Atlas stood amid the crumbling marble of the lower Heaven, the pulse of the Key burning against his chest. He felt it again—the latent law that slept within him, that power whispered once by Aurora, copied, memorized in muscle and marrow, the same force the Guide had wielded, the same force countless monstrous beings had used before him. A power he had thought was foreign, borrowed, alien to his own soul.
Yet now, in the haze of ruin and divine death, he sensed it awake. His limbs tingled. His veins hummed with golden fire that mirrored the pulse of Heaven's fracture. Maybe it remembered, he thought. Maybe the Guide only showed me the way once, and my body never forgot.
But it was not time for maybes. Not now. Not here. They had been searching for Michael and Lucifer through the shattered corridors of the Citadel, moving from throne room to throne room, following the echo of wings and whispers of what had been their brothers' power.
