The wind clawed its way through the bones of Brittania. It moved like a memory—slow, uncertain, heavy with whispers of what once thrived. The farmlands that had once echoed with the laughter of rivers now stood as cathedrals of dust. Each stalk, every grain, bowed their heads in quiet reverence. And in that breathless stillness, voices began to rise.

  They were not prayers, but rather hungers shaped into sound.

  “Beelzebub, nourish us.

  Beelzebub, forgive us.

  Beelzebub, remember us.”

  The famine had learned to speak.

  Above the fallen altar of the Harvest Court, Fitran stirred from the depths of slumber. His armor, singed from the last battle, caught the feeble red light of dawn. As he moved, ash fell from his shoulders like broken wings. For a brief moment, he thought he still heard Beelzebub's breath—a deep, indulgent hum of endless existence—but when he opened his eyes, he was faced with only the dry, scentless expanse.

  A girl watched him from a distance. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes shining with fever. She held a cup of air and whispered a name once filled with promise.

  “Saint of the Hollow Table… Fitran, scion of the famine-born.”

  He met her gaze, unwavering. “That is not my name.”

  “It is now,” she replied softly, turning her gaze toward the fields.

  There, hundreds knelt. Not in reverence to Beelzebub's corporeal form—she had been scattered like ash in the wind—but in worship of her lingering echo. A sermon swept across the plain, led by priests whose ribs jutted like crowns atop their hollow heads. Their words were not taken from scrolls; they resonated through the pain of starvation. Each syllable seemed to draw from the very breath of the earth, as if the ground wept in sympathy.

  “Embrace the shadow. Savor the drought. Become one with the void,” they intoned, their voices a haunting melody wafting through the air.

  Fitran clenched his jaw, the bitterness of their message burrowing deep within him. The world had absorbed her gospel, thrumming like a dark heartbeat beneath the surface.

  He rose to his feet, feeling the heavy reality that lay ahead. His memories—shattered and painful after the Dominion—returned to him in fragments: Beelzebub's radiant smile amidst the crumbling void, her hand brushing gently against his cheek, and her final whisper lingering in the air like a ghostly refrain: 'You cannot erase hunger; you can only become it.'

  And in that moment, he understood that he had become it.

  The farmers had laid no bodies to rest. The ravages of famine had consumed even the concept of burial. Now, their faith had twisted into an unending hunger. Their temples had become mere empty bellies, and their god? An absence that echoed through the desolation.

  He walked among them, unarmed, each step burdened by the weight of their despair. The priests parted like dry leaves as he passed. Some reached out to touch the hem of his tattered cloak, their fingers trembling with a blend of reverence and fear; others turned away, wary of the contagion hanging in the still air. When he reached the heart of the field, the sky itself seemed to shudder, responding to the storm gathering within him.

  “Another solemn chant will rise,” one of the priests murmured, his eyes downcast. “The Saint will deliver his message.”

  Fitran faced the crowd, his voice a sharp blade cutting through their dullness. “This is your holiness? You choose to worship that which devours you?”

  From the shadows of the crowd, an old woman, her voice like fragile parchment, dared to reply, “We cling to what remains. She has taken all else.”

  “Then you have confused emptiness for truth,” he countered, his tone firm but tinged with a sorrow that resonated with the ruins surrounding them.

  Her gaze ignited with fervent intensity. “Emptiness is truth. You brought this upon us.”

  Fitran's breath trembled as he directed his gaze toward the horizon, where the earth shimmered like liquid glass—a haunting reminder of Beelzebub's twisted legacy, a reflection that stubbornly clung to life. All beings born from famine were now bound to this accursed land. Their bodies became instruments of despair; their thoughts twisted into vessels of hunger.

  He shut his eyes, the burden of the world weighing heavily on him. “If hunger is belief,” he murmured, “then let me declare the starvation of the divine.”

  The wind seemed to hold its breath. Even the ash lingered as though it were waiting with anxious anticipation.

  He extended his hand toward the scorched earth. The veins of his gauntlet glowed with Voidwright sigils—red and blue light twisted together, bleeding into a brilliant white. When he spoke, his voice transcended the realm of the living, almost neither wholly earthly nor completely angelic; it resonated like the echo of every meal forsaken, every prayer left unanswered.

  “This world has devoured itself in your name.

  It gnaws at its own silence.

  But I—I will starve it of your influence.”

  The opening line of The Litany of the Starved echoed across the land.

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  The priests cried out in horror. The air shimmered as if sliced by an invisible edge. From every corner of Brittania, the famine stirred—fields heaved, roots turned to dust, rivers crawled back into their beds. The dark reflection writhed, desperate for a voice to oppose him.

  And it found one.

  Her voice didn’t come from the heavens but resonated deep within every living soul.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know, Fitran. You carry my essence within you.”

  Beelzebub’s echo—tempting, relentless, merciless.

  He hesitated, his hand clutching his chest as if some dark force was trying to break free from within him.

  “You called me Famine,” she whispered from the very core of his being. “You see hunger as a curse, yet it’s nothing but a promise. Without longing, creation cannot survive. Without need, no heart will cherish love. To try to banish me is to snuff out the very heartbeat of existence.”

  He spat blood onto the ground, a bold act. “Then let existence welcome its silence.”

  “You declare that now, but mark my words, your kind shall plead for my return once more. When the fields of Gamma were set ablaze, did you not long for their light? When Rinoa fell, did you not crave her voice? Each yearning breathes life back into me.”

