“Wing-Cleaving Brilliance!” Akenachel soared and flung both hands wide. Power gathered out of thin air, then poured down in a rain-curtain of light toward Edlyn.
A hush in her chest, Edlyn raised one hand to the sky and closed her fingers around the oncoming flood like catching a storm-bloom.
Purple energy welled from her small frame, moonlight pouring into a calm pond.
With her lifted left hand as a fulcrum, that vast power shaped a colossal palm and swept through the air toward where Akenachel hovered.
The barrage of light hammered the giant hand; the space shivered like a bell struck at dawn.
Edlyn narrowed her eyes—first a prickle of wrongness, then thought.
Akenachel’s condition shouldn’t allow such pure-force strikes.
Edlyn glanced at the sword in her hand.
Ashir had looked lifeless the moment she stepped into this world, its old spirit gone like wind leaving a flute.
So this is… a world of mind?
When she drew Ashir earlier, Akenachel had worn that odd expression.
Unruffled, Edlyn blocked another of Akenachel’s skills like brushing aside falling petals.
She rubbed her soft chin, brows knitting in a graceful arc. “What exactly is…?”
If these are just the flashy, overpowered moves crowding her memories, she knows plenty.
Akenachel bit down, unwilling, eyes locked on Edlyn.
In her recollection, the grandest attack she could muster was already spent.
The woman below unraveled every strike like idly dispersing mist; panic nipped—what else could she do?
Edlyn eyed the broad wings behind Akenachel, thoughtful, then nodded as if confirming a script.
She spread her hands. Under Akenachel’s slack-jawed stare—
A pair of vast black pinions unfurled from Edlyn’s back; one lazy beat kicked up a cyclone that howled like a mountain gorge.
Edlyn’s mouth curled. “Ah. So it is.”
“You—what is that!” Akenachel pointed, voice trembling.
“Those… Fallen Angel wings. Why do you have them?!” Akenachel breathed, stunned.
Edlyn shrugged, light as drifting ash. “You taught me. Everything here bends to thought. Your wings looked good; I wanted some, so I wove them from demonic aura.”
She flicked the great feathers behind her, impish as a night sparrow.
“How is it? Pretty, no?” Edlyn’s smile held winter.
Akenachel jabbed a finger, fury burning. “You! You blaspheme! Filth! Accept judgment!”
Edlyn raised a brow—amusement first, then motion.
It’s just Fallen Angel wings. Why the theatrics—diving straight down like a comet?
A perfect target.
She wouldn’t waste it. Her wings beat; she speared up into the high sky like an arrow from a black bow.
Heat flushed her cheeks. “Wow, this feels incredible!”
Feathered edges sliced the wind. Twin longswords bloomed in Edlyn’s hands—Ashir in one, Thias in the other. She cut twice at the diving Akenachel.
Would Akenachel be that foolish?
Of course not.
She raised both arms to guard. Her forearms flashed, turning into twin bars of golden light.
Akenachel gritted her teeth.
This was the skill the Celestial God left her—to bind a Hero. A silence so strong it smothered power.
The price was cruel: turn both hands into pure divine force, and step into melee against those beyond imagining.
Near suicide.
She’d once tried it in secret, before meeting that Hero; even then, his killing-cold gaze locked onto her like frost finding bone.
With no other way out, she reported failure to the Celestial God and begged another envoy to liaise between Hero and Celestial Realm.
“Fall, Demon King!” Akenachel snarled, rage ripping like torn banners.
The orcs’ bellowing and the blast of elven arc-sorcery tangled together like thunder and hail.
The conjured forest had already burned to stumps, smoke scoring the sky with dark strokes.
Bodies fell across the field, armor slick with ash.
On their faces, stubborn grief or raw anger—embers refusing to die.
A shrill whoosh, then a sky-wide slam of explosions. Bricks, dirt, tiles—and severed limbs—spun through the air. Crying, shouting, calls for help braided into a harsh tide.
Orcish charges, fearless as storm-wolves, smashed the Elf Race’s line. With that tide crashing in, the elves’ resistance looked painfully small.
