The skies over the mortal world cracked. Clouds curdled into black spirals, thunder raged without lightning, and a crimson veil bled across the horizon. The air itself tasted of iron, thick with dread. Cities trembled, rivers boiled, and nations were already whispering of the end. The mortals, fragile and fleeting, could not understand what truly approached. But the angels, scattered across dimensions, felt it — the arrival of one who embodied hopelessness itself.
Metatron descended through the storm. His wings, radiant yet veiled in sorrow, parted the heavens. His presence was not merely light; it was judgment carried upon the currents of eternity. He bore no crown, no arrogance, only the authority of one who once stood closest to the voice of God.
He touched the soil of a mortal land — no particular kingdom, no chosen empire, just a nation unfortunate enough to become the stage of something beyond their comprehension. The streets were drowned in screams. Fire fell from the heavens like broken stars. Buildings crumbled into ash as shadows writhed between them.
And in the heart of this chaos stood Pythius.
He was not tall in a mortal sense, nor vast in angelic splendor. He was wrong. A thing that seemed to defy the very possibility of form. His shape twisted, folding into itself like a thousand broken mirrors. Faces screamed across his body only to dissolve into flesh again. Limbs jutted out and retreated like snakes shedding skin. His presence bled despair into the atmosphere; even those too far to see him dropped to their knees, weeping, unable to rise.
"You have arrived," Pythius said, his voice a thousand overlapping tones, some childlike, some ancient, some nothing more than sobbing. "Finally. I was waiting."
The earth itself seemed to recoil from his words.
Metatron's hand rested on the hilt of his blade — the Sword of Silence, a weapon that did not sing but smothered. Its edge bore no gleam. It absorbed light, devouring sound, making the very air quieter around it. He drew it slowly, the void of the weapon contrasting the fury of the storm.
"You call yourself hope," Pythius hissed, tendrils of shadow lashing around him, striking stone and melting it to dust. "But hope is just a word. A sound the weak cling to when nothing else remains. The cutest part? Mortals pointing their toys — their rifles, their bombs — at me. They fire, thinking they matter. They do not know what angels are. Infinite. Extradimensional. Transcendental. I am not simply Pythius. I am hopelessness incarnate. I made the first angel weep. I birthed the concept of suicide. And I am the most vile wretch that Hell could spit forth."
His laughter split into screams, then into sobs, then into silence.
He slithered closer, his form flickering, now like a man, now like a serpent, now like a centipede with a thousand gnashing maws. "And do you know why? Because of them." His claw gestured to the cowering humans. "Because your God made these insects in His own image. Do you see the insult? It is like a policeman standing before a truck. The truck halts not because the officer's body can withstand it, but because behind him stands authority — government, law, power. Humans hold no such authority over us. They are nothing. And yet we were told to serve them."
Metatron's gaze did not waver. His wings flickered with restrained fury, feathers shifting like blades of light. "Enough. Your words are poison. Angels cannot war with God, so you prey upon His creation. But I am here to protect it."
Pythius's laughter became thunder. "Protect it? Here? If we fight here, the world will be ash before our blows finish landing. You cannot face me without unraveling the threads of reality itself."
Metatron smiled faintly, the only light in a place drowning in shadow. "Who said we fight here?"
In a heartbeat, he lunged. His hand pressed against Pythius's warped chest, channeling energy through sigils older than stars. Teleportation seals ignited, glowing like a miniature cosmos. The plan was simple — to wrench Pythius away from this fragile mortal soil and cast him into the void between realms.
But Pythius only laughed. His body melted, collapsing into an abomination. Segments of a colossal centipede burst forth, hundreds of legs slamming into the ground, splitting the crust of the earth. Fangs longer than spears dripped black venom. His eyes multiplied into dozens, then hundreds, each an abyss swirling with faces screaming from the void.
The teleportation shattered like glass.
"Did you think I would let you choose the battlefield?" Pythius roared. "This land will be my canvas."
The first clash came swift. Metatron's blade cleaved down, its silence cutting not just flesh but concept — erasing the sound of Pythius's shriek. But where one limb fell, two more grew. The centipede's coils wrapped around skyscrapers, tearing them like paper. Explosions painted the night sky as military jets, foolish in their defiance, unleashed their arsenal. Yet their missiles disintegrated midair, their pilots choking on despair until their screams became part of Pythius's chorus.
Metatron struck again, wings blazing with divine resonance. Each feather became a lance of light, piercing through segments of the beast. Cities crumbled in the wake of their struggle. The land cracked open, swallowing rivers whole. Millions cried out, but their voices were lost beneath the duel of titans.
For days — or what felt like days — the battle spread. Across one country, then bleeding into another. Nations ceased to matter; borders burned away. Every strike leveled districts, every counter obliterated armies. Mortals, once so arrogant in their dominion, now realized how fragile their world truly was when angels warred.
Yet still, Pythius grew stronger.
From his sundered body spilled something darker than shadow — an essence of despair that consumed hope itself. When it touched the living, their eyes dulled, their hearts ceased to beat, not from wounds but from surrender. When it touched the angels, their wings withered, their hymns faltered. Even the princes of Hell watching from afar felt a shiver, as though they gazed upon a mirror showing their inevitable defeat.
Finally, Metatron's patience ended. He summoned the Sword of Silence to its fullest glory. The weapon pulsed once, and the world stilled. For a moment, there was no sound — no storm, no screams, not even the beat of Metatron's heart. He swung, and the blade severed Pythius in half, slicing through dimensions themselves.
The ground collapsed. Cities shattered. And for a fleeting second, silence reigned.
But silence cannot kill hopelessness.
The halves of Pythius's body writhed, melting into a tide of black ichor. From the abyss rose something new — something far worse.
His form stretched upward, no longer centipede nor man but a singularity clothed in flesh. A being beyond fear, beyond comprehension. His very shape seemed to erase itself from the mind, so that mortals who glimpsed him gouged out their own eyes to forget. His presence devoured the concept of light itself, plunging the battlefield into a sphere of pure darkness two hundred meters wide.
Metatron staggered. His sword slipped from his grip.
This was not merely power. This was the erasure of meaning.
Within that blackness, hope did not exist. The idea itself — the word, the feeling, the dream — was gone. Every angel who bore witness despaired. Choirs of Heaven fell silent, their hymns cracking. Even Metatron, who had stood closest to God, felt his strength falter. His wings drooped, his voice failed.
Pythius rose, his voice no longer sound but thought pressed directly into the mind: Do you see? This is why I command legions. I am not a warrior. I am inevitability. I am the gravity that pulls every soul into despair. And even you, Metatron, cannot resist.
All around, the other Princes of Hell unleashed their terrors. Asmodeus bathed entire regions in flame, cities writhing as their inhabitants clawed at one another in lust and madness. Azarel cloaked nations in perpetual night, shadows devouring entire armies. Mammon split vaults and treasuries, corrupting kings into beasts of greed. Each prince was a catastrophe. But Pythius… Pythius was the end of meaning itself.
Metatron's vision blurred. His knees buckled. He could no longer feel the Sword of Silence in his hand. The battlefield had become void. The mortals screamed, but he could not hear them. Even his own heartbeat seemed to fade.
Pythius leaned closer, his face a horror without symmetry, his breath the stench of endless graves. Angels cry when I arrive. They do not fight. They do not resist. They weep. You will too.
Metatron tried to rise. His hand clawed toward his fallen blade. But when his fingers brushed its hilt, he realized something horrifying — the sword, like hope, no longer existed in this darkness.
He was alone.
And before him stood the embodiment of hopelessness, ascendant, unchallenged, eternal.