Vergil woke to nothing but utter silence
He slowly opened his eyes as the world blurred into dim light and shifting shadows across his retinas.. At first, he thought he was still unconscious, suspended in some formless dream — but the coldness of stone beneath his cheek told him otherwise. He blinked again, a flicker of instinct returning.
He tried to move.
Nothing.
There was no pain, no scream from torn muscles or broken bones — only a hollow absence, like the weight of his body had been drained away. He couldn't lift his head. He couldn't twitch his fingers. He couldn't even turn to look around.
Only his eyes moved, sluggish and glassy.
Panic stirred beneath his ribs, not as a storm, but as a slow, sinking stone.
His breath caught in his throat.
Why couldn't he move?
What happened?
The memories were fragmented — like trying to grasp smoke.
He had seen something. Someone. Then, darkness.
No reaction time. No struggle. No warning.
There had been overwhelming force — he didn't understand how, but the moment it hit him, the world had simply vanished.
His vision adjusted. The ceiling above was carved into sharp points, jagged and natural. Streaks of faint light pulsed through glowing veins in the stone, casting dim patterns across the rough cavern wall. It wasn't the usual part of the cavern. No — he knew this place.
They were at the spike.
That immense obsidian pillar that rose endlessly into the abyss above — a monument that he had history with. Onr of his places of comfort. But before could could proceed anything.
"You're awake."
The voice came softly, as if not to disturb the cavern's brooding hush.
Vergil's eyes shifted — the only part of him that still obeyed.
Luminare.
She sat just a few meters away, cross-legged atop a flat slab of stone. Her silver-white hair flowed over her shoulders like silk, faintly illuminated by the weak light from the spike's base. One hand rested on her lap, the other loosely held a piece of bone — or was it crystal? — idly tracing runes into the dust beside her.
Her gaze wasn't on him. She stared at the ceiling, eyes unfocused, as if seeing through the stone.
"It will only last a few minutes," she said again, her voice patient. Calm. Almost indifferent.
Vergil wanted to ask what she had done to him.
Wanted to ask why she had attacked him.
But his lips would not part.
He could only listen.
Her eyes closed. Her voice dropped into something softer. Measured.
"...But should I tell you a story?" she asked, not waiting for an answer.
The faint hum of the spike pulsed once. Then fell quiet again.
And she began.
"Once upon a time," Luminare whispered, "there was an angel."
Her voice was hollow. Not sad — just empty, stripped of illusion or decoration.
"She was cold. Not cruel — just… unfeeling. Although most angels are born without emotions. The angel was different. The kind that others called monster not because of what she did, but because of what she didn't feel. The other angels hated her for it."
Her eyes opened slowly, but she still didn't look at him.
"She didn't cry when her kin were slaughtered in war. She didn't rejoice when they won a battle. She didn't smile when the sun rose. Didn't pray. Didn't love."
Vergil watched her face — its perfect stillness. There was something so distant in her expression, like she wasn't in the room at all.
"So they turned on her," she continued. "They called her a failure. A defect. Behind her back. The never dared say it out loud. And when they went to war against the lower realms… they made sure she was sent with them. Alone."
Her hand stopped moving.
"They betrayed her there. Struck her down. Tore off her wings one by one. But they didn't kill her. They couldn't. She survived. And she ran."
The silence that followed was thick.
Vergil felt a pressure building in his chest — not fear, not exactly, but a deep, suffocating unease. Like the walls of the cavern were leaning closer.
"She fell from the sky like a star," Luminare murmured. "Bleeding. Dying. And she burrowed into the earth. Deep into the earth. As far from the heavens as she could go."
Her fingers resumed tracing the rune, but slower now. The shape had changed — less precise, more like a spiral.
"She couldn't go home. She was hunted. Her body wouldn't heal — the wounds were too deep, too sacred, too cursed. She knew she would die eventually, but slowly. Painfully. Every breath was agony."
Vergil's eyes stayed locked on her.
This story was real.
It was her.
Luminare's voice became softer, almost inaudible.
"She was too scared to kill herself."
A pause. The spike pulsed again.
"She had the lifespan of a god. That's the curse of our kind. We don't die easily. So she did what she could."
"She carved an array — something no one else would ever think of. A space-time barrier. A distortion field. To isolate herself from the world. To disappear, so they would never find her. And so that time inside it would move faster."
Vergil's pulse slowed. He understood what she meant now.
She had trapped herself in a space where time passed differently — not to escape, but to accelerate the slow crawl toward death.
"Thousands of years passed inside," Luminare said. "But not many years passed outside."
Her hands folded together.
"She waited. For death. For sleep. But…"
She looked at him then. Slowly. Her gaze heavy.
"…it never came."
There was a long silence.