  Her laughter rang out over the crowd; the worshipers fell to their knees, weeping, their cravings reignited. Fitran clenched his jaw, raising his hand once more.

  “I will rewrite that pact.”

  “Rewrite hunger?” she mused, a hint of mockery in her voice. “Then let your journey begin with your very self.”

  He hesitated, memories flooding his mind—her lips, her teachings, her tragic end. He had destroyed her physical body, but her spirit remained. The demon had morphed into philosophy, interwoven into the core of his thoughts.

  He lifted his gaze to the emaciated crowd. Their eyes sparkled with an unearthly light—not wholly human, nor completely divine, but reflective, like the still surface of a pond. They had become mirrors—a reflection of starvation, a reflection of him.

  He knelt before them. “If the world exists on the foundation of need, then let my own need wreak havoc upon it in vengeance.”

  The second line of the Litany slipped from his lips like the keen edge of a blade:

  “Let me hunger until the void remembers its source.”

  The light of Beelzebub’s echo flickered uncertainly. The ground turned into a thick shadow, clinging to the air like a whispered curse. For a moment, the famine seemed to pause—its relentless rhythm faltered, its breath caught. Then she spoke again, her voice gentle, almost tender.

  “You would endure suffering to unravel me? Then I grant my blessing on your anguish. Every cry you unleash reshapes my scripture anew.”

  He inhaled deeply, each breath a painful rasp. “Then let it be inscribed in reverse.”

  He stretched his arms wide. The symbols on his armor unfurled like flowers, casting out streams of pale light. The void within him roared—not with destruction's fury but ignited by purpose. His voice changed, becoming firm, icy, and eerily calm.

  “Listen, you who are starving.

  Your hunger is proof of life, not a chain that binds it.

  You were made to seek, not to be chained to the search.

  Feed on the determination to conquer famine—not on famine itself.”

  The air thrummed with energy. The emaciated crowd lifted their tired heads. Some wept. Others collapsed, unable to bear the weight of the contradiction.

  Beelzebub’s laughter faltered. “You turn hunger against itself. Clever, little void.”

  Fitran’s eyes blazed with a furious red light. “You taught me well.”

  The famine howled—a storm of memories, faces of those he had lost flashing like shadows on the horizon. Beelzebub sought to bury him beneath layers of nostalgia, hoping to reignite a yearning for what had been taken.

  But he refused to give in.

  He pronounced the final line, one forged not from scripture but from the very essence of defiance:

  “Let absence bear its own purpose,” he declared. The ground shook beneath them, a deep rumble rising from the very depths, as if it longed to consume its own desire. The priests gasped, their hands pressed against their chests; the air thickened around them, enveloped in an otherworldly glow.

  Then—silence.

  It was not a comforting stillness. It was the kind of silence that surrounds the shattered remnants of speech itself.

  Fitran sank to one knee, the weight of his loss pressing upon him. He felt her slipping away, drawn back into the void she once commanded. Yet even as she faded, her voice remained—gentle, familiar, yet triumphant.

  “You will never be free of me. Every longing must find something to desire. When your heart cries out for justice, I am there. When you seek love, I am there. You cannot simply preach me away into nothingness.”

  He took a shaky breath. “Perhaps not. But I can force you to speak the truth.”

  With determination, he pressed his hand against the ground. The last flickers of his Voidwright sigils faded, leaving a weary mark upon the earth. The famine may not disappear, but it would bear the burden of this sermon. It would carry the stain of shame.

  He looked toward the horizon. The sun was beginning to rise, yet it offered no warmth—only a pale, ghostly light that felt thin and cold. In its muted glow, he saw his own form stretched across the fields, vast and empty.

  One of the priests crawled toward him, shaking in fear. “Saint… what have you done?”

  Fitran answered without turning, his voice steady. “I have starved a god.”

  The priest's eyes filled with tears. “Then who will provide for us?”

  “Your own hands,” Fitran replied softly. “Or despair will take you.”

  He stood up, swaying slightly. The world around him felt both lighter and heavier at once, as if the very essence of meaning had turned thin and transparent. Above, the clouds twisted into strange shapes—circles within circles, reminiscent of the distended bellies of unseen beasts.

  Beelzebub’s final whisper brushed against his ear like a chilling wind. “Litany or sermon, you cannot erase hunger. Every creation is just a mouth—yes, even you.”

  A faint smile broke across his face, bittersweet yet resolute. “Then let me teach this weary world how to silence it.”

  At long last, the true silence since the famine began engulfed the land of Brittania. Fields that had once turned sour under the sun now lay in peaceful stillness—not fertile, not barren, but entirely empty. The worshipers scattered, their faith shattered like delicate seed husks disintegrating in the wind.

  Fitran watched them leave, then focused on his own hands. The veins glowed with a pale, otherworldly light. Within that glow lay something strange—not power, not hunger, but purpose.

  He whispered to the barren air, “The desire to starve is, in reality, the desire to start again.”

  The earth beneath his boots shifted with a life of its own. The horizon inhaled deeply, as if responding to some ancient heartbeat. Far below, in the deep recesses of the earth, the echo of Beelzebub continued to laugh—a faint, eternal sound, both derisive and beckoning.

  He turned toward it. “Then return, if you choose,” he proclaimed, his voice steady. “Come and see what hunger becomes when it dares to remember mercy.”

  The winds paused, holding their breath. The world stood ready in expectation.

  Then, without warning, the ground yawned open like a mouth.

  And it swallowed the Saint of the Starved whole.