Season 1 – THE CURSED SUMMON
Episode 5: The Warlord Awakens
Three days after the blackened Feast, the kingdom mourned a lie.
Priests stood atop the ivory spires of the Central Cathedral, chanting praise to Eidros while hiding the truth—that the holy fire had been corrupted, that two Summoned Ones had escaped the divine purging, and that the divine system itself had trembled in fear.
Ren and Lyra didn't hide in shadows.
They bathed in them.
They had descended to the root layers of the city, into the forsaken Depths beneath the capital—where light was a memory, and the whispers of the damned never ceased.
Ren sat by a ruined fountain carved with ancient runes. Lyra stitched a gash across his side using thread torn from her own robe. Neither of them spoke.
Because they knew—
—They were being hunted.
The Chainsmen were no longer mere enforcers. Now, they were driven by divine mandate. The Summoned Ones had defied the Church. Defiled a holy ritual. That made them enemies of Eidros himself.
"I can't… remember all of it," Lyra murmured, hands shaking as she worked. "But some things came back. My sister. My village. The day I died…"
Ren grunted as the needle pierced him.
"We'll get the rest back," he said. "And if this world won't give it willingly…"
"…then we'll tear it from their corpses," Lyra finished. She smiled—but it didn't reach her eyes.
They both heard the footsteps before they saw the figure.
Bare feet.
Dragging chains.
A child's voice echoed through the tunnels.
"Mister… are you cursed too?"
---
She looked no older than seven.
Pale skin. Bone-white hair. Eyes like dying stars.
Around her neck hung a rusted collar etched with hundreds of names. She sat cross-legged in the filth, smiling at them with the innocent curiosity of a girl who didn't know she was a ghost.
"Do you have sins? I have sins. Do you want to trade?"
Lyra reached for her dagger—but Ren held her hand.
This wasn't a child.
This was something else.
The girl giggled and tilted her head.
"I'm the Doorkeeper. I watch the dead dreams walk. Do you want to meet the Warlord?"
Ren's heart stopped.
"…What did you say?"
"The Seventh Warlord," she said with a bright smile. "He's waking up. The chains are cracking. He's been hungry for a long, long time."
Ren stood slowly.
"Where is he?"
She pointed toward a broken archway sealed in silver runes, long faded.
Ren approached. The air behind the arch pulsed with something wrong. Like the memory of war. Like hate given form.
Then the voice echoed from beyond:
"Ren Aizawa."
Lyra drew her blade.
"How does it know your name?!"
"I don't know," Ren whispered.
But he did.
Something in his bones screamed.
This was older than the system. Older than the gods.
And it knew him.
---
They stepped through the arch.
And entered a crypt that shouldn't exist.
It wasn't stone.
It was metal. Black, rusted, covered in moving carvings. Thousands of names crawled along the walls like insects.
A throne of swords stood at the center.
Empty.
But above it—suspended by seven cursed chains—hung a body.
Armor fused to flesh. A crown of blades. And one single eye, still open.
The Seventh Warlord.
Ren took a step closer, and the eye rolled toward him.
"Finally," it whispered. "I found me."
The chains shattered.
---
The Warlord fell like a meteor.
Ren and Lyra were thrown back by the shockwave.
Dust swallowed the chamber.
And from within, a voice laughed. Not cruel. Not mocking.
Just… broken.
"Of all the possible futures… this is the one that survived."
The Warlord stepped forward, dragging a massive blade across the floor—an executioner's greatsword larger than a man.
His face was obscured by a cracked helmet.
But his voice—
—was Ren's.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
Ren raised his hands, ready to fight.
But his heart was splitting.
Because this wasn't just any enemy.
This was himself.
Older.
Torn apart.
Twisted by time and sin.
The Warlord threw his sword down. It clanged like thunder.
"I am what you become if you fail."
Ren said nothing.
The Warlord tilted his head. "Do you know how many times you've died already?"
Ren blinked.
"…What?"
The Warlord walked past him. Touched the walls.
"They loop you, Ren. Every time you defy the gods. Every time you break the rules. They restart you. Erase your mind. Send you back to the Labyrinth. You think this is your first life?"
He turned.
"It's your 37th."
Lyra gasped.
Ren stumbled back.
"No. That's not possible."
The Warlord laughed again.
"Of course it is. You didn't think Divine Learner was a blessing, did you?"
Ren clutched his chest.
He remembered flashes.
Shadows. Screams. His own voice. Akio's corpse. Lyra burned alive.
And a throne of bones.
He remembered dying.
So many times.
And waking up.
Again.
And again.
And again.
---
"I'm the only one who made it through the loops," the Warlord said. "The system failed to erase me. So they sealed me. Left me in this cage. And prayed you'd never become me again."
Lyra drew her sword.
"Why are you telling us this?"
The Warlord turned to her.
"Because if he doesn't learn—really learn—he'll become worse than me."
Ren stared at the mirror of himself.
"What do you want from me?"
The Warlord pointed toward the crypt doors behind him.
"There's a gate hidden beneath the Bastion. A rift between worlds. It's where the gods anchor the loop."
He stepped forward and gripped Ren's shoulder hard enough to crack bone.
"If you want to end this… destroy the anchor."
"And then what?"
The Warlord's voice darkened.
"Then the gods fall. And so do we."
---
Suddenly—
—a lance of golden light tore through the ceiling, vaporizing half the crypt.
The Warlord roared and shielded Ren with his armored body.
Above them, a figure descended.
Clad in sunfire. Wings of gold. Eyes of judgment.
The Herald of Eidros.
An angelic executioner.
"The Learner is unbound," it said. "The Warlord is unsealed."
Its voice echoed across dimensions.
"In the name of Order—your existence ends now."
Ren stood, bloodied, furious.
And smiled.
"Then come down here, you divine bastard."