Luminare stood at the base of the spike, her pale, slender frame wrapped in the tattered remnants of what had once been a gown woven from starlight. Her white hair, dulled with age and dirt, cascaded past her hips like a slow-moving waterfall.
Her wings, or what was left of them, hung limply behind her back—not broken, but mutilated, ragged bones jutting from the scars that never healed. She tilted her face upward toward the abyssal sky, a sky so devoid of light that it seemed to drink in her presence rather than reflect it.
Her lips barely parted as her eyes shimmered with reflections of distant stars long since dead.
Vergil remained silent, unmoving. He couldn't speak. Not here. Not now. The weight of her presence, the weight of what he knew was coming, held him like shackles. He could only look at her. He knew very well who she was talking about.
Luminare gently lifted her hand and extended it toward the spike, her fingers brushing its obsidian surface. Her fingertips trailed down its smooth, ancient surface as if it were an old companion, an altar, or perhaps a grave.
"However the angel felt something she had never felt before in her time above." she whispered slowly, her voice fragile yet echoing through the cavern. "The thing called Freedom. Not living up to the expectations of others, or in fear of being betrayed."
Her hand fell to her side, trembling slightly. She looked over her shoulder at Vergil, her expression softening with a fragile sort of joy.
"She enjoyed life down here," she said, her voice taking on a wistful tone. "She ate, even though she didn't need to. She practiced the violin she kept as a keepsake , even though there was no one to listen to her music, She didn't have to fight anymore. Not for anyone else. "
She took a few steps forward, each one echoing across the ruined stone floor. There was no elegance to her movement, just weariness—the kind only a being who had lived for millennia could possess. She walked not as an angel, not even as a warrior, but as a mother nearing the end of a road paved in silence and sorrow.
"However," she continued, voice cracking slightly, "after a thousand years of this… she became lonely. The only one she spoke to was a spear."
Luminare glanced to the side where the ancient weapon lay, a testament to madness and solitude. She smiled faintly at it, as one might smile at an old pet or a fading memory.
"She couldn't fly out. Her wings were ripped."
She slowly lifted what remained of her right wing, and it crumbled slightly under her own strength. It dropped back with a dull thud, lifeless.
"She couldn't regenerate. Her soul was damaged. Her body… was decaying."
Her hand hovered over her abdomen, fingers brushing against the fabric of her cloak where the void within her chest lay hidden.
"The next three thousand years… they passed. She suffered. Silently. She went mad, once or twice. Maybe more. But she always came back. Always returned to herself."
She stopped and closed her eyes. Her voice becoming quieter.
"Ultimately, she knew she was near her life's end. And she was glad."
Vergil's hand twitched, his gaze unwavering.
"Then," she said, voice tinged with something like awe, "a boy came from the heaven above. He struck the spike."
Her fingers gripped the spike again, and her lips curled upward in a small, genuine smile.
"He struggled to live. Struggled to survive. The angel watched him from afar. He was desperate. And that… moved her. He lived."
She turned toward Vergil fully now, walking closer. Her steps were unhurried, deliberate, her torn robes dragging across the stone.
"But she realized he was not a man. He was a devil. But she didn't care. She took him in anyway."
Her arms opened as if embracing the memory.
"Not as a friend. Not as a comrade. But as a son. The angel… she wanted a family. The kind she denied long ago. They laughed. Ate together. Sang. She taught him the common language. "
Tears welled up in her eyes but never fell. She blinked them away.
"The angel wanted that life to continue. But her time… was ending. She had little left. She didn't want him to be alone."
She turned, walking slowly toward the center of the ruins. As she did, symbols carved into the walls and floors began to glow, ancient glyphs that pulsed with divine resonance.
"So she created a way to be with him. Forever."
Luminare stepped into the center of the Array. Its light began to rise around her, brushing her feet, her waist, her shoulders.
"The Heaven Refining Array," she murmured as she lowered herself into a sitting position, folding her legs beneath her with surprising grace. The array responded to her presence, growing brighter. More alive.
Vergil watched, frozen. He couldn't move.
"You know, Vergil," she said, her voice suddenly much softer, "I can't bear the thought of being separated from you. So I'll stay with you. As your new arm."
Her hand gripped the edge of her cloak and slowly lifted it. Beneath, the truth was revealed. He wanted her to stop. But his mouth wouldn't move
A massive hole lay in her chest—her flesh decayed, her ribs exposed. In the center rested a fragile core, glowing faintly blue and white. Cracks spiderwebbed across it, pulsing weakly with each breath she took.
"My lifespan has ended," she said, her voice clear, unwavering. "My soul, or what's left of it, is right here. Just like you, my son—we both have holes in our chest. But mine cannot be closed."
Vergil's eyes trembled. He didn't flinch. Didn't cry. He only looked at her, his entire body tense, his jaw clenched with emotion.
