most were crying.Some stared blankly.Some shrank back in fear against familiar arms.
Countless young lives—offered up by their parents, their kin, their blood—lifted toward the firelight,lifted toward him.
Toward this blood-smeared, barely standing, scar-faced man.
Scar's breathing stopped.
The infant in his arms continued to cry.
That cry seemed to amplify, merging with the sobs and wails below into a rising tide of sound that tightened his chest and made his soul tremble.
He looked again at the infant.Then at his free right hand—still smeared with his own blood and the dust of Darenz's streets.
The grime of poverty. The stains of survival.
"Silence—!!"
Vito's voice rang out again, crushing the cries and the restless murmurs.
Scar felt pulled by that voice—or cornered by the silent, unbearable weight of trust pressed upon him.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was nothing left inside but something empty, instinctual, and frighteningly calm.
He raised his right hand high.
Without hesitation, he dragged it hard across his own blood-smeared face.
Warm, sticky blood—his own life's mark—coated his palm.
Then, under the breathless stares of the crowd, he gently—yet unmistakably—pressed that bloodied hand against the infant's soft cheek.
A clear, dark-red handprint bloomed on the crying face.
Next, gathering every shred of strength left in his body, Scar raised the infant high above his head.
Raised it toward Darenz's starless night sky.
The torches leapt.
They illuminated the crying infant and the glaring blood handprint.They illuminated Scar's grotesque scar and his resolute expression.They illuminated the countless arms below, holding children aloft, and the eyes burning with belief.
"Save us."
Scar's voice was hoarse like a broken bellows—yet terrifyingly clear.
A brief, absolute silence.
Then—
"SALVATION—!!!"
A roar erupted—wilder, more unified, completely unhinged.
No longer a plea.
But total devotion.Fanatic acceptance of a dark ritual.
Blood and fire.Scars and new life.A desperate gambler and a wailing infant—
On this long, sinful night in Darenz, they were grotesquely bound together, igniting an unpredictable blaze capable of consuming everything.
Scar stood at the center, arms raised, holding the crying "offering."
Blood streaked his face.The bloody handprint burned bright on the infant's cheek.
Swept up and drowned in the fanatical roar, he felt himself torn apart by this sudden, crushing meaning—then reshaped into a foreign totem, one that even he feared.
Salvation?
He looked at the blood handprint.
Whose salvation was this?And whose hell?
If he could, Scar would have liked to stand there longer.To shout more.To vent every ounce of bitterness, cunning, and absurd exhilaration he'd accumulated in his life—
To smash it all into Darenz's bottomless night.
But the last heat in his body was draining fast.
His knees buckled.The arm holding the infant burned and numbed, heavy as if it might snap.Dizziness and pain surged like a black tide, flooding his consciousness again.
This broken body couldn't last.
And beneath the feverish thrill, sharper thoughts stabbed like ice picks—
What happened while I was unconscious?What lies did Vito tell?Why the hell are they offering their children?And how is this "salvation" farce supposed to end?
But before all that—
Scar drew in a deep breath of scorching air, thick with blood, sweat, and smoke.
His gaze swept across the faces below—devout to the point of madness, fully ignited by a single bloody handprint.
A thrill he had never known before—almost euphoric—shot up his spine, briefly drowning out the pain and weakness.
Screw the reasons.Screw whether they live or die tomorrow.
This body—beaten, bled dry, dragged out of the mud and crowned a "god"—
Deserved this moment.
Even if just this once.
Scar bared his teeth.
Facing the countless eyes beneath the torchlight, he showed them a grin smeared with blood and exhaustion—raw, feral, and drunk on control.
The infant continued to cry in his raised arms.
The blood handprint on its face burned bright.