From atop the jagged ridge that overlooked the battlefield, smoke curling around their feet, the angel and demon generals stood in silent observation.
The screams of the dying carried up on the wind. The earth shook with every distant explosion, with every charged impact of spell against shield, steel against flesh. Below, the chaotic beauty of war unfolded—demons roaring through broken wards, angels lancing light through desperate defenses, mortals scrambling to hold the line with everything they had left.
General Malgareth stood with his arms crossed, the edges of his blackened armor humming with residual heat. His horned helm was tucked beneath one arm, revealing skin like volcanic glass and eyes glowing with coal-red light. His lips curled with disdain as a dying wizard launched one last defiant fireball before being cleaved in two by a howling imp.
He snorted. "You call this a plan?"
Seraphion didn't answer right away. His alabaster armor gleamed like moonlight, not a speck of blood on him. Wings folded neatly behind his back, he stood as still as a statue, eyes locked on the shrine far in the distance where the stone trembled and magic thickened like gathering storm clouds.
Malgareth sneered. "When does it begin?"
Seraphion's lips quirked into a smile. "Any time now."
Malgareth rolled his eyes, then followed the angel's gaze. His smirk vanished.
Below, just beyond the second ring of broken wards, he saw Zelus—the so-called god of zeal—locked in a furious battle with a lone human wizard. A man in flowing robes. No wand. No weapon. Only a gleaming ring and a storm of movement that turned the battlefield around him into a living weapon.
Malgareth tilted his head. "Is that… the old man?"
"Mm," Seraphion said. "Kazuki, I believe. Commanding officer of this region's defense."
"He's dancing." The demon general's brow lifted. "Is that magic or theater?"
"Both," Seraphion murmured, tone unreadable.
They watched as Kazuki transfigured a cluster of broken pillars into chains of steel and nearly ensnared Zelus mid-sprint. The god tore free with a roar, blood trickling down his temple. Not fatal—but not untouched, either.
Seraphion tilted his head slightly. "Do you think the god requires assistance?"
Malgareth barked out a short, sharp laugh. "Please."
The sound was molten gravel. His grin widened, all pointed teeth.
"That arrogant flame-hearted fool may be insufferable, but make no mistake—he would crush that frail mortal like a beetle. All of them." He waved a gauntlet toward the horde of defenders. "Zelus is reckless, but he is strong. Stronger than any of the meat-wielders down there."
A pause. Then a snort.
"Still," Malgareth added, "I don't care for those who call themselves gods. They prance and preen like peacocks, drunk on scraps of borrowed power. They forget where true dominion lies."
"In the pit?" Seraphion asked coolly.
Malgareth's grin didn't falter. "In dominion," he repeated. "Wherever it is taken."
Seraphion's gaze shifted again to the shrine.
The earth had begun to hum.
He smiled.
***
The shrine walls trembled with distant thunder. From inside its high-arched halls, the sounds of war were muffled—shouts and screams like ghosts pressing against thick stone. The defenders rushed through, barking orders, spellfire scorching the air.
Squibs flattened themselves against the walls as armored witches and wizards stormed past. Some carried crates of hastily prepared potions, others towed injured comrades toward the deeper chambers.
"Out of the way!" a young soldier barked, barely sparing them a glance. "You're useless here go hide in the cellar or something!"
One of the squibs, a gaunt man with hunched shoulders and tired eyes, gave a silent nod and stepped aside. Another—a middle-aged woman clutching a wooden spoon like a wand—shrank back and bowed her head, murmuring apologies as she slipped away down a side corridor.
Another burst of light flashed through the upper stained-glass windows. Dust trickled down from the ceiling.
The squibs moved.
Slowly, silently, once the soldiers had thundered by, their footsteps changed. No longer nervous. No longer hunched. They moved with quiet intent, their gazes sharpening. The fear faded from their faces like masks peeling away in shadow.
The gaunt man stopped before a sealed panel near the wardstones embedded in the far wall. With unsteady fingers, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a copper device something ancient, barely magical. It pulsed once with red light.
He knelt, eyeing the seams of the panel, searching for the point of insertion.
Elsewhere, the woman with the spoon had discarded it in favor of a rune-carved chisel. She muttered something under her breath, words not in any mortal language. Her hand hovered just inches from a keystone glowing faintly with the shrine's magical defenses.
Another a teen with soot-blackened hands descended the spiral stairwell toward the magical conduits that powered the outer barrier. His eyes were hollow. Too hollow.
None of them noticed the silence gathering behind them.
None of them felt the sudden drop in temperature.
The first squib, kneeling before the panel, reached forward—
—and never touched it.
Something moved in the dark.
He stiffened. No breath. No scream. Just the soft sound of his body crumpling sideways onto the stone.
The second reached out with her chisel, fingers inches from the keystone—
—and then her mouth parted slightly in confusion. She shivered. Her eyes rolled back, and she fell without a sound.
Down the stairwell, the teen placed a trembling palm on the conduit housing.
A breath behind him.
A whisper of robes.
And then silence.
All across the inner shrine, the squibs who had moved with quiet purpose who had slipped from their roles like snakes from old skin fell in eerie unison. None of them saw what stopped them. None of them ever heard the thing that moved just beyond the edge of light, always in shadow, always watching.
The shrine remained sealed.
Its defenses untouched.
***
The battlefield churned with chaos.
Angels swooped overhead, their silver blades flashing beneath storm-dark skies. Demons surged in waves, clawing through shattered defenses with roars that cracked the mountain air. Spells soared. Shrapnel of transfigured metal tore into flesh and stone alike. Cries of pain and war echoed off the towering walls of the shrine.
And still, Kazuki danced.
The old Transfiguration Master moved like silk through smoke. Zelus, the so-called god of zeal and rivalry, towered before him—his form cloaked in golden armor, wreathed in raw divine might. Every time Zelus brought down his spear, the earth quaked.
Kazuki never stopped moving.
He twirled on the balls of his feet, flicking his ring-clad hand with rhythm and grace. Stone from the broken battlefield rose midair, spun into disks, and fused into a twisting wall of obsidian that caught a spear thrust meant to pierce three soldiers behind him. He dropped to one knee, fingers grazing the dust and a moment later, a field of jagged stone erupted in a perfect line beneath Zelus