Across the battlefield, raining gray-black and bright crimson splashed and strutted, a brutal contrast.
Above, spells and enchanted arrows crossed and burst, tangled like fireflies in a hurricane.
Yor stood in the command room, expression flat, watching it all as if through frost.
He tapped the chair arm lightly. “That human—where is he? Eli went for intel, right? Why isn’t he back after nearly three days?”
“Don’t tell me he bolted?” Yor’s brow knotted—doubt first, then restraint.
“No…” Yor sighed, wind against flags.
Either way, he still trusted Her Majesty.
However foul the man’s reputation, he was the helper the Queen handed over.
Desertion seemed unlikely.
But Avis kept scheming in the dark, little moves that stank; it made Yor’s eye twitch.
If not for wartime, he’d dump the man on Raphael and have him clean up the mess.
“Raphael?” Yor frowned—then recall clicked.
Right—Raphael knew Eli well, didn’t he?
Back in the Tree of Life’s inner space, weren’t the ones caught Raphael, Eli, and a girl half human, half demon?
Send Raphael to find Eli.
Yor’s smile thinned. He pressed the communication crystal until it squealed.
“Have Raphael… come see me.”
In the Sky Prison now—
“Raphael, the commander wants you.” The guard’s voice was cold, iron in snow.
If not for this guy, he might be on the front line, defending home. No warmth for Raphael at all.
For Raphael, the clipped words fell like a god’s oracle, sweet as water after drought.
“What? Her Majesty wants to see me! Great—Her Majesty—yes!”
The guard shot him a frigid look. “Hm? Her Majesty—no. You’re not worthy of her summons.”
“Then…”
“It’s the wartime commander, Lord Yor.” The guard’s tone stayed flat.
“Ah?! Y—Yor!” Cold sweat ran down Raphael’s neck in quick drops.
Memory clawed up from years ago.
Back when he was… inventive with captured spies.
A helper sent by the Queen to assist him—he was called Yor, wasn’t he…?
“No mistake—this is it!” Era reached the depths beneath the Elven City, eyes shining at the vast cubic structure in that pocket dimension.
Reni watched the once-cool, wise Era with a sigh; now she looked like a ten-year-old buzzing at a festival.
Reni couldn’t help it.
The building ahead refused to be ignored. A thousand meters under the city, an odd space opened like a secret garden.
Just past lay raw rock and soil; yet here felt like a secluded paradise.
There was even a sun-like light source hanging on the “sky.”
A bottomless black cube loomed before Era and Reni, silent as a tomb-stone.
Countless strands of green natural energy gathered in the air and shaped strange living forms—sprites and serpents of light swirling like ivy in storm.
The proud host of nature spirits circled the massive cube at the center, arrogant as cranes.
Spirits that drifted gentle elsewhere turned sharp near the cube, like deer catching a predator’s scent.
They wheeled, anxious, around the dark block, giving off a silent, scrape-throated roar. The eerie cube just stood there, patient as a mountain.
Reni held her breath; the sight hit like a tidal bell.
Outside of the Demon Race legions seen in inherited memory, this was the most devastating thing she’d witnessed.
“Come, my kin! Wake! For supreme glory—fight once more!” Era cried, voice rolling like drums across a valley.
Akenachel barely knew what she was doing anymore—weariness pooled first, then pain.
Her hands—she hadn’t even noticed the moment they were cut away.
In that instant, she lost every chance.
“Demonic Lord, give me a clean end.”
It was her last request to Edlyn.
When she poured all the Celestial God’s gifts into her hands, and Edlyn severed them without mercy, the god-force slipped its leash. Memory surged back—
The fear the Celestial Gods had buried deep, absolute and cold.
The Celestial Realm’s nightmare.
An indifferent gaze steeped in killing intent. A Holy Sword once claimed by the heavens.
A mortal beneath their banner, a flag they thought theirs.
A face that always wore a curl of mockery, a thin winter smile.
And his final strike, Holy Sword lifted like sunrise.
“Annihilation Dawn!”
