"What the hell just happened?"
The question echoed not just in the minds of Orario's mortals, but reverberated with a chilling resonance through the divine ears of the gods themselves.
The moonlight cast long, weary shadows across the war-torn city, painting the ruins in hues of blood silver and bruised black.
Only hours ago, the air had thrummed with the exhilarating hum of victory.
The protracted, brutal war against the evilus had concluded, its wretched champions and executives scattered into the dust, their malevolent god, Erebus, banished back to the Heavens.
It had been, unequivocally, a triumph.
But now, the phantom taste of ash replaced the sweetness of victory.
Perched atop the desolate pinnacle of Babel, where the wind whipped through gaping holes in the edifice, Hermes ripped the question from his throat, a raw, tormented bellow directed at the indifferent sky.
"That was supposed to be the end, right? Then what is… who killed Astraea?!"
His voice, usually a playful, melodious instrument, was now a jagged shard of grief.
Barely an hour had passed since he had stood with Astraea on this very spot, witnessing the swift, undeniable execution of Erebus's final return to the heavens.
A brief, almost subdued conversation had followed, the air still thick with the residual magic of divine judgment.
Then, Astraea, had asked him to leave.
She'd needed space, she'd said, to think.
To process.
Hermes, understanding her unique, strained connection to Erebus, had not pressed, had respectfully withdrawn.
Now, the memory of her solitary silhouette against the moonlight was a living brand on his soul. He regretted it, deeply, savagely.
He should have stayed.
He should have known.
Astraea, an embodiment of justice, was gone.
Sent back to Heaven.
And no one, no one in this entire blasted city, knew who, or why, or how a perpetrator, mortal or divine, had managed to slip past every vigilant eye, atop the very heart of Orario, the most secure place in the world.
Not far away, Loki, her sharp eyes scanning the scene like a predator, addressed Finn, who stood beside her, his face etched with confusion.
"Could it be the Evilus? Is there something we missed, something we overlooked?"
Finn shook his head slowly, his usually quick mind struggling to grasp the incomprehensible. "I… I don't know."
The words were a stark confession of his own failure to comprehend.
He had not once let his guard down.
Not even as the city below erupted in celebration, had he allowed the high alert status to drop.
He had dispatched scouts to the most critical strategic points, securing key locations, anticipating a potential retaliation.
And yet, this.
This utterly unforeseen, devastating blow.
Loki's gaze then drifted down, settling on the opulent, untouched spire where Freya resided.
"By the way, did you not notice anything? I mean, you live on the top floor of Babel."
Her tone was laced with a subtle suspicion.
Freya, with her beauty and power, was a likely a suspect in many scenarios, but to harm Astraea?
It didn't make sense.
Freya was not foolish enough to invite such an immediate, widespread backlash, and there was no known animosity between the two goddesses.
Freya, sensing the implied accusation, turned her head slightly, her usually captivating smile absent, replaced by a genuine frown.
Her eyes, typically swirling with a thousand secrets, held only a bewildered emptiness.
"I did not notice a thing."
Her reply was curt, almost defensive.
Even the goddess of beauty and obsession was genuinely perplexed, her finely tuned senses having detected nothing amiss.
Loki sighed, running a hand through her crimson hair, her attention returning to Finn.
"What about Astraea's children? Any word from them?"
Finn's frown deepened.
"From what I gathered, they all went after the Bahamut familia."
Loki's eyes widened in alarm.
"Wait, doesn't that mean they are in danger? Without their goddess's blessing, surviving the Beol mountain range will be incredibly hard. The monsters there are no joke."
The Beol mountain range, a natural barrier to the north of Orario, was a realm of untamed wilderness and powerful beasts, made even more perilous by the recent clash of two dragon deities, Bahamut and Falazure.
"Yes, that is why I sent Riveria and Gareth earlier. They should find them soon," Finn replied, his voice strained.
He fell silent, his eyes fixed on the distant, jagged peaks of the Beol range, a silent prayer for the safety of the young adventurers, now doubly vulnerable.
The answers eluded them, the questions multiplying with each passing moment.
The frustration was a palpable thing, a collective chokehold on the city.
With a final, guttural cry of despair and resolve, Hermes turned from the summit of Babel, his powerful strides carrying him away.
He was done with questions.
He was going to find his own answers.
His departure, a solitary figure disappearing into the gloom, only heightened the sense of urgency.
Finn, observing his departure, issued immediate orders.
