Continental Year 2177.

Forty years had passed since the Demon Race retreated, and new shoots pushed through every corner of the continent like green breaths after rain. Peace lay over the land like a calm lake.

The ground once riddled with holes by war now looked stitched and mended, the joint strength of all races smoothing its scars. Everything seemed too quiet, too whole.

A war that dragged on for nearly twenty years ended under the Hero’s grit, the allied banners rising like dawn after a long night. Victory was declared, complete and final.

On the surface, no trace of the Demon Race remained, not even a footprint in the ash. If any still lingered, they only skulked in shadow, breathing shallow.

Everything looked flush with life, a field ready for harvest. Only one thing felt off, like a chill under sun-warmed stone.

The Holy Court Church, which had blazed like a comet during the war, went silent. With the Hero and the Celestial Gods behind them, they rose fast, step by step, to become the First Church.

Yet for the last month, to every race’s surprise, they didn’t preach or expand. They huddled in Holy Paris, their lights dimmed, their banners still.

Inside the Holy Court Church, everyone stood rigid, eyes fixed on the figure at the foot of the Heaven-reaching Ladder. Even breath sounded too loud.

“H…Hero… are you insane?!” The Pope’s fury cracked like thunder as he pointed at Birand across the marble floor.

Birand stood angled at the Ladder’s entrance, a shadow cut clean. His gaze never touched the faithful gathered like wheat before a scythe.

“Me? Insane?” He laughed low, like embers snapping. “If you can do what you’ve done, I won’t let you go so easily.” He turned.

Every face there felt winter bite their bones. The sight of him froze the hall like a sudden frost.

The left side of Birand’s face was sheathed in lava, his eye replaced by a red gem that smoldered like a coal. Heat shimmered off him.

“You… you… you actually… fell into the Abyss!” The Pope’s hands shook as he pointed, his staff a brittle reed in floodwaters.

“Heh… hahahaha.” Birand pressed a gloved left hand over his molten cheek, as if to hold in a laugh that had teeth.

“You’ll never, ever slip from my grasp.” His voice came cold as iron. “I’ll drown you in absolute fear.”

He flung his arms wide. Power surged out of him like a tidal wave, a crimson tide that flooded the vast hall in one breath.

“Hahahahahahaha!” He howled with glee. In his grip, the Holy Sword Tias keened, a blade’s cry like wind through a graveyard.

It was as if Birand himself faced a mortal threat. Thias fought him, trying to choke off the torrent of power pouring from his veins.

Birand looked down at the blade, a breath like a sigh escaping. “I know. Let me be selfish, just this once…”

Thias only answered with a shivering, sorrowful tremor along its edge, like a bell tolling over snow.

Birand lifted his head. Cruelty slid back over his face like a mask snapping into place. The lava glowed hotter.

He stared down at the terrified mass below and laughed, bright as a knife. “Mortals, fear my power. This is a living Inferno.”

“Bask in the finest tortures this world can offer. When I return, extinction will follow.” His words fell like ash.

Screams burst like ripped banners. Eyes rolled white. Souls were yanked from bodies, threads ripped from cloth, writhing in the crimson field he had cast.

They howled in unison, a chorus of flayed wind, as the field burned their souls with a heat no water could quench. The stench was grief.

Birand smiled, cruel and soft, like a razor wrapped in silk.

The Pope braced his staff, holy light pouring from him like a melting snowfall. He fought back the consuming heat with a trembling jaw.

He darted a look at Birand striding for the Heaven-reaching Ladder. His teeth clenched. He took a breath like a man about to dive.

“Hero! As a messenger of the Celestial Realm, you can’t do this!”

Birand glanced back and grinned, baring the edge of his teeth. “So you could just take what I love? Burn what I am?”

“Remember this.” His voice dropped to a growl. “I start fights. No one starts one with me.”

He blinked and appeared at the Pope’s side, a shadow moving faster than thought. “Or I’ll make them wander forever, never reborn.”

He stripped off his glove. His lava hand clamped around the Pope’s throat with a hiss like rain on iron.

“—ngh!” Holy energy bloomed from the Pope, a clean spring against volcanic rock. It broke like paper in fire.

The molten grip devoured those wards like dry leaves. A heartbeat later, Birand crushed. The head came away in his fist like a snapped stem.

He sneered. His mouth opened, teeth closing on the Pope’s soul, a pale flame torn free. In a few blinks, he swallowed it whole.

Birand faced the Heaven-reaching Ladder. The lava on him steadied, cooling like a river’s skin at dusk.

Slowly, his left hand and cheek knit back to human flesh, smooth and calm. Only his left eye stayed wholly red, a coal that never died.

He listened to the choir of screams rising like smoke and bowed to the sky as if to a distant stage. He looked… pleased.

“Hahaha! You made me. Now I’ll repay the favor!” His laughter rang against vaulted stone. “Hahahahaha!”

He turned and stepped onto the Heaven-reaching Ladder. The world seemed to hold its breath.

…

Akenachel didn’t know what she was doing anymore. Weariness soaked her bones like rain in old wood. Everything felt heavy.

There was a fear, buried deep by the Celestial Gods, like a serpent coiled under a temple floor. It shifted. It stared back.

