Prologue: The Fall of Faith
The air above the capital of Valoria did not smell of smoke; it reeked of iron, blood, and brimstone. For four days, the walls had been a line of desperate, failing light.
"Stand still! Do not let them breach the gate!" The command, once a roar of authority, was now a strained, ragged plea.
More and more demons, from the towering, horned behemoths to the swift, snarling imps, poured into the breach zones. The human soldiers' armor was dented, their blades chipped, and their stamina was a forgotten luxury. Fatigue was a heavy shroud, yet their eyes remained fixed on the sky, a silent, ceaseless prayer offered to the divine patron of humanity. Only their unwavering faith in the Goddess Yourina kept their line from crumbling entirely.
"Do not lose your faith! She has not abandoned us!"
A man in a white, mud-splattered robe, identified by the gold sunburst amulet of the Temple of Light, scrambled across the rubble. He was Cleric Theron, the last priest left with the front line. His hands, usually clasped in prayer, now gripped a heavy mace, and his voice was raw. He was the brittle spine of hope holding the defense together.
Arrows streaked like dark rain, and spells blasts of sickly green and infernal purple slammed against the stone bastions. Valoria's defense was a dying ember. The constant, earth-shaking thump of siege machines and the high-pitched shriek of the lesser demons were a symphony of inevitable doom.
They had been besieged too long. They were too few.
A man on the rampart, his face pale with terror, screamed. "The main gate has been breached! The portcullis is down!"
With a sound like tearing silk, the defenses gave way. Demons of every horrifying description flooded the capital's main avenue. The fighting became a desperate, close-quarters massacre. Soldiers were overwhelmed, sliced, and trampled. Cleric Theron watched in horror as his comrades were cut down, yet the defiance in their eyes was the final spark.
"For the Goddess! For Valoria!" they roared, even as the Archdevil's legions crushed them.
The war was no longer a battle; it was a furious, bloody sacrifice. It was an impossible, savage stalemate between the dying humans and the relentless demon horde. Then, the fighting abruptly changed. A brilliant, incandescent red light tore through the smog and clouds high above the world.
---
In the ethereal sphere above the material realm, the red light was the furious, divine aura of Yourina, Goddess of Humanity, locked in combat with the Archdevil, Malakar.
Yourina was a vision of radiant silver and steel, her movements those of grace and devastating power. But Malakar was cunning. He feigned exhaustion, drawing her close, and then, with a speed no god should possess, he plunged his colossal, obsidian-red blade into her side.
Yourina gasped, her divine energy sputtering. "Y-Yourina, after so many years, you remain weak!" Malakar gloated, his voice a grating whisper that echoed the emptiness of space.
"H-how?!" she cried, struggling against the paralyzing poison now spreading through her essence. She looked at the Archdevil's weapon, the blade was wrong. The vibrant red of Malakar's usual hellfire essence dissolved, replaced by a terrifying, sterile monochrome. White runes of holy power and black runes of oblivion crawled across the surface of the sword.
Impossible. It was a weapon forged not in hell, but in heaven, modified by a forbidden blend of sacred and profane magic.
"I see... a traitor..." The thought ripped through Yourina, sharper than the blade in her ribs. It wasn't the pain of the wound that broke her; it was the betrayal by one of her own kind, one of the divine council, that had engineered this weapon and supplied it to her ultimate enemy.
Her godly composure shattered. Grief, rage, and profound disappointment made her shake. I must warn the others! she screamed internally.
Gathering her remaining strength, Yourina tried to execute an emergency inter-dimensional teleport. But she couldn't separate herself from the cursed sword; the runes held them anchored. Malakar's grip was iron as they were violently ripped from the battlefield and cast into the blinding vacuum of deep space.
"You think I will let you get away and raise the alarm, little Goddess?"
Yourina ceased her struggle. She inhaled the freezing, silent void, and the chaos left her. She accepted her fate. No warning could be delivered. She would die here. But not alone. She met Malakar's triumphant gaze with a fierce, burning resolve.
She began channeling the entirety of her remaining divine energy, concentrating it into a single, blinding point. The spell was forbidden: Divine Self-Annihilation.
"If I'm going down," she whispered, her voice a tremor across the cosmos, "then you are coming with me!"
Yourina locked the Archdevil to her essence, ensuring the destructive magic would consume them both. The gathered power exploded.
A light more brilliant than a thousand suns, followed by an earth-shattering BOOM, echoed through all the realms.
---
On the ground in Valoria, the sound was felt more than heard, a crushing wave of pressure that flattened the trees on the horizon. The people, soldiers and demons alike, looked up in unison, shielding their eyes from the brief, blinding supernova flash.
And then, they saw it.
A silhouette, massive and terrifyingly fast, fell through the atmosphere. The falling figure of their Goddess.
The sight broke them. It was a tangible, final image of their failure. The soldiers' last vestige of hope and faith shattered like glass. They dropped their swords.
The demons, sensing victory, needed no further command. The massacre became a rout. The eastern continent of the humans, once a bastion of light and faith, was quieted forever under the shadow of the Archdevil's conquest.