Seven advanced with measured steps into the fractured sanctuary. The rain had turned into a sticky mist, mixed with greasy ash and crimson reflections. The marble beneath his boots was webbed with luminescent fissures, like feverish veins on the verge of rupturing, converging toward a central point. Around him, diaphanous silhouettes drifted in the air—souls torn from their vessels whose brilliance was inexorably fading, sucked into an invisible maelstrom.
In the spiritual cacophony that filled the sanctuary, Seven did not perceive mere anonymous whispers. He recognized voices. Faces distorted by agony. Merchants from the central square of Eryndor, comrades glimpsed at the turn of an alley, residents whose gaze he had met every morning. Their broken murmurs demanded neither pity nor mercy: they howled for raw vengeance. And this lament only hardened the stone-cold stillness in his chest.
In the midst of this charnel house, a vision brought his advance to a dead stop.
Kael.
She was suspended in the center of the arena, chained to massive black steel pylons that rumbled under the tension of complex heresies. Her lacerated body, stained with grime and dark oozing wounds, was threaded with filaments of pure energy—residues of the sacrificed souls—that coiled around her limbs like parasites. Her blood drained slowly, beading along her wrists to fall into a translucent stone receptacle engraved with primordial runes. The scarlet fluid and the essence of the deceased amalgamated within it with a sickening wet splash, pulsating like an artificial and deformed heart.
"Next time... she'll be the one."
The last words of Malakiel during their encounter echoed in Seven's mind. The fallen general had kept his promise.
Kael opened her eyes with difficulty, her left eyelid split and bloodied. Her pupils trembled as they met Seven's. A weak, almost imperceptible grimace stretched her chapped lips. She was still breathing.
Seven asked no questions. He did not hesitate for a fraction of a second. His irises turned lapis lazuli and he lunged forward, his onyx chains shooting from his forearms like black vipers, ready to pulverize the containment pylons.
But they never reached their target.
A cataclysmic gravitational pressure slammed down on the arena. The air itself seemed to solidify. Seven's chains were crushed against the ground in a deafening shock that pulverized the marble, and he felt his own knees crack under an unbearable weight. His breath caught, coughing up a trickle of bitter bile, he raised his head.
The mist parted, torn by an aura of absolute coldness.
Malakiel stood there.
The fallen general's dark armor absorbed the dim light of the sanctuary. On his breastplate, the mark of the Void pulsed to the same rhythm as Kael's blood in the receptacle.
"You have finally arrived, Seven," resonated Malakiel's deep, metallic voice, without him making the slightest movement to attack.
The young angel clenched his jaw, driving his legs into the ground to resist the crushing zone. His anchoring in the present was total; no hesitation, no doubt clouded his vision.
"Free her. Immediately."
"It is not a question of will," Malakiel replied with a troubling weariness. "What you see is only a consequence. A crude, artificial method to compensate for your own refusal. When I offered you to join us, you looked away. You refused to play your part to open the Gate."
Malakiel stepped forward with a heavy tread, pointing a slow gesture at the bloody arena.
"Thousands of innocents from Eryndor consumed to simulate your key, and your protégé broken to serve as their receptacle. It is your refusal that forced the Council to act. Their blood covers your hands as much as mine."
Malakiel's accusations slid off Seven without leaving the slightest nick. Not a shadow of guilt paralyzed his movements. Around him, the voices of the souls of Eryndor were not accusing Seven: they were demanding justice. He knew exactly who he was, where he stood, and what he had to accomplish.
"Your speeches do not interest me, Malakiel," spat Seven, standing back up inch by inch against the crushing gravity, Aether crackling wildly around his fists. "You butchered my people. You touched Kael. There is no grand design or fatality in what you do... only one more executioner to erase."
An infinitely bitter smile stretched Malakiel's lips.
"You are blind to what surrounds you... But your feelings do not matter. The world does not care about your certainties."
The rumble of thunder intensified outside. Above them, Kael's chains howled in a grinding of martyred metal. The receptacle began to radiate a blinding violet glow. The ritual was entering its terminal phase. Malakiel's aura exploded, sweeping away the last wandering souls, and the gravitational pressure abruptly vanished, replaced by a vortex of suction drawn toward the center of the room.
Kael groaned in pain, her body convulsing, lifted by the magical currents.
Seven lunged again, pure hatred guiding his onyx blade, ready to slice the fallen general. But Malakiel did not take a guard stance. He simply spread his arms, welcoming the assault with a terrifying serenity.
"The blood, the souls of Eryndor, and her flesh were only the fuel," murmured Malakiel, his voice piercing the din of the magical storm. "Everything was ready. It only lacked a spark."
A meter away from Malakiel, Seven was stopped dead. The Aether in his own body began to resonate uncontrollably with the receptacle. The runes on the ground lit up with a vibrant azure blue, perfectly mirroring the energetic signature of his being down to the millimeter.
His eyes wide, Seven understood the atrocious trap he had just thrown himself into. By coming to save Kael and avenge Eryndor, he had brought the final element to the ritual.
"It only needed your core," Malakiel concluded.