Messengers, their faces grim, fanned out across the city, their voices hoarse with the solemn proclamation: the victory was brief, the war was not truly over.
Orario's day of triumph was brutally cut short, swallowed by a wave of renewed tension and dread.
..........
Meanwhile, far below the city's ravaged foundations, in the chilling, damp, and twisting labyrinth of Knossos, a clandestine meeting of dark gods was underway.
The air, thick with the scent of damp earth and stale magic, was oppressive, a stark contrast to the open skies above.
Dim, flickering braziers cast dancing shadows on the grotesque, unhewn rock walls, illuminating the faces of deities who had seen better days.
"So that shit, Erebus lost, huh!" Rudra, began the meeting, his voice a low rumble.
He sat hunched, his muscular frame looking weary, his eyes glinting with a morbid pragmatism.
"That he did! Luckily, we did not completely devote our resources to him, or we would have ended up like those two," replied Thanatos, his tone a dry rasp.
He gestured vaguely to an empty space at the table, implying other fallen dark gods.
His face was a mask of cold resignation, his gaze distant, as if already assessing the scale of their collective casualty.
"That piece of shit, he cost us everything!" Apate shrieked, slamming a delicate hand on the rough stone table.
Her voice was shrill, barely controlled, betraying a savage frustration.
Her once-grand familia had been decimated, her schemes unraveled by the evilus coalition collapse.
"Quiet down bitch, I lost everything too," Alecto, interjected, her voice a low growl of annoyance.
Her face was a venomous scowl, her eyes burning with an internal fire.
"What did you say? Are you picking a fight?" Apate snapped, her slender frame trembling with fury, pushing herself to her feet.
"And what exactly can you do? We both don't have any usable children left, or do you want to fight me directly? If so, I can grant your request," Alecto snapped back, a wickedly curved dagger materializing from thin air into her hand, its polished blade reflecting the dim firelight. The air crackled with their suppressed rage.
"Enough, you two! Arguing isn't going to solve anything. We need to be discussing how to recover from this," Thanatos interrupted, his voice laced with weary authority, cutting through the rising tension.
The two goddesses, their faces contorted in mutual loathing, hesitated.
"Hmph," both Apate and Alecto scoffed in unison, their eyes still locked in a silent promise of future retribution, before grudgingly returning to their seats.
Just then, the heavy, stone door to the chamber creaked open, and a messenger, his face pale and sweating, hurried in.
He delivered a tightly folded note to Rudra, who snatched it from his hand with an impatient grunt.
Rudra's eyes scanned the message, and a strange expression, a mix of surprise and something akin to twisted amusement, crossed his face.
"Oh my, would you look at this," he muttered, his voice devoid of its earlier weariness.
"What is it now?" Apate demanded, her curiosity piqued, her anger momentarily forgotten.
"Apparently, someone sent Astraea back to heaven," Rudra replied, his gaze still fixed on the note.
A beat of stunned silence.
Then, "What?!" Thanatos exclaimed, his steely composure finally cracking in genuine surprise.
"Well, serves her right! Whoever did it deserves praise!" Apate crowed, a malicious smile gracing her face, her eyes alight with sadistic pleasure.
The news, unexpected and brutal, was a balm to her recent wounds.
"While the news is joyous, it is also concerning," Alecto said, her earlier fury replaced by a chilling analytical coldness.
"And why is that, pray tell?" Rudra asked, raising an eyebrow, intrigued by her sudden shift in demeanor.
"It means there is another god or goddess, unaffiliated with us, that shares a similar thought process," Alecto explained, her gaze narrowing into the shadowy corners of the room.
"Someone powerful enough to bypass Babel's security and banish a deity."
"And this is concerning for us because…?" Apate drawled, rolling her eyes, her simple mind unable to grasp the nuance.
"Idiot," Alecto muttered inaudibly, before articulating her thoughts more clearly.
"Because they may also be an enemy. An unknown force. Someone who could easily turn their attention to us."
"Not necessarily," a sudden, melodic voice interrupted the meeting.
It was rich, resonant, and utterly foreign to the chamber, yet it seemed to fill the space from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Who dares?!" Rudra yelled, getting up from his chair, his instincts screaming danger.
"Oh, be quite, wildling. You don't need to be so loud," the voice replied, a hint of playful disdain in its tone.
The air in the distance rippled, shimmering as if heat waves distorted the very fabric of reality.
In the next moment, the air solidified, swirling into a distinct form.
A goddess, impossibly beautiful, her form radiating an aura of ancient, terrifying power, materialized in the room.