It was an absolute fear that belonged to the Celestial Realm itself, a cold mirror that reflected only endings. It tasted like frost.

A gaze, indifferent and murderous, cutting like winter wind. A Holy Sword that once belonged to the Celestial Realm, bright as dawn and heavy as judgment.

A mortal who had carried their banner, a face that never shed its mockery, a laugh that turned prayer into dust.

And his final strike, the blade raised high, the name like a sunrise that devours night.

“Annihilation Dawn!”

Then came a muddled memory, silt and storm water all mixed together. Time blurred like ink in rain.

And then Akenachel stood before her—haggard, drained, a candle guttering in its own smoke.

Edlyn blinked, startled, as if a cold drop fell on a hot pan. What did I just see?

She glanced at Akenachel, whose form was fading like mist at noon. Her brow tightened. Is this… her memory?

Edlyn stepped forward and patted Akenachel’s shoulder, gentle as a hand on new snow. Akenachel lifted her head with effort.

“Please… help me.” The voice shook like a string pulled too tight.

“Help you? With what?” Edlyn’s frown deepened. Confusion pressed like fog. The Hero… that was indeed him.

But something was wrong. Wrong like a note bent out of tune, like light that didn’t warm.

Akenachel’s power began to bleed away, scattering into the world like seeds on the wind. The air drank her.

She pleaded to Edlyn, voice small as a child’s. “I’m willing… to become a part of Angela. I hope… you can erase that memory.”

“Huh?” Edlyn’s brows knit tighter. Why is she yielding so easily?

What happened? What could be that terrifying inside those fragments?

Akenachel hugged herself, trembling so hard her wings shook. “Please… please… please.” Her lips quivered. Her face drained white.

Edlyn kept her brows slightly drawn, studying the Archangel’s unraveling poise. Curiosity twisted under her pity.

What could shake an Archangel into this? What kind of shadow cuts light itself?

“Give me that memory. Let me see.” Edlyn sighed, bent, and brushed Akenachel’s head like smoothing ruffled feathers. “I’ll help you destroy it.”

“I… thank you.” Akenachel nodded to Edlyn, wiping the tears at her eyes with a hand that shook.

…

The Gate of the Celestial Realm stood where the mortal world and the heavens met, a threshold like a blade laid between sea and sky.

Usually, only two Angels guarded it, still as statues, wings tucked, eyes calm. No one else lingered here.

“Ugh, so boring.” One Angel sighed, his voice drifting like dust motes in a sunbeam.

“What, it’s not your first shift,” the other answered with a long exhale. “And still you complain. Honestly.”

They saw the Archangel Akenachel streaking toward them, a star falling uphill. Surprise flared and quickly dulled.

Nothing was wrong below, as far as they knew. The Heaven-reaching Ladder was under the Holy Court Church’s hand.

With that mortal Pope’s strength, who could possibly threaten the Celestial Realm? The question felt like a joke.

Akenachel had looked down on the lower world out of idle habit. And then—

She saw Birand’s massacre, a red storm eating the horizon. Her heart dropped like a stone through a well.

From a great distance she sent her voice, a bell tolled in panic. “Close the Celestial Gate! Let nothing through!”

The two Angels moved like molasses, slow and unimpressed. They thought the Archangel had misplaced her dignity.

Panicking was beneath the heavens, they thought. Dignity was a robe you never removed.

The next instant, the Celestial Gate opened with a breath like an old door exhaling dust.

They saw Birand step through with a kindly smile, a neighbor at your threshold with a basket of fruit.

“Ah! You’re the Hero!” The Angels smiled at him, relief washing like warm milk.

Birand smiled back, gentle as spring. It was the soft of wool hiding a knife’s edge.

Watching that peaceful scene, Akenachel almost forgot the Fiend below, almost believed her sight had lied.

For a heartbeat, she wished the horrors were mirages. Then guilt hit like a falling bell.

Why didn’t I go to them immediately?

Birand’s hand rose and fell. Two heads leapt from two necks in the same heartbeat, blood arcing like red silk.

The Holy Sword pierced the bodies of the Celestial envoys, a paradox gleaming. Heaven’s blade, heaven’s blood.

Birand drew out their souls, two pale flames trembling. He swallowed them deep, like a night that never gave back its stars.

“No!” Akenachel’s howl tore the air, the sound of a wing breaking mid-flight.

…

Birds skimmed the wasteland, instincts veering them away from the iron stink below. Their cries trailed like broken strings.

One dipped too low, wings heavy with fatigue, and brushed a stand of waist-high grass. Its rhythm faltered.

It shuddered, flapped twice, and dropped straight down. It hit blood-soaked earth. The salty reek rose like a wave and smothered its last spark.

A dark bolt, black with oil-sheen, jutted at an angle in the grass. It hid and waited, a patient mouth.

Before this moment, it had already taken a life. It would take more. It was made for endings.

Broken halberds and snapped swords lay strewn like bones across the ground. Everywhere the eye went, only ruin breathed.

Blood rotted into roots and bark. Flowers withered. Water stagnated and died. Life collapsed into ash.

This place was no longer the Celestial Realm.