The farmlands of Brittania had long since stopped producing wheat. Instead, they were filled with haunting echoes.

  At first, the farmers whispered in low tones about a blight—stalks wilting to a pale grey before the harvest, crows speaking in voices that sounded all too human, and wells that mirrored not faces but wide, gaping maws of hunger. Then, famine struck. Grain silos collapsed into dust overnight, and livestock, driven by an unquenchable thirst for food, ripped open their own bellies to consume the emptiness within.

  The priests called it divine punishment.

  The scholars labeled it chaos.

  Desperate peasants, in their suffering, referred to it as Beelzebub.

  Deep beneath the dying soil, a heartbeat pulsed.

  Each throb echoed like a whisper, each whisper a prayer spun from hunger.

  And from the abyss among the roots, Fitran emerged.

  He struck the ground, which felt warm and alive, pulsing. Above him loomed a sky made of reversed earth, beams of light filtering through its surface. His armor was battered, the memory of the Dominion still resonating in the cracks. His mind stumbled through a fog of memories—Rinoa’s bright smile, Beelzebub’s eerie laughter, and the heavy weight of his own name.

  “Where…” he rasped, his voice dragging through like a forgotten dream, “am I?”

  A voice answered, smooth as honey poured over rusted iron.

  “Welcome back, my absent knight. The realm above suffers from famine, and so you have come to join us at our table.”

  Beelzebub stepped out from the shadows, her presence as tangible as a breath—she had transformed since the days spent in the Machine City. No longer a creature of distorted angles and insect-like traits, she had become elegant decay made real. Her skin glimmered like oil under rain, iridescent and shifting fluidly between beauty and horror with every glance. Her hair flowed like liquid amber, twisting into shapes that recalled both vines and veins with a single motion. Her six eyes moved with careful grace, each one revealing a different emotion: pity, pleasure, grief, hunger, rage, and calm contemplation.

  Fitran rose slowly, his blade half-drawn, though his determination flickered like a candle in the wind.

  “You should never have dared touch the surface,” he murmured, his voice laden with foreboding. “It remembers you.”

  Beelzebub’s smile spread wide, a thread of wicked delight. “Oh, it remembers all too well. The fields sing my name in the gentle rustle of wheat that refuses to grow. Now, every stomach across Brittania whispers their prayers to me in silence. You crafted me too well, Fitran. You forged me to consume sin, and now sin is the very essence that sustains the world.”

  She stepped forward, her bare feet gliding across the living earth that submitted humbly to her weight.

  “They consume because I exist. I exist because they consume. That is the essence of faith.”

  Fitran tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, trembling with barely contained rage. “You call this travesty faith? You’ve turned hunger into a distorted form of worship.”

  “Is it not fitting?” she asked softly, her voice wrapping around him like silk. “You aimed to create a void, to banish false gods. I conjure hunger to remind mortals of their harsh reality: that even purity craves a mouth through which to speak.”

  He turned away, focusing on the trembling walls of the chamber. Faces emerged from the clay—peasants, soldiers, nobles—all murmuring quiet yearnings. Their eyes, though empty, glimmered with burning desire. A child silently mouthed the words, I only wished for bread.

  Fitran’s voice dropped, heavy with the gravity of revelation. “You stretch your influence beyond Gamma. The famine has become your message.”

  “And it is proving effective,” she replied, a trace of triumph lacing her tone. “The Empire submits. They call me the Saint of Empty Tables. My sigil hangs above granaries, in the hopes that I might offer them a blessing. They remain oblivious: blessings come with a price.”

  Her laughter resonated through the soil, a haunting tune of sighs. As Fitran turned to face her fully, his crimson eyes were dulled by fatigue.

  “You’ve transformed into everything I warned against.”

  Beelzebub's expression softened, revealing a flicker of understanding. “And yet, you came here. Why, if not to heed my words?”

  Aboveground, Brittania staggered under the weight of despair.

  Within the grand cathedral of the capital, priests tore pages from sacred texts, grinding them into a paste to feed the starving children. In the crowded market squares, merchants sold stones shaped like fruit, while desperate souls bit into them until their gums bled. The famine had gone beyond the physical; it had become a question of morality. Compassion was consumed first, followed by dignity.

  And always, beneath their breath, they sang a single refrain:

  “All who eat shall be eaten. All who hunger shall be blessed.”