***
Several hundred meters away, on the western flank of the city, the air was nothing more than a continuous howl.
The battlefield reeked of acid, charred flesh, and superheated ozone. Abezethibou, the Scourge, stepped back heavily, crushing debris beneath his soot-covered boots. His left shoulder was now nothing but a crater of necrosed and smoking flesh, liquefied by Nicole's poisons. His lower wings hung in shreds of carbonized tar, the inoculated neurotoxin stifling the auto-regeneration of his spiritual body.
Yet, the demon's monstrosity remained overwhelming. With a sharp flick of his remaining arm, he projected a beam of corrupted energy that pulverized the torso of an archangel of Eden attempting a sneak attack from behind. The man did not even have time to scream: his ribcage exploded in a spray of blood and bone splinters that spattered the surrounding ruins.
Liah observed the carnage from the top of a twisted steel beam, her breath short, wiping away the blood dripping from her brow with the back of her sleeve. Her mind was racing. Abezethibou was crippled by Nicole, diminished... but in terms of brute power, he still dominated her sixty percent to forty. A frontal clash would mean her immediate decapitation. She had to play for time, use technique and the terrain.
— *Arcanum: Phantasma Echos!*
Liah violently struck the guards of her daggers against each other. The metallic clash produced fed back into her Aether network and was amplified beyond reason. The sound struck the collapsed concrete walls, multiplying into dozens of sonic signatures perfectly identical to her own.
Abezethibou pivoted sharply, his lavender eyes blurred by the cacophony.
"Parlor tricks," the Scourge growled.
Liah took advantage of this micro-second of distraction. She dropped into a dive, cleaving the air with absolute discretion.
"Lieutenant Vance! Now!"
On the ground, a bloodied Awakened of the Legion, his jaw half-broken, slammed his two sticky palms against the cement.
— *Module: Stone Prison!*
Spikes of rock violently erupted from the ground, crisscrossing around the Scourge to block his footing. It was not enough to wound a god, but enough to hinder his center of gravity. Liah landed on one of the rock points and vibrated the blade of her dagger at an inaudible frequency.
— *Arcanum: Frequentia Absoluta!*
The air around the steel warped under the effect of molecular friction. Liah brought her dagger down, aiming for the junction of the demon's nape. But Abezethibou, in a surge of brute rage, unleashed a shockwave from his aura. The rock cage exploded into a thousand deadly projectiles. A shard of stone struck Liah's cheek, slicing her flesh, and the violence of the wave deflected her trajectory. Her blade only carved deeply into the Scourge's cheek, tearing away a chunk of shadowy skin that sublimated into black smoke.
Before she could retreat, Abezethibou's right hand shot out. His claws sank into Liah's shoulder with a dull thud of tearing flesh, and he hoisted her up like a rag doll.
"You are fast, little fly," spat Abezethibou, his face dripping with shadowy blood.
He slammed her violently against the ground. The impact shattered two of her ribs with an audible crack and emptied her lungs. Before she could gather her daggers, the demon raised his heavy steel boot to crush her skull.
— *Arcanum: Sonitus Impulsus!*
Liah roared, releasing a concentrated vocal shockwave directly under the Scourge's sole. The sonic explosion repelled Abezethibou's foot and pulverized the concrete within a three-meter radius, allowing the young girl to roll to the side, coughing up a spray of hemoglobin.
She sat up painfully, her left arm hanging limp, her body racked with excruciating pain. *Nicole...* Liah thought, her vision blurring from the blood loss. *Nicole had to fight this monster? She must be of terrifying power to have managed to mutilate him this much...*
Abezethibou gave her no respite. He extended two bloodstained fingers toward her.
— *Haeresis: Hastae Averni.*
Three lances of pure shadow cleaved the space at hypersonic speed. Liah used the reverberation of sound on the hot air to read their trajectories. She dodged the first by dropping to her flank, deflected the second with the edge of her vibrating dagger, but the third pierced her right thigh straight through.
A howl of pure agony escaped her. She collapsed in the bloody dust, unable to put weight on her leg.
Two Awakened of the Legion immediately threw themselves in front of her, deploying an energy shield.
"We've got you covered, Miss Liah!"
Abezethibou didn't even bother to look at them. With a simple backhand:
— *Haeresis: Dissolutio.*
A wave of decomposition swept over the two men. Their shields shattered, then their skin, muscles, and bones dissolved in a fraction of a second, reducing them to two puddles of smoking organic mush on the concrete.
Liah gritted her teeth until her molars nearly cracked. They were all dying to buy her seconds. She closed her eyes, channeling all of her remaining Aether, making every atom of air around the battlefield sing.
— *Arcanum: Resonantia Speculum!*
She struck the ground with her palm. An invisible sonic bell slammed down on Abezethibou. Inside the prism, the demon's heart rate, the coursing of his blood, and the vibrations of his meridians were amplified a million times. The Scourge unleashed a roar of madness, clutching his head with both hands as his eardrums and cerebral vessels burst under the resonance of his own body.
Liah lunged, almost crawling, pushing off her good leg to deliver the killing blow.
