Edlyn kept walking through the place once called the Celestial Realm, her steps tapping the ruins like rain on broken jade.

Once-sacred ground now swam with blood and severed limbs, crimson pools glinting like tarnished mirrors.

Wherever she looked, corpses carpeted the land like a field after frost.

Edlyn frowned; a cold needle pricked her thoughts. How many had that guy killed?

“…Really…” Edlyn sighed, her breath drifting like mist over stone.

Not far off, by a pool once brimming with holy water, Akenachel lay sprawled, her skin and robes soaked red like a drowned rose.

In front of her, that man stood; Holy Sword Tias drank the blood of gods, its edge a guttering candle of clotted red.

Birand looked up at the stars and exhaled a plume of stale breath, smoke under a winter sky.

“First Heaven Sector. Slaughter complete.” He bent and yanked her up by the golden hair, like ripping a dry root from cracked earth.

Under the dying amber sun, blood congealed on Tias’s blade; the sword looked ruined, a relic dug from a battlefield.

It made Akenachel tremble like a leaf in a cutting wind.

Birand took in her pale face and bleeding wounds, then smiled, thin as a knife. “Angels, did you ever imagine you’d crawl before a lesser species?”

“Did you ever imagine the lives you took mattered like fire to someone else’s winter?”

His tone cooled like iron in snow. He eyed the divine wings on her back and smiled, cruel as a crescent scythe.

He slammed a fist down toward her face, a stone falling from a cliff.

She toppled with a thud, her body quivering like a net in a storm, telling in shakes what her throat couldn’t.

Caw—caw—caw—

As eerie birdsong rippled around them, Birand’s expression leveled out, calm returning like dusk over a battlefield.

The half-living, the overlooked, the ones playing dead—he’d cleared them all, shadows folded like closed books.

The ravens had returned, iron wings whispering. Next came the ruin of another Heaven Sector.

Birand snapped his fingers, and the orange sky pulled back into his body like smoke into a brazier.

The dome returned to deep blue, the stars unmoved, cold pins on velvet.

Edlyn watched, heart turning to ice, shock blooming like frost across a window.

How terrifying was the Hero now…?

Even at her peak, she’d be a candle in a gale, snuffed in a heartbeat.

The more she thought, the more wrong it felt, worry spiraling like a tightening vine.

He had clearly stepped beyond the world’s limit, a mountain above cloud and thunder.

But how could anyone kill him?

Unless beings like the Abyss or a Celestial God struck, voices at the scale of night and ocean.

Yet the Abyss slept after her failure, a volcano sealed under ash.

The Celestial God slept too—or else they wouldn’t have sent a Hero from another world to halt her army.

Curiosity bit deeper, sharp as a fishhook. How did this man die?

She fixed her gaze back on Birand, eyes quiet as a pool.

He seemed to sense it and smiled toward her, crooked as a scythe.

Edlyn flinched; cold sweat beaded like dew on glass.

Maybe she overthought it; the next second, he looked away, gaze drifting like a cloud.

She clutched her pounding heart like a bird in a cage, lungs scraping for air.

Was that… was that just a look?

Edlyn ground her teeth, resentment burning like a coal. How did he climb this high?

Birand raised Tias to take Akenachel’s head, but the blade halted at her neck like thunder held by a hand.

Akenachel trembled and looked up at the primeval Fiend, eyes wide as moons.

Birand studied her pretty face and chuckled, a click of tongue like flint. “Tsk. I just remembered—you’re one of the ones who took Icarina.”

He crouched and brushed her cheek, a touch cold as iron under moonlight.

Goosebumps raced over her skin; it hurt worse than a clean kill, like salt rubbed into a wound.

“You… what do you want?” Akenachel’s voice shook, brittle as thin ice.

She felt a familiar breath knit her wounds like spring rain on cracked earth. It was the Hero’s power of hope.

To a god, it was tonic, honey in winter tea.

But inside that sweetness, she felt a trace of the Abyss, a black thread in white silk.

She couldn’t resist, caught like a fly in amber; she could only watch the man once called Hero heal damage his ravens had carved.

Power surged in her again, divine force billowing like a river in flood.

She even wanted to strike, lightning coiled under her skin.

But the Abyss seeped in and detonated, a mine under her ribs, throwing her power into riot.

Hope of the Hero, godforce regrown by that hope, and the Abyss—three forces rampaged through her body like three beasts trapped in one cage.

It felt like someone cranked a meat grinder inside her, gears chewing flesh and light.

Birand watched her pain with pitiless eyes, a hunter savoring the tremble of a stag.

As he drank in it, her pupils widened; her resistance thinned like a melting candle.

