Rain fell like digital ash over the synthetic streets of Eidoria. Lights flickered in perfect symmetry, humming with the programmed rhythm of a world too clean, too quiet. Even the wind followed code—no chaos, no soul. IMER walked alone, his footsteps muted by the sterilized concrete.
People passed him, eyes glassy, smiles pre-coded. Their Morality Scores hovered above their heads in soft blue holograms. 97.3. 98.1. 94.9. Each one striving for a perfect 100, where redemption required no thought, only obedience.
IMER had none.
He wasn't registered in the System anymore.
He slipped into a back alley, guided not by sight, but by an itch in his bones. A pull. Like a half-remembered melody buried in his blood. He felt it stronger now, since the last incident.
His hand clenched at his chest. There, just beneath the skin, his code pulsed—burning, awakening. It had started two nights ago, when he absorbed the first sin.
Despair.
It wasn't just pain he took in. It was memory. History. Truth.
The boy he tried to save was already dying. A street orphan rejected by the Purifiers for emotional instability. A threat to peace. When IMER touched him, the system had glitched.
"[ERROR CODE: DESPAIR DETECTED]"
And then something deeper unlocked.
"[CHEAT CODE ENABLED: SIN-EATER_vΩ]"
It gave him a choice: Absorb. Decode. Rewrite.
He didn't know what it meant.
He just knew he said yes.
Now, he couldn't unsee the cracks in reality. The way the world shimmered like a false skin. The way the smiles were too stiff. The silence too scripted.
He arrived at a forgotten district: Zone Null. Abandoned since the Cleansing Era, when all sin was erased from society. No Purifiers patrolled here. No light reached this deep.
Only the unprocessed sins still lingered.
He stepped into an old chapel. Vines strangled its steel frame. The stained-glass saints had no faces.
The altar was broken.
Good.
He knelt.
And waited.
Suddenly, the air grew cold. A whisper. Not in his ears, but in his code.
"Sin Detected: WRATH."
A figure rose from the shadows—twisted, half-human, burning red.
It screamed.
BOSS DETECTED: WRATH ENTITY LV.1
IMER didn't flinch. The memory of despair had prepared him.
"Begin Absorption Protocol."
The entity charged, claws extended, fire flaring from its jaw. IMER dodged, barely, and countered with the Black Flame he'd inherited from Despair.
Flames met. Darkness swallowed light.
He was hurled against the wall, ribs cracking. Blood, real and raw, hit his lips.
The wrath entity howled—half rage, half sorrow.
A flicker of something passed through IMER's mind. A vision.
A soldier, once a protector. A betrayal. His family slain in a government purge. Rage had consumed him, and when he resisted the Morality Code, he was sealed here as a sin-born wraith.
IMER's heart clenched.
"Absorb."
He opened his arms.
The wrath surged into him.
Pain. Fire. Fury.
And memory.
"They killed them... they called it purification..."
He screamed. The entity screamed. The chapel burst into ghostly red light.
Then—silence.
The entity was gone.
In its place, only IMER knelt, trembling.
A new mark burned on his arm:
[SIN ABSORBED: WRATH]
[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: BLAZING CODE FIST]
[DECODE SUCCESSFUL: TRUTH UNLOCKED - MASSACRE OF DISTRICT 6, COVERED BY SANCTIFIERS]
His eyes widened.
"Rewrite."
He raised his hand. The mark glowed.
Reality rippled.
The chapel's altar reconstructed itself—not in steel, but living code. The faceless saints gained new shapes—no longer gods, but humans. Rebels. Sin-bearers.
He stood.
"I won't destroy sin," he whispered. "I will restore its meaning."
Outside, a Purifier drone froze mid-air. Its sensors scrambled.
"UNIDENTIFIED ENTITY DETECTED."
"Name?" it asked.
IMER looked up.
He smiled.
"I am the Last Sin Eater."