JUGGERNAUT

Everybody knows the temple half of the story: Cain Marko grabs the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak in Korea and a cave-in does the rest. What almost nobody prints is the receipt that arrived four decades later. Touching the gem only handed Cain the power on approval. The mantle itself still belonged to somebody else — a Korean villager named Jin Taiko, the reigning avatar of Cyttorak, who had held the title before Marko ever set foot in that temple.

Taiko's offence, in his god's eyes, was mercy. His village had stopped worshipping Cyttorak, and Taiko refused to punish his own neighbours for it. A god of destruction reads that as breach of contract, so Cyttorak went shopping for a replacement — and the loud American deserter who stumbled into the temple was hired on the spot. To make the appointment permanent, the new man had to remove the old one.

So Marko fought Taiko in single combat and killed him, taking the title outright rather than borrowing it. Then, under Cyttorak's influence, he completed the job description in the worst available way and slaughtered Taiko's entire village — the very people his predecessor had died refusing to harm. The unstoppable force did not just find his power in that temple. He signed for it in somebody else's blood, twice over.