She looked down at the core, then back up to him with a smile that was both radiant and broken.
Then, suddenly, her face changed. A dark shadow passed over it. Her lips pressed together. Her eyes narrowed.
"I want to ask you for a favor," she said coldly. "Not as your mother, but as the title given to me by the angel. The Angel of Death, Luminare. If you ever see my sister…"
Her voice dropped lower, darker.
"Brutalize her in the worst way imaginable. And don't let her rest in peace."
Vergil's eyes widened slightly. His left eye—the Serpent Split—glowed, observing her. There was no ripple in its gaze.
She wasn't lying.
And Vergil understood.
She stepped forward one last time and embraced him. Her arms wrapped around him tightly, trembling. She pulled her forehead to his, her breath warm against his skin.
"So go," she whispered, "climb higher. As you said you would. Make new friends. Laugh again. Don't look back."
But his eye was bleeding.
From his left eye, a thick, red liquid streamed down his cheek. Not blood, not tears. Something in between. Scarlet and sacred.
He saw her emotions:
Regret. Happiness. Longing. Vengeance. Sorrow. Love.
Her soul screamed those feelings into his. The pain he felt could not be explained. His mind an utter mess.
"With my abilities, you can escape this place," she said softly.
Then, after a moment of silence:
"But when I become your arm, my divine energy will reject your demonic one. You will explode. You will die."
Vergil's breath hitched.
"But my divine energy will hold you together. It will keep you alive."
She smiled again, a smile full of pain and love.
"So struggle. And keep moving forward. Do not cry. I will always be there. To comfort you."
She turned from him then. Slowly. Her steps had no hesitation now. She returned to the center of the array, her robe beginning to glow, threads unraveling into strands of light.
And then, without shame, she removed her clothes—each piece falling to the glowing floor, revealing the decay beneath. But she did not cower. There was no embarrassment, only dignity.
Her final prayer rang out through the ruins:
"Heaven and Earth, refine this body of mine into an arm, capable of shaking the earth and piercing through the heavens."
The array surged upward, glyphs igniting in a blinding sequence.
"Fuse everything into it. My broken body and. Even my soul."
The ruins shook. The spike glowed with celestial energy. A blinding white light erupted, trying to pierce the abyss above—but was blocked. Contained. Sealed beneath the Space-Time Array that protected this sacred place from the eyes of the world.
And Vergil, still unmoving, bore silent witness to the beginning of his mother's end.
And her eternal gift.
Vergil closed his eyes.
He could feel it—his body stirring, aching, burning, but very much alive. A strange sensation, as if his soul had just been stitched back together, thread by trembling thread. The light had been blinding, a sea of white consuming his senses. Time lost meaning in that ocean of radiance. Seconds felt like eternities. His body floated in it, suspended, as if caught between death and rebirth.
Then it ended.
The light flickered once more and finally dimmed, withdrawing like a retreating tide. His vision began to return in muted colors, grey shadows reforming into tangible outlines. Where the spike had once pierced his body—an instrument of execution, a l monument of demonic wrath—only silence remained, the once tall spike had shattered, broken into a scattering of glowing shards, hovering breifly before fading into the nothing like the dying embers of a flame
But something remained.
Floating before him was what looked like an arm. Mechanical, not in the crude sense of gears and wires, but in a divine, almost celestial way—elegantly smooth and coldly beautiful. The white plating shimmered with faint pulses of energy, and on its outer shell bloomed a tattoo. A flower—no, not just any flower.
A blue spider lily.
Its petals curved like strands of fate themselves, ominous and delicate. A symbol of death. Of rebirth. Of endings that lead to beginnings. The flower had existed in his previous world.
The rest of the arm was silver-white, almost ethereal, like it had been forged not of metal, but of starlight frozen in form. It hovered there silently, watching him, sensing him, as if waiting for his recognition.
Vergil staggered forward, the weight of his body still unfamiliar. His fingers trembled as he reached out—not to grasp it, but simply to see if it was real.
The arm reacted.
In an instant, it surged forward. A streak of silver lightning across the space between them. The socket at the base of the mechanical limb connected to Vergil's mangled torso with a loud, magnetic snap. He screamed. It wasn't just pain—it was transformation. Something was being rewritten in the deepest layers of his existence.
The arm began to reshape itself, fusing into him, altering tissue and soul alike.
Then his head exploded.
There was no time to process it—one second, he was screaming, the next, there was only darkness and a strange floating sensation. A noise followed—whirring, grinding, like a divine machine restarting in the aftermath of a system crash.
[User has gained ??? Divine Energy]
[Divine Energy is colliding with the demonic energy in the left eye]
[WARNING: Energetic instability detected]
[Regeneration Factor has been gained from the Right arm]
[Absorbing all skills related to regeneration]
[Users head is being restored]