But the pride of a King of Hell was bottomless.
In a fit of brute insanity, Abezethibou detonated the entirety of his residual aura without trying to control it. The gravitational shockwave pulverized the sonic prism and swept Liah away.
Her body was hurled through the perimeter wall of a ruined building. She crashed through two reinforced concrete partitions before rolling into the debris. Her breathing was nothing more than a hoarse, bloody wheeze. Her arms trembled, unable to support her own weight.
She had grown stronger. She had fought with surgical intelligence. Yet, the reality was one of absolute cruelty: it wasn't enough.
Abezethibou breached the hole in the wall with a heavy step, his jaw dripping with black bile. His demonic aura crushed the rubble. He stopped above her, his right hand gathering a sphere of pure darkness.
"You were an acceptable diversion, little one," he spat with cold hatred. "But your final note ends here."
The shockwave of a gravitational attack struck her chest, sinking her even deeper into the rubble. The pain tore her consciousness apart. And in this growing gloom, a vision forced itself upon her: Nils's broken baseball bat, abandoned in a puddle of black blood. Nils, whose thorax had been pierced without hesitation by this same demon, his entrails torn by the monstrosities before Seven's eyes.
As Abezethibou's hand descended to perforate her heart, Liah dug her nails into the cement.
And under the Scourge's astounded gaze, she pushed herself up. Slowly. Vertebrae cracking, blood running down her chin.
Her breath ragged, but her gaze anchored in the demon's lavender eyes, she murmured:
"It has to be me."
Abezethibou twisted his face into a mocking sneer.
"Really? And why is that, little worm?"
"Because Seven won't be able to," she spat, coughing up a blood clot. "Not against you. If he crosses paths with you... he will be blinded by rage. He will destroy himself. Because you killed Nils."
The demon frowned, searching the depths of his corrupted mind. Then a raucous sneer escaped his lips.
"Nils? Who is this Nils? If I have no memory of him, he must have been nothing more than an insect crushed under my heels among so many others."
A sad smile, devoid of the slightest hatred, stretched Liah's bloodied lips.
"It's always like that with monsters..." she breathed. "To you, Nils was nobody. To me, he was just a resident of Eryndor... But to Seven, he was someone dear. And you don't even remember him after executing him."
She took a deep breath. Around her, silence took over. The rain, the crackling of the fire, the death rattles of the dying... everything faded away.
"To tell the truth," Liah resumed, staring at the monster, "I don't hold a grudge against you. Whether for your massacres, the destruction of this city, or even Nils's death... I feel no hatred toward you. It is your nature to defile everything. But you must still die here... by my hands."
Abezethibou's face contorted under flouted divine fury.
"That phrase belongs only to the powerful, brat! And you clearly are not one of them!"
The demon swooped down on her, his black talon extended to pierce her chest.
***
*A memory suddenly slipped into Liah's mind.*
*The Garden of Breaths, in Eden.*
*Liah was sprawled out full length on the sacralized marble, her body covered in scratches and contusions, her lungs burning. A few meters away, Barachiel stood with his hands in his pockets, his jersey slightly frayed at the right shoulder—the minute proof that an attack had grazed him.*
*The Archangel of Lightning looked down at the young girl with a carnivorous smile.*
*"Well then... you managed to touch my jersey, kid," Barachiel chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. "No flattery, that's a hell of a wild card you've forged for yourself there. This compression of Aether through frequencies... if you manage to hold it for more than three seconds without blowing out your meridians, even the big shots of Hell are going to sweat."*
*Barachiel gave her a sparkling wink.*
*"Save it for the moment when you have no other choice. When you need to shut a monster's mouth."*
***
Liah opened her eyes again.
She did not try to dodge Abezethibou's charge. She harmonized the entirety of her vital frequency with the celestial Aether dormant in her meridians.
— *Arcanum Caelestis: Symphonia Valkyria.*
A flash of blinding purity tore through the gloom of the sanctuary.
A sonic wave compressed to the extreme, harder than primordial diamond, shot through space. With the sound of shattered crystal followed by a spurt of thick, black blood, Abezethibou's right arm was blown to pieces, cleanly severed at the shoulder before his talon could even touch Liah's clothing.
The Scourge howled a sacrilegious insult, recoiling brutally as he clutched his smoking stump from which a sticky fluid gushed.
"Wh... What?!"
Around Liah, the Aether no longer dissipated: it vibrated at a sovereign frequency.
Air, saturated with sound, condensed into fluid, silver armor plating with amethyst hues, hugging the lines of her body without restricting her movements. On her back, the compression of sonic frequencies sculpted two majestic wings, sharp as razor blades, crackling with celestial energy. Her freed hair floated in an altered gravitational field, and her eyes shone with an absolute azure blue.
She was no longer holding simple daggers. In her hands stood a spear of sonic light, its tip spinning on itself at a hyper-frequential speed, capable of decomposing matter by mere proximity.
Liah stared at Abezethibou, her voice now resonating with a celestial harmony, amplified by the resonance of her armor.
"I told you that you would die by my hands."