Chapter 266 The Broken Paladin

“Gasp!”

Captain Gerald suddenly jolted up from the coarse linen bed, his eyes widening in absolute shock as his chest heaved for air.

Cold sweat dripped down his forehead, running in icy rivulets down his pale, drawn face.

He frantically looked around, his vision swimming with disorienting blurs of mahogany walls, stone brickwork, and a flickering wall lantern that cast swaying shadows across the unfamiliar chamber.

He was inside a small, quiet wooden room, laid out on a simple bed with crisp, clean sheets.

He raised his trembling hands, staring at his palms, trying to understand how he had ended up here.

He tried to recall what had happened—how he had ended up in this bed, where his holy squad was, what battle he had fought—but as he tried to dig into his mind, a blinding, razor-sharp spike of pain stabbed directly through his cranium.

“Argh…!” Gerald groaned, pressing the heels of his palms against his temples.

He could not remember anything.

It was as if an entire lifetime of memories, names, places, and duties had been cleanly sheared away from his consciousness, leaving behind only a vast, terrifying void of dark silence.

His heart raced like a panicked beast trapped in a cage, his breathing growing shallow and rapid as terror began to consume his chest.

He didn’t know his name.

He didn’t know his face. He didn’t know where he stood in this world.

SQUEAK.

The heavy iron hinges of the room’s wooden door groaned as it slowly swung open.

A young female servant dressed in a simple grey-and-crimson maid outfit stepped inside, carrying a wooden tray bearing a steaming bowl of medicinal herbs and fresh bandages.

BOOM!

Before the maid could even register his movement, pure combat instinct—instinct forged through years of high-tier martial training—overtook Gerald’s panicked body.

He rushed out of the bed out of sheer fear, his body blurring across the small chamber in a fraction of a second.

THUD!

He slammed the maid hard against the stone wall, the wooden tray clattering to the floor as the bowl of hot herbs shattered into pieces.

Gerald gripped her slender neck tightly in his right fist, lifting her off her feet as his knuckles turned white from the sheer pressure.

“Who are you?!” Gerald shouted, his voice hoarse, wild, and laced with frantic desperation.

“Where am I?! Speak!”

The poor maid clawed frantically at his iron-like fingers, her face instantly turning a sickly shade of purple as she choked for air.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, her throat rattling violently under his suffocating grip.

“Cough… ack…!” The maid coughed up a small splatter of dark crimson blood onto Gerald’s bare forearm, her eyes wide with agonizing terror.

“P-please… just… just kill me…!” she choked out, her voice barely a thread-thin whisper. “Y-you… you were rescued… by the Crimson Key Sect…!”

“Rescued? By the Crimson Key Sect?”

Captain Gerald staggered back in profound shock, his mind reeling as the unfamiliar names echoed in his ears.

Unable to comprehend what was happening or why he was holding a helpless woman by the throat, he instantly released his grip.

The maid slumped heavily onto the cold stone floor, curling into a ball as she clutched her bruised throat, coughing violently and struggling to draw ragged, frantic gasps of air back into her lungs.

Gerald backed away until his shoulders hit the far wooden wall of the room.

He stared at his trembling, blood-drenched hands, his chest rising and falling uncontrollably.

“What… what is the Crimson Key Sect?” Gerald asked, his voice trembling as he stared down at the shivering maid. “And… who am I? Who the hell am I?!”

The maid lifted her tear-streaked face, her fear-filled eyes staring at Gerald with a complex mixture of horror, pity, and deep awe.

She swallowed hard, her trembling voice echoing quietly in the small room.

“Y-you were brought in three days ago… by our outer patrols at the lower mountain gate…” the maid stammered out, cowering slightly against the wall.

“They found you half-dead among the piles of abominations… You… you belong to the Church of the God of the Sky…”

BZZZZZZZZT!

The exact second the phrase ‘Church of the God of the Sky’ left the maid’s mouth, something deep inside Gerald’s mind violently snapped.

It was like a rusted lock being shattered by a heavy warhammer.

An explosion of white-hot heat surged through his central meridians, detonating inside his cerebral sea with terrifying force.

“AAAAAARGH!”

Gerald shrieked in unholy agony, clutching his head with both hands as he sank down to his knees.

His back arched violently, his muscles spidery and tense as severe, blinding pain ripped through every single nerve ending in his brain.

DRIP. DRIP.

Thick, dark crimson blood began to leak steadily from both of his eyes, streaming down his cheeks like bloody tears.

A second later, warm blood burst from both of his ears and trickled out from his nostrils, staining his jaw and the collar of his linen shirt.

Within that storm of agonizing pain, a flooded river of shattered memories came rushing back into his mind with violent, overwhelming clarity.

Images flashed before his inner eye—grand marble cathedrals bathed in harsh divine light, vast ranks of armored paladins standing under golden sun banners, white-robed high priests chanting holy doctrines, and his own hand wielding a heavy, golden longsword forged in the name of the Sky God.

He remembered it all.

He was Captain Gerald.

He was a high-ranking commander of the elite Paladin Corps under the Church of the God of the Sky, a decorated holy warrior, and a designated candidate positioned to become a future High Priest of the Holy Pantheon.

Yet… as those vast, lifelong memories of fanatical devotion and holy service settled back into his consciousness, Gerald felt a strange, chilling void where his faith used to reside.

He stared down at the blood dripping from his nose onto the floorboards, his breathing slowing down into a cold, eerie calm.

There was no warmth.

No reverence.

No holy fire left in his heart for the God of the Sky.

The golden light that had guided his entire life felt completely hollow, distant, and utterly repulsive—like a foreign parasite he had finally purged from his soul.

Instead, deep within the deepest, most sacred recesses of his soul sea, a dark, primordial seed had taken root.

An inexplicable, absolute, and irresistible compulsion hummed through his very blood, echoing through his bones like a divine command etched into his DNA from the beginning of time.

Every fiber of his strength, every drop of his martial power, and every beat of his heart was no longer his own.

He felt no loyalty to the Church of the God of the Sky anymore.

Instead, a terrifying, absolute instinct commanded his soul to bow down, bleed, and lay down his life for one supreme entity alone:

The Church of the God of Beast.