Original Seven Sins

[Harry Styles]

The blade came down in a perfect arc, silver steel catching the afternoon sun, and Leon Vaelis stepped sideways instead of blocking because blocking would have shattered the knight's sword and he was trying not to kill anyone today.

The knight stumbled past him, off-balance, and Leon caught the man's wrist with two fingers and redirected the momentum into the dirt. The knight went down hard, armor clanging, and didn't get up.

"That's four," Leon said to no one in particular, because the other three were already unconscious and the fifth knight was still deciding whether charging him was a good idea.

It wasn't.

The fifth knight charged anyway, which Leon respected even if it was stupid, and this one at least had the sense to aim low and try to tackle him instead of swinging that oversized hunk of blessed steel around like it meant something. Leon sidestepped again, let the knight's momentum carry him past, and tapped the base of his skull with the pommel of his own sword.

The knight dropped.

Leon stood in the center of the forest clearing, five unconscious Holy Knights scattered around him like discarded training dummies, and wondered if this was going to be his entire week. Probably. The Celestial Dominion had put a bounty on his head three days after his reincarnation, which was frankly impressive timing considering he hadn't even done anything yet.

Well, anything new.

The sword in his hand caught the light again, golden instead of silver, and Leon looked down at it with the same mild confusion he'd been carrying since he woke up in this body. Aurelius, the Golden Lion Sword, Sacred Relic of the Sin of Pride, legendary weapon that had supposedly been sealed away three thousand years ago when the Original Sins were defeated.

Except Leon was the Original Sin of Pride, or at least he was now, and the sword had been waiting for him in a cave he'd stumbled into while trying to figure out where the hell he was.

The System had been very helpful about that.

[COMBAT COMPLETE]

[ENEMIES DEFEATED: 5]

[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 0]

[NOTE: ENEMY LEVEL TOO LOW FOR EXPERIENCE ALLOCATION]

"Right," Leon said, dismissing the notification with a thought. "Thanks for that."

The System didn't respond, because it never responded, it just occasionally threw information at him like a particularly aggressive tutorial that refused to admit he'd already finished the introduction. He'd tried asking it questions. He'd tried ignoring it. He'd tried threatening it, which in retrospect was probably stupid because threatening a cosmic entity that controlled the fundamental rules of reality was the kind of thing that got people smote.

Smited?

Smitten.

Whatever.

Leon sheathed Aurelius and started walking, because standing around in a clearing full of unconscious knights was a good way to attract more knights, and he had places to be. Specifically, he had a person to find, because the System had been extremely insistent about that part.

[QUEST ACTIVE: LOCATE THE SIN OF WRATH]

[OBJECTIVE: FIND ARIA IGNIS BEFORE EXECUTION]

[TIME REMAINING: 6 HOURS, 23 MINUTES]

[FAILURE PENALTY: PERMANENT DEATH OF SIN VESSEL]

Leon picked up his pace.

The forest thinned out after another mile, giving way to rolling hills and the kind of pastoral farmland that would've been peaceful if not for the smoke rising in the distance. Black smoke, thick and oily, the kind that came from burning buildings instead of cooking fires. Leon changed direction toward it, because smoke meant people and people meant information, and if he was lucky it also meant he was heading in the right direction.

He was not, historically, lucky.

The village was small, maybe two dozen buildings clustered around a central square, and it was very enthusiastically on fire. Villagers ran in every direction, some carrying buckets of water that weren't going to do anything, others just running because fire was generally a good thing to run away from. Leon scanned the crowd, looking for anyone who seemed like they were in charge, and found a woman in a singed apron yelling instructions at a group of men trying to form a bucket line.

He walked up to her.

"Excuse me," Leon said, and the woman spun around with the kind of wild-eyed panic that suggested she was about two seconds from hitting him with something.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who's lost," Leon said, which was true. "What happened here?"

"What happened?" The woman laughed, high and brittle. "What happened is the Holy Knights came through looking for some criminal, tore the place apart, and when they didn't find her they decided to burn it down anyway because apparently that's what passes for justice these days."

Leon's hand drifted to Aurelius. "They're still here?"

"Left an hour ago, headed east toward the capital." The woman's eyes tracked his movement, caught on the sword, and narrowed. "You're not one of them, are you?"

"No," Leon said, and meant it. "I'm looking for someone. Red hair, probably armed, definitely angry?"

The woman stared at him for a long moment, then pointed east. "They had her in chains. Said she was the Sin of Wrath, said she burned down half of Kalstead and killed a dozen knights. Said they were taking her to the capital for public execution at sunset."