  Fitran walked alongside Beelzebub through the twisted realm, the ground beneath them pulsing with the heartbeat of countless unseen souls. He steeled himself against the haunting whispers of their desperate pleas.

  “What are your intentions?” he asked, a hint of unease threading through his voice.

  “Intentions?” Beelzebub tilted her head, a sly smile on her lips. “Fitran, I am not scheming. I am evolving. Each famine, every moral decay, every tear that tastes of salt—these have become my sacred texts.”

  Fitran stopped, the weight of her words settling over him. “You are turning existence into mere consumption.”

  “Consumption is the core of existence,” she replied sharply. “Tell me, Voidwright—what was your Dominion of Black Reflection if not a distorted mirror of that very reality? You took fear, sin, and tyranny, and reflected them until they devoured one another. I simply carry on the lesson you taught.”

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  He frowned, a flicker of thought passing through his eyes. “I never meant for it to spiral out of control.”

  She let out a soft chuckle, a touch of scorn in her voice. “Ah, so you are blissfully unaware. Ideas do not stay locked away in the pages they’re written on. They seep out, they writhe, they consume everything in their path.”

  The ground beneath them began to tremble. From the cracks in the earth, golden roots surged upward, bony fingers grasping at the empty air. Fitran drew Excalibur, its blade gleaming in the eerie twilight—blue and crimson cracks flickering with the weight of hidden light.

  “Stop this insanity,” he warned, his voice calm but tinged with urgency.

  Beelzebub’s gaze shone with a sixfold brightness. “If I stop, your world suffers from hunger. If I continue, your memories wither and vanish. Choose which famine you’d prefer to endure.”

  The atmosphere thickened, bearing the weight of their grim exchange. In the distance, the wails of the starving mixed with the groans of the earth. It became increasingly hard to tell where one realm ended and the other began.

  Fitran raised his weapon high, but the strike he intended never came.

  Instead, Beelzebub extended her hand, and the sound of countless spoons clattering against empty bowls filled the air—an echo of mocking applause.

  “Do you see? Even your silence feeds me.”

  She closed the distance between them, her hand reaching toward his chest, not out of malice but with a familiarity that unsettled him. “You carry famine within yourself as well, Fitran. Each time you erase a memory, you starve a piece of the universe. You devour reality itself to keep your fragile balance.”

  Her palm pressed against his armor, right where his heart should have been. The metal hissed as if it were a wound being torn open anew.

  “Allow me to light your way,” she murmured, her voice a gentle touch amidst the chaos.

  They plunged into a depth of sensations—colors intertwined with sounds, sounds blending into scents. Fitran's mind exploded open, and through Beelzebub's touch, he understood.

  Villages across Brittania bowed before her statues: black wheat tied with twine, lips marked with ash. Mothers giving up their last morsels to phantoms. Children burying their parents' bones in salt to keep them from rising in hunger. Priests enduring fasts until they grew thin and skeletal, mere shadows of their devotion.

  He saw the realms above and below merging into one, and in the center stood Beelzebub—addressing a gathering of both the living and the dead.

  “Hear me closely, you empty souls. Hunger is not a curse but a memory. It is a remnant of a time when you were whole. Feed on the essence of what you once were, and rise again.”

  Each word sliced through the very fabric of the air. Reality trembled like water. Crops withered, then burst forth into watchful eyes; rivers ran clear for a moment, only to turn into a thick black syrup. The sun faded into a mere ember behind clouds shaped like skeletal ribs.

  Beelzebub's voice surrounded Fitran completely.

  “This is my realm, Fitran. The Sermon has begun.”

  He flinched at her touch, breath coming in short gasps. The ground beneath them had turned to glass. Beneath its crystalline surface, he caught sight of Brittania’s armies moving forward—men reduced to mere shadows, their silhouettes ravenously clawing at their own feet.

  “You are unraveling causality,” he said, urgency threading through his voice. “If you continue with this preaching, the famine will alter the very roots of creation.”

  Beelzebub glided effortlessly over the shattered glass, each step leaving behind traces of grim expressions. “Perhaps this is the cost of evolution,” she pondered, her voice a soft murmur. “To consume the old order until the divine wellspring is fulfilled.”

  “You call that evolution?” Fitran's tone tightened like a noose. “That is simply the cannibalism of existence.”

