The Broken Halo

When Simon thought about it, there was nothing wrong with Gluttony and Greed forming first.

Devour was the main reason he had birthed the seed of Gluttony. He had spent so long consuming power that the act was almost inseparable from his pursuit of strength.

And Greed was not far removed from Gluttony.

They were different sins, but the desire to possess more and the hunger to consume more could easily feed each other.

Their emergence made sense.

Pride should have been just as easy.

So why was there still nothing?

Simon searched himself while blood seeped beneath his chest.

Above him, the enormous pupils shifted.

The One could sense what the mortal was attempting. The movement of power within that broken body betrayed his efforts to birth another sin.

That was interesting.

But the obstruction around his mind and soul was more interesting.

His perception pressed against it again, but a white radiance met the intrusion. It enclosed the shell of the mortal’s mind and surrounded his soul, denying the scrutiny that had already passed through his flesh.

The One changed his approach.

Still, his perception could not enter.

Around Simon, the bent distance between two broken stones shortened further. Lilith’s fingers stiffened, and another tremor passed through her spirit.

The One paid her little attention.

There was something hidden within the mortal.

What was protecting him?

And what lay behind that protection?

He was the strongest being in existence.

Yet the mind and soul of a mortal remained closed to his gaze.

That should not have been possible.

His scrutiny deepened.

Beneath it, Simon’s thoughts briefly scattered.

He gathered them again, unaware of the white light holding back the intrusion.

’Why?’

He had been a king.

His kingdom had been the greatest on Earth. In his era, no other human on Earth had reached the Demi-God realm.

And he had been stronger than the average Demi-God.

The true Hero of Earth.

The Demon Slayer of Earth.

The Halo of Earth.

Those titles had not been empty praise. He had earned them through battles, victories, and decades of war.

He had defied gods while knowing exactly what they were.

Had he somehow done all that without pride?

Ridiculous.

Arrogance, confidence, an enormous ego... he had never been short of any of them.

Even his greed for power had roots in that pride.

He hated humiliation.

Being looked down upon. Treated as trash. Held by the neck while a god decided whether he was a threat worth killing or something interesting enough to keep alive.

His mouth tightened.

He had wanted enough power to ensure that never happened again.

But was safety really where that desire ended?

If he became the second strongest being in existence, untouchable to everyone except one, would he be satisfied?

’No.’

What if that final being had no interest in harming him?

The answer did not change.

He would still want to surpass it.

His pride would accept nothing less than the absolute peak.

Then why had it not become a seed?

His heart contracted painfully.

Simon followed the sensation inward.

’What makes pride a sin?’

Not achievement alone. Not confidence. He had already understood that.

’What kind of sinful pride do I want?’

The thought barely formed before he rejected it.

No.

He was not choosing an ornament to wear.

’What kind of pride do I possess?’

The question left him without the comfort of titles.

A kingdom was something he had ruled. A Demi-God was something he had become. A hero was something others had called him.

None of them told him what remained when those things were taken away.

He was lying in his own blood.

What did he believe now?

He could accept that another being was stronger. He had done so countless times. He could learn from someone, admit an error, recognise a skill beyond his own.

But he could not bear the thought of another being remaining above him forever.

Even if it treated him kindly.

Even if it left him free.

His freedom was not the whole of it.

Somewhere beneath every reasonable explanation, he considered the highest place his to claim.

The existence of someone more worthy of it was something he intended to correct.

Simon’s lips parted slightly.

There it was.

Not merely a refusal to be degraded.

He wanted supremacy for himself.

He could acknowledge another’s greatness without accepting that it should ever be the limit of his own. He could bow today, learn today, endure today.

But an eternity spent looking up?

Unacceptable.

’Then why...?’

His awareness brushed against something familiar.

Fearless

Simon went still.

The skill was still resisting. It had not vanished, and he had not lost it.

It simply could not protect him from the terror of the gaze above.

He had already understood how dependent he was upon it.

But he had not followed that realization far enough.

For so long, he had looked at his own composure and seen proof.

He could face a stronger creature without trembling.

He could smile at a threat.

He could think clearly while someone broke his body.

Of course he was confident.

Of course he was proud.

In his mind, those things had become almost interchangeable.

But whenever Fearless protected him, that unshaken state arrived without him having to find it for himself.

In that narrow sense, the skill had been acting as his pride.

It had supplied the effortless certainty, and he had mistaken the feeling for an answer about who he was.

Now that protection had failed.

A fraction of an unfathomably distant supreme power had reached him, and the pride he thought unassailable had guttered like a flame beneath a soft breath.

Simon felt his expression twist.

’I’ve been looking at the mask.’

The calm face.

The easy smile.

The voice that never shook.

How was he supposed to grasp his true pride while mistaking those things for its substance?

His ambition had been real. So had his arrogance.

But his understanding of them had been shallow.

He had studied the confidence Fearless allowed him to feel instead of the emotions it had made so easy to overlook.

A thought rose in objection.

Devour was a skill too.

Had it not helped him birth Gluttony?

Yes.

But Devour had given his hunger a means to act. When he examined that hunger, he knew what he wanted to consume and why.

The appetite had been his.

Fearless, however, had been supplying the very response he kept pointing to as proof of his pride.

He had confused the absence of fear with the conviction that he belonged above what frightened him.

They were not the same.

His thoughts paused.

He was afraid now.

Terrified.

There was no familiar calm between him and that truth.

And yet...

’I still want your place.’

The admission came without dignity.

He was bleeding, mutilated, barely able to breathe, and he still resented the idea of anyone standing forever above him.

Not because he believed he could win now.

He could not.

Not because the difference was smaller than it seemed.

It might be greater than he could imagine.

None of that changed what he wanted.

His pride had not needed him to deny his weakness.

It needed him to recognise the arrogance that survived the admission.

The same arrogance that had judged this terror understandable for anyone else, but intolerable in himself.

He had made an exception of himself even while condemning himself.

Simon almost laughed.

He had been so disgusted by his fear that he had failed to examine what the disgust revealed.

There was no calm assurance left to hide behind.

Only himself.

Afraid.

Weak.

Still unwilling to accept any place beneath the highest.

He stopped trying to recover the feeling Fearless had always given him.

Instead, he held that naked, unreasonable conviction without disguising it as anything nobler.

His damaged sea of consciousness churned.

Within his heart, something stirred.

Simon turned his face toward the sky.

The movement dragged his cheek through blood. His neck trembled, and he could raise neither his shoulders nor the six ruined wings pinned beside them.

But his eyes found the violet pupils.

His mouth spread into a grin.

Fear remained in his gaze, and the grin remained too.

BADUM!

His Prime Forged Heart struck harder than before.

The sound reached his ears through the stone beneath him.

BADUM!

Greed thrummed.

Gluttony answered.

Then a third presence gathered within the same heart.

It was faint at first, without a settled outline. Simon kept his attention upon it, no longer searching among old titles or imagined expressions.

Another contraction passed through his chest.

The new presence drew together.

Its outline held.

A third seed thrummed beside the other two as it was on the verge of forming.

Pride.

Blood escaped Simon’s grin.

The gaze had stripped away the protection he had mistaken for himself. It had forced him to feel what he had avoided understanding.

He hated the owner of the gaze.

At that moment, he was also genuinely grateful.

The contradiction made his grin widen.

He dragged enough air into his lungs to speak, his voice hoarse and thick with mockery.

”Thank you... for your help.”