[QUEST UPDATED: ARIA IGNIS LOCATED]

[LOCATION: ROYAL CAPITAL - EXECUTION GROUNDS]

[TIME REMAINING: 5 HOURS, 47 MINUTES]

"Sunset," Leon repeated, looking at the sun. Still high, but sinking. Five hours to cover what was probably a day's travel on foot, break into the most heavily fortified city in the kingdom, and stop an execution that the Holy Knights had presumably been planning for weeks.

He started running.

The thing about being the Sin of Pride was that it came with perks, which was good because otherwise the whole "reincarnated as a legendary criminal" thing would've been significantly less appealing. Leon had spent his first day in this world experimenting with those perks, mostly because the System kept throwing notifications at him and he'd figured he might as well know what he was working with.

Turned out, he was working with a lot.

[AUTHORITY PROTOCOLS ACTIVE]

[PASSIVE SKILL: SOLAR MAJESTY - RANK 3]

[PHYSICAL ENHANCEMENT: 340%]

[MAGIC RESISTANCE: 89%]

[STAMINA REGENERATION: 12X BASE]

Leon ran, and the world blurred around him, and he covered five miles in the time it would've taken a normal person to cover one. His legs didn't burn. His lungs didn't ache. He just moved, faster and faster, until the forest was a green smear on either side of the road and the only sound was the wind screaming past his ears.

The capital appeared on the horizon after three hours, white stone walls rising out of the plains like broken teeth, and Leon slowed down because sprinting through the front gate was probably a bad idea. The city was massive, easily ten times the size of the village he'd left behind, and the walls were crawling with guards in the silver-and-blue livery of the Holy Knight Orders.

Leon walked up to the gate.

The guards crossed their spears.

"State your business," the left one said, bored.

"Tourism," Leon said.

"Tourism," the right one repeated, skeptical.

"I hear you're having an execution," Leon said. "Thought I'd watch."

The guards exchanged a look, shrugged in unison, and uncrossed their spears. "Execution grounds are in the center square. Can't miss it. Try not to start any trouble."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Leon said, and walked through the gate into the capital city of a kingdom that wanted him dead.

The streets were packed, which made sense because apparently public executions were considered entertainment in this world, and Leon let the crowd carry him toward the center square while he tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do when he got there. The System had been very clear about the whole "save Aria Ignis" thing, but it had been significantly less clear about the how, and Leon was starting to suspect that was intentional.

The crowd thickened as he got closer, pressing in from all sides, and Leon caught fragments of conversation as he pushed through.

"...heard she killed fifty knights..."

"...burned down three villages..."

"...they say she's a demon..."

Leon reached the edge of the square and stopped, because the execution grounds were less "grounds" and more "massive stone platform surrounded by enough Holy Knights to invade a small country." The platform stood fifteen feet high, accessible by a single staircase on the far side, and in the center was a wooden post with a woman chained to it.

Red hair, check. Probably armed before they took her weapons, check. Definitely angry, extremely check.

Aria Ignis looked like she was about three seconds from chewing through her chains out of spite.

[QUEST OBJECTIVE VISIBLE: ARIA IGNIS]

[STATUS: RESTRAINED, MAGIC-SEALED, CONDEMNED]

[WARNING: INFERNAL RAGE ATTRIBUTE UNSTABLE]

[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION]

"Working on it," Leon muttered, scanning the platform. Fifty knights, maybe more. A priest in white robes standing next to Aria, reading from a scroll that was probably her list of crimes. A executioner in black, holding an axe that looked like it weighed more than Leon did.

And behind them, standing in a place of honor, a man in golden armor with a sword that radiated enough holy energy to make Leon's teeth hurt from across the square.

[ENTITY IDENTIFIED: HOLY KNIGHT CAPTAIN]

[THREAT LEVEL: HIGH]

[SACRED ARMAMENT DETECTED: BLADE OF DIVINE JUDGMENT]

"Of course there's a captain," Leon said, because his life was apparently a series of escalating problems with no breaks in between.

The priest finished reading, rolled up the scroll, and nodded to the executioner. The executioner raised his axe. The crowd went silent.

Leon drew Aurelius, and the sword ignited.

Golden light exploded outward, bright enough to blind, hot enough to burn, and the crowd screamed and scattered as Leon launched himself toward the platform. He crossed the distance in two seconds, hit the stairs at a dead run, and the first knight to reach him got a pommel strike to the face that sent him flying backward into three of his friends.