Birand frowned, bored as rain on stone.

Too dull. Die so quickly from a simple torment?

He let go of her hair and kicked her back, a hammer blow ringing bone.

Under that kick, the three forces were forced out like smoke pressed through a sieve.

Edlyn grimaced; cruelty piled upon cruelty, thorns under nails.

She bit her lip and kept watching, curiosity and dread braided tight.

She had to know what could subdue a Hero like this.

Birand seized Akenachel’s hair again and dragged her forward, steps slow as a procession. “I won’t let you die easy. You’ll watch me erase all eight Heaven Sectors. Then I’ll grant you death.”

He tapped his own forehead, a rueful flick like a loose mask. “Ah, seriously—why am I being so dramatic? Not good… not good.”

Akenachel wailed, a broken flute’s note, but she couldn’t fight the Hero.

She raised both hands and clawed at his right hand, a drowning soul clutching reeds.

She earned only his impatient blows, strikes falling like rain.

When Birand’s patience snapped, he flung her aside and stepped behind her, movement clean as a blade’s turn.

His left half turned molten, red glare and bubbling stone.

He spread his hands and tore off her two divine wings, left and right, as if stripping banners from a temple, then tossed them aside.

Akenachel’s eyes rolled back; she fainted like a snuffed lamp.

Birand flooded her with energy and forced her awake again, winding the clock of pain.

Her gaze went glassy, eyes dull as river stones. The will to resist was gone.

Only then did Birand nod, satisfied, calm as a still lake.

Edlyn clenched her teeth, granite-hard. Seeing that monster wear Eli’s face to do this twisted her stomach.

Her brows locked tight. “Impossible. They can’t be the same person.”

She spoke to herself, stubborn and low, a whisper in a storm.

He’s the fool who jokes to make us smile, a warm lamp in a cold room. He loves everything with easy fairness.

He acts scatterbrained, but he never fails when it counts, a steady hand in fog.

Edlyn clawed through memories of Eli’s words and deeds, prying Birand’s shadow out of her mind like pulling a thorn.

She exhaled. “Absolutely not. He’s him. Birand is Birand.”

Edlyn bit down and followed Birand’s pace, steps falling like echoes.

He dragged Akenachel and walked slow, unhurried as a tide.

Blood seeped from her torn wings and trailed behind them, a red ribbon laid over stone.

Edlyn stepped over the ribbon and kept up, boots whispering like paper.

At the Second Heaven Sector, the gate Angels fell like wheat under a scythe—heads severed in a blink, souls swallowed like sparks in night.

Akenachel watched in a stupor, silence heavy as sand, beyond protest.

Birand nodded, pleased. He ripped out the gatekeepers’ spines and wings and bound Akenachel to a stone pillar, knots tight as iron roots. He patted her numb face and smiled. “Relax. I’ll bring this sector’s guardian back to you. Wait for me.”

He tapped her cheek again and laughed, a ripple over dark water.

He spread his arms. A violet portal bloomed behind him like a wound in air. Ravens poured out, their thunder a black storm of knives.

Birand snapped his fingers. The orange sky replaced the stars once more, saffron fire smothering velvet night.

Edlyn’s pupils shrank; memory returned like a tide. Not long ago, she’d lived under that sky.

The archangel guarding this sector sensed the wrongness, set down her carving, and used the talent the Celestial God had granted to call for aid.

But the rescue beam that left her hall was swallowed by the orange firmament and erased, a comet eaten by cloud.

The guardian stared, appalled, face pale as chalk.

Birand’s left side turned molten again. He carried Tias in his right and strolled toward the sector’s heart, a blaze walking through snow.

Another slaughter rose like a tide under absolute suppression.

No number of guards mattered, sand against storm.

Birand’s body wore unholy flame, foxfire licking a corpse road. The molten left side radiated a killing heat.

Each time he seized an Angel’s head, flame raced fast over it, and their wails whistled like wind in a graveyard.

Birand crushed the skull, pressure snapping like ice.

Akenachel’s numb face refilled with terror, color flooding back like stormlight.

Tears leaked from her eyes like rain on marble. She shook, brittle with fear, before that man like a god of slaughter.

Why had she joined that plan? Regret ate her like rust. Why hadn’t she stopped the Celestial God from launching it?

She knew now: it was her worst decision in this life, a brand burned into bone.

Edlyn saw Akenachel crying in that unnatural way, a statue weeping, and sighed.

Poor thing.

“Heh heh—ha ha ha! Die! Die! Die! Angels? The divine realm? Hahaha! I am your Ragnarok! Hahaha! Taste despair, you ants!”