Beside her, a single follower, cloaked and silent, appeared like a shadow.
Her eyes, the color of twilight, swept over the assembled, gods, a faint, knowing smirk playing on her lips.
"You… how…?" Apate's voice hitched in her throat, all her bravado evaporating under the intruder's palpable presence.
Shock, pure and unadulterated, contorted her features.
"Interesting," Thanatos muttered, a rare, genuine smile slowly spreading across his lips, a chilling expression of recognition and potential opportunity.
Rudra and Alecto, however, remained frozen, struck dumb by the audacity and sheer power of the intrusion.
"Now, now, young ones," the intruding goddess purred, her voice a silken promise of both terror and tantalization, her sinister smile deepening.
"Let us have a proper meeting."
Her arrival had not only confirmed Astraea's killer but had heralded the dawn of a new, perhaps far more dangerous, era for the evil gods themselves.
.........…
Far away, in the Beol mountain range, the entire village of Edas lay wrapped in a suffocating silence.
The remnants of battle lingered…..scorched earth, splintered trees, and the faint, metallic scent of blood carried on the chill wind.
The distant, booming clash of Bahamut and Falazure, two colossal dragons, had faded in the distance, leaving behind an unnatural stillness that pressed down on the few living souls present.
This silence, thick and heavy, was particularly agonizing for Draco.
He stood amidst his own weary familia members, his heart a leaden weight in his chest, staring at the shattered forms of the Astraea Familia.
They had just lost: their goddess, their guiding star, their very rock, was gone.
Banished to Heaven.
The blow had been cataclysmic.
It was the kind of pain few could claim to understand, a spiritual amputation that left a horrifying void.
Neither Draco nor his familia members knew what to say, how to help.
Their friends, their allies, were adrift, unmoored from their divine anchor.
Yet, even as their hearts ached for the Astraea Familia, a cold dread snaked through Draco's own familia.
Their own goddess, Bahamut, had been locked in a titanic, destructive battle with Falazure.
Her fate was, at best, uncertain.
They didn't want to lose her, not after all they'd been through.
Moreover, they couldn't simply abandon the Astraea Familia in this state.
In their vulnerable, delirious grief, they might do something reckless, something they would regret, something that would lead them directly into the jaws of death.
'To think that such a thing would happen. What exactly is happening in Orario?' Draco pondered, the question a dull, throbbing ache behind his eyes.
The world seemed to be unraveling, its very foundations shaking.
Suddenly, a figure stirred.
Ryuu, slowly got to her feet.
Her eyes, once sparkling with intelligence and conviction, were now hollow, devoid of light, like empty wells.
Her gaze was fixed, unseeing, in the direction of Orario, a thousand miles away.
One by one, like automatons, like sleepwalkers, the other girls of the Astraea Familia stumbled to their feet.
Their movements were jerky, uncoordinated, driven by a primal, irresistible urge.
Their faces were ghost-pale, mirroring Ryuu's vacant stare, their bodies shivering not from cold, but from an internal shockwave.
They turned, and without a word, began to walk.
Their destination, unspoken but clear, was Orario.
"Wait!" Draco called out, his voice sharp with alarm, as he immediately moved to block their path.
He planted himself firmly in front of them, his arms spread, a barrier against their suicidal march.
He couldn't let them leave.
Not like this.
Without their goddesses blessing, they were merely mortals, incredibly skilled, yes, but no match for the horrors of the Beol mountain range without their divine support.
They would become prey, nothing more.
Old man Caam, watched the unfolding scene with somber eyes.
He looked down at the ground, his gaze distant, lost in the swirling mists of his own memories. Years ago, he, too, had lost his goddess, had felt that crushing, soul-destroying void.
He understood, more than anyone else present, the raw, visceral pain of the Astraea Familia.
He could feel it radiating from them, an almost tangible shroud of grief.
And because he understood their pain, he also understood the next action the Astraea Familia took, even as it tore at his weary heart.
"Move," Alise, the fiery captain of the Astraea Familia, spoke, her voice flat, devoid of its usual passion, yet carrying an undeniable, chilling authority.
Her hand, steady as stone, brought her gleaming blade, to bear.
The point of the weapon, usually reserved for monsters and villains, was now aimed squarely at Draco's chest.
Her eyes, though dull, held an unyielding resolve.
They were no longer the eyes of a friend, but of a broken warrior, hell-bent on a path she saw as her only option, no matter the cost.