The captain's sword came down like a falling star, and Leon caught it on Aurelius with a sound like a bell being struck by lightning.

"Hello," Leon said, grinning, because he couldn't help it. "I'm here for the girl."

The captain's eyes widened behind his helmet, and Leon saw the moment recognition hit. "You're—"

"The Sin of Pride," Leon finished, and shoved the captain backward with enough force to crack the stone beneath his feet. "I'd apologize for the interruption, but I'm really not sorry."

[SKILL ACTIVATED: SOLAR MAJESTY - RANK 3]

[COMBAT MODE: ENABLED]

[AUTHORITY PROTOCOLS: FULL RELEASE]

The world went gold.

Light poured off Leon in waves, rolling across the platform like a physical thing, and the knights closest to him staggered backward with their hands over their eyes. Aurelius burned brighter, hotter, and Leon moved through the crowd like a force of nature, disarming and disabling with the kind of efficiency that came from three thousand years of combat experience he didn't remember having but apparently still knew how to use.

A knight swung at him from the left, and Leon redirected the blade into the ground and kicked the man's legs out from under him. Another came from the right, and Leon ducked under the strike and drove his elbow into the knight's solar plexus hard enough to lift him off his feet. A third tried to tackle him, and Leon sidestepped and used the man's momentum to throw him off the platform entirely.

The captain came at him again, faster this time, and their swords met in a shower of sparks that lit up the square like fireworks.

"You can't win this," the captain said, pressing forward. "There are fifty of us and one of you."

"Fifty-three, actually," Leon said, counting. "And you're right, I probably can't win."

He twisted his wrist, angled Aurelius down, and drove the captain's blade into the stone platform hard enough to stick. The captain pulled, couldn't free it, and Leon punched him in the face.

The captain went down.

"But I don't need to win," Leon said, stepping over him. "I just need her."

He crossed the platform in four strides, reached Aria, and brought Aurelius down on her chains. The metal shattered, blessed steel or not, and Aria stumbled forward into him with the kind of momentum that suggested she'd been planning to headbutt whoever freed her.

She stopped an inch from his face, eyes wide, and Leon got his first good look at the Sin of Wrath.

She was younger than he'd expected, maybe early twenties, with sharp features and the kind of scowl that suggested she'd been angry since birth. Her eyes were red, actually red, not brown or amber but the color of hot coals, and they were currently staring at him with a mix of confusion and homicidal intent.

"Who the hell are you?" Aria demanded.

"Your rescue," Leon said, and then the platform exploded.

Fire erupted from beneath Aria's feet, red and gold and hot enough to turn the stone molten, and Leon threw himself backward as the flames roared outward in a wave that consumed everything within ten feet. Knights screamed and scattered, the priest's robes caught fire, and the executioner dropped his axe and ran.

Aria stood in the center of the inferno, chains melted, magic seal broken, and laughed.

[WARNING: INFERNAL RAGE ATTRIBUTE CRITICAL]

[ARIA IGNIS ENTERING BERSERK STATE]

[RECOMMENDATION: EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY]

"Oh," Leon said, watching the fire spread. "That's bad."

Aria turned to look at him, and her eyes were glowing now, bright enough to hurt. "You freed me."

"I did," Leon agreed, backing up a step.

"Why?"

"Because the System told me to," Leon said, which was true but probably not the answer she wanted. "And because I need your help."

Aria tilted her head, and the fire around her pulsed like a heartbeat. "Help with what?"

"Saving the world," Leon said. "Stopping the Celestial Dominion. Reuniting the Seven Sins and fighting a war that's been going on for three thousand years."

Aria stared at him.

The fire stared at him.

Fifty-three Holy Knights, those still conscious, stared at him.

"But first," Leon said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her toward the edge of the platform, "we run."

And they did, through the smoke and the flames and the screaming crowd, while behind them the execution grounds burned and the Holy Knights scrambled to regroup and the captain dragged himself to his feet with murder in his eyes.

Leon and Aria hit the street at a dead sprint, turned left, turned right, ducked into an alley and kept going, and somewhere in the chaos Leon heard the System chime.

[QUEST COMPLETE: LOCATE THE SIN OF WRATH]

[ARIA IGNIS: RESCUED]

[NEW QUEST AVAILABLE: CONTROL THE INFERNO]

Leon looked at Aria, who was still glowing, still burning, still radiating enough heat to make the air shimmer.

"So," he said, breathing hard. "About that rage problem."

Aria grinned, wild and sharp, and the fire around her hands flared bright enough to light up the alley like noon.

"What rage problem?"