  “And how would you define your own erasures?” she snapped, her tone as sharp as a blade. “Every time you try to ‘restore balance,’ you devour futures that were never meant to exist. You consume possibilities. Fitran, you and I are mere reflections—one of insatiable hunger, the other of emptiness. The real difference lies in style.”

  He hesitated, her words hitting a chord too deep to deny.

  Then, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, he responded, “No. You crave to own, while I erase to free.”

  Beelzebub gave a faint smile, a flicker of sorrow appearing behind her six eyes. “Then free me from your hold.”

  Fitran stood frozen, caught by the intensity of the moment.

  “Liberate me from the weight of your judgment. Stop your struggle. Let my hunger fulfill its purpose, and you will find your peace at last. No more fading memories. No more lingering echoes. Just yield.”

  The earth trembled under the weight of her words, wrapping around him like twisting vines. The temptation was overwhelming—a solemn promise of peace in surrender. He could end the endless cycle of loss by allowing the world to consume itself.

  Fitran remained silent for what felt like an eternity. His sword dulled, then gleamed back to life, a faint echo of Rinoa’s laughter lingering in the air.

  He raised his eyes to meet hers. “You misunderstand my intentions, Beelzebub. I do not resist to deny your request. I resist because if I give in, she will be lost to me forever.”

  Beelzebub's expression faltered. “The woman from that haunting memory, the one that seeps from your soul?”

  He answered with a grave nod. “Yes. She is the only hunger I refuse to satisfy.”

  A silence like thunder enveloped the air as the six eyes closed one after another.

  Then Beelzebub's face changed—she smiled, not with malice, but with deep sorrow.

  “Then your sermon will serve as a response to mine.”

  The dominion shook violently. Columns of earth erupted, unleashing dark swarms of locusts that sang mournful hymns of deprivation. The glassy sky shattered, revealing the world above—a Britannia ravaged by a golden famine. Villagers crawled on their bellies, desperately lapping at the spilled grain that mixed with the dirt. Priests tore their tongues, offering blood to the altars of Beelzebub’s newly raised temples.

  Fitran looked up, his sword trembling in his grip. “This must come to an end.”

  Beelzebub spread her arms wide, her voice ringing across both realms like the distant toll of a bell.

  “Then let it end with worship.”

  The air howled in response.

  Dozens of reflections of Beelzebub appeared, each a manifestation of insatiable hunger. They spoke as one, their voices blending like the buzz of countless bees.

  “Blessed are the starved, for through their emptiness, they rise to divinity.

  Blessed are the devourers, for within them lie the echoes of creation.

  Blessed is Fitran Fate, who nourishes the void so the world may continue to feast.”

  The Hunger Sermon echoed through the very fabric of reality, drawing the starving from realms unknown. Fitran watched as the people of Brittania ascended into the air, like ash caught in a whirlwind, their hunger radiating light. Their forms changed into constellations, consuming themselves in an endless cycle.

  He stepped forward, entering the chaos of the storm.

  “You declare hunger a path to salvation,” he shouted, his voice cutting through the tempest's rage. “Yet relentless hunger breeds nothing but despair. You consume to grasp the essence of life. I remember, so that I may affirm my own existence.”

  He raised his sword, brilliant in the dim light.

  “Then listen to my sermon.”

  Beelzebub's eyes widened—not in fear, but with deep interest.

  “Name it,” she whispered, breathless.

  Fitran’s voice shifted into a powerful hymn, each word resonating with an otherworldly glow.

  “Litany of the Starved.

  May every hunger that consumes without yielding turn upon itself.

  May the mouths of deities seal upon their own tongues.

  May the void hold onto mercy.”

  The world itself fractured.

  Beelzebub’s reflections screamed—not in pain, but in euphoric release. Her form shattered into light and shadow, folding back into the earth, into the desolation, into every yearning mouth still whispering her name. The dominion trembled, giving way to a profound silence.

  As the tremors eased, Fitran crouched, breath coming in labored gasps. The air above the farmlands began to clear, although the soil remained barren. Only a single whisper endured, soft as a heartbeat echoing beneath the surface:

  “You cannot extinguish hunger, my love. You can only redefine its essence.”

  Fitran closed his eyes. “Then let me bear it.”

  He rose, turning away from the desolation. The first dawn in many moons broke over Brittania, pale and cold. Far below, Beelzebub smiled in the shadows, her sermon still unfinished, waiting patiently for its next verse.

  And within Fitran’s memory, a fresh void unfurled—gentle, aching, and achingly human.