Chapter 53: Sword of Rupture, Gods! Fall Completely Into Dust!
Exactly as Rowe, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu had planned in that room long ago, the gods in the Heavens needed to be gathered, then split.
Right now, the one blocking the King of the Gods, Anu, was the very god they had already drawn out and separated.
The Sun God, Shamash.
He was the solar projection that shone upon Mesopotamia, the deity who governed light itself. Yet beyond those divine identities, he had another tie that made him different from the rest.
By blood, he was the grandfather of Gilgamesh's grandfather.
One of the rare gods who, despite being divine, could still stand on the side of humans. That was why he had answered Gilgamesh's lure and appeared here.
In the sky of the Heavens, Shamash rode a golden chariot and looked down upon the temple of the gods.
His figure was tall and imposing. Golden scales covered his body, golden hair burned like dawn, and he manifested as a man crowned with a sun like diadem, seated upon the throne of his radiant chariot. Beneath that crown, his eyes glowed crimson and gold.
"King of the Gods, Anu, our common Father of all gods. You who ceased managing the myriad phenomena long ago should have known the moment you stepped out of the highest temple that the end of the Age of Gods is inevitable."
Shamash's gaze did not waver.
Anu said nothing. He only sat upon the throne of the God King, fingers tight on the scepter that governed the Heavens.
Shamash was right. Long, long ago, Anu had retreated into the highest temple and handed governance of Heaven and Earth to his grandson, Marduk.
"Marduk is already dead, Brother Shamash. You cannot possibly not know." Ishtar's true body spoke beside Anu, her voice sharp as a thrown blade. "He fell in battle against the primordial Mother of Chaos, Tiamat."
"Of course I know." Shamash glanced at his so called sister.
Ishtar's true body, the Venus that shone beside the Sun, had been born from the Moon Elder, Nanna, just as Shamash had.
"But Ishtar, since you acknowledge Anu as your biological father, you are no longer of the same origin as I am," Shamash said. "I am not your brother."
Father of all gods was an authority, a title.
Biological father was something else entirely.
"You…" Ishtar paused, then bristled. "What is wrong with me doing that? You and Father refuse to contend for authority, so what is wrong with me acknowledging the Father God as my biological father and preserving the glory I deserve?"
"Nothing wrong. And yet terribly wrong." Shamash did not look at her again.
In this timeline, there were none of the tangled dramas of older myths. The Sun God's attitude toward his former sister was distant, almost indifferent.
He did not waste another word on her. His eyes returned to Anu.
"Anu, I know what you are thinking."
Shamash lifted his gaze to the dome above.
At this instant, countless stars were manifesting across Heaven, the projections of the gods Anu had summoned.
Anu still did not speak.
Not because he lacked words, but because he had already done what he came to do.
To him, Shamash could not stop it.
"But do you know what that Sage of the human world told me?" Shamash looked at the vast star field and smiled suddenly. "He told me that the gods of the present world will someday depart, yet their traces will remain in another form."
"At least a few hundred years from now, someone will carve a code of laws in the name of light and justice."
Light poured from Shamash.
It was no longer sunlight.
It was something sharper.
Something with weight and judgment.
"I am the Sun God, the God of Radiant Daytime. And I will also be the God of Justice."
He stood from the golden chariot.
Gods naturally transcended the present world's dimension. If he could look into the future, then he could also gather his future self.
Five hundred years later, Hammurabi, King of Babylon, would proclaim a code of laws in Shamash's name.
At this moment, Shamash drew on that future, pulling its radiance and authority back into his body.
The unseen net of law spread in an instant, wrapping every direction, blotting out the boundless starlight.
The stars could no longer pour power into Anu, could no longer hold the Heavens aloft, could no longer prevent their fall.
"Brother… you…" Ishtar's true body gasped, stunned.
The King of the Gods changed expression for the third time.
Shamash only laughed, loud and free.
"Next, it is your turn, Sage Rowe!"
He had done all he needed to do.
Reality.
Before the palace of Uruk, Rowe heard Shamash's words and let out a soft breath of laughter.
Step by step, everything had reached this point.
This grand scheme built for complete death had finally arrived at its finish line.
Everyone looked up.
They felt their hearts tremble under a pressure too vast to name.
The sky collapsed.
The Heavens, that high domain floating above dimensions, drifted nearer and nearer, until at last they fell into the human realm.
First, the pale rolling clouds tore apart.
Then abyssal darkness opened, filled with drifting stars like a celestial river pouring down.
At its center stood a colossal palace. Around it loomed countless divine shadows, too grand for mortal eyes to measure, dwarfing the structure itself.
"So it has come…" Gilgamesh's face turned solemn on the Ark of Stars.
Enkidu's robe snapped in the wind.
Ishtar Rin instinctively shrank back, avoiding her true body's wrath.
Ereshkigal tightened her fists softly in the Underworld.
The divine radiance of the sky gods blazed.
The heart fire of humanity surged.
Everyone understood it.
Dragging the gods down was only the beginning.
They were no longer untouchable, but they were still gods.
Even if their power was no longer absolute.
"Blasphemers of divine authority, Sage Rowe!" Anu's voice thundered through the present world, heavy with wrath. "We will inflict divine punishment upon you!"
"Kill them! Kill them all. As long as those three die, even here in the present world, we will still rule!" Ishtar's true body hissed, her anger spilling from every syllable.
"I am Thunder and Storm."
"I am Earthquake."
"I am Pestilence."
"I am War."
"In the name of the gods, we perform miracles."
"World, perish!"
Grand voices overlapped one after another.
The gods of Heaven wielded their authorities together, without restraint.
Gales spiraled.
Mountains and seas groaned.
Meteors fell like judgment from beyond the sky.
Natural disasters piled on natural disasters, swallowing the human civilization sheltered behind Uruk's magnificent walls.
A true catastrophe.
A disaster meant to end the world.
But this was not the death Rowe wanted.
Such a death would only send him to the Underworld.
Ereshkigal would still be there.
He would still rise again.
So Rowe raised his hand.
In his eyes, the shadow of the Key of Heaven intertwined and transformed.
A pale, lucid key formed before him, white light flowing along its surface, as large as an adult's arm.
The manifested Key of Heaven.
Rowe stared at it.
The storm of disasters bore down.
And then he spoke.
"Is this Key of Heaven truly the Key of Heaven?"
Anu, even after being dragged into the present world, still towering and lofty, froze at the question.
Rowe did not wait for an answer.
"The wedge of Heaven, the Key of Heaven, and the Chains of Heaven are divine constructs of the same specification. Artifacts jointly created by you gods and embedded in the human world."
"The Key of Heaven is the core that links and sustains both the wedge of Heaven and the Chains of Heaven. That is what you told me."
"But why is the wedge of Heaven a person, and why are the Chains of Heaven a person, while the Key of Heaven alone remains an object?"
If it had not been shattered and devoured, the Key of Heaven from the start was an object, not Rowe himself.
This had always been his doubt.
And another question lay beneath it.
Why was it named Key of Heaven at all?
Names in the Age of Gods were never casual.
Divine artifacts, like deities, bore names that declared their nature.
Now, Rowe had the answer.
"The Key of Heaven was never just a key."
He reached out and gripped its crown, as though peeling away a shell.
His fingers tightened, and the pale outer layer receded like mist burned away.
What emerged in his grasp was not a key.
It was a sword.
A golden hilt.
A three section cylindrical blade carved with complex circuits.
The Key of Heaven had been a key, yes, but also the key that once stirred the chaotic world at the dawn of creation.
In other words…
"Sword of Rupture, Ea!"
The strongest Noble Phantasm Gilgamesh should have possessed had never been missing.
It had been Rowe.
The Key of Heaven was the Sword of Rupture.
Rowe was the Sword of Rupture.
It was not the gods who granted it to him. The Key chose him. The gods had been powerless to stop that choice. All they could do was disguise it as a harmless key, hoping he would never realize what he held.
Too bad.
Rowe had seen through the disguise.
He tightened his grip and raised the sword.
The three spiraling blades that embodied Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, the structure of the cosmos itself, began to rotate.
A crimson storm detonated toward the sky.
A golden line tore the world open and rose upward.
It was the same power that had annihilated tens of thousands of demonic beasts when the three had united.
Because that had always been Rowe's power.
The primordial force of the Sword of Rupture, made real by the magic power Gilgamesh and Enkidu poured into him.
Then.
As now.
Rowe looked up at the gods and smiled.
"Gods, witness the primordial beginning of creation."
"From that high sky."
"Fall completely."
Anu's expression twisted for the fourth time.
He finally understood.
The real blade had been placed at their throats from the moment they thought they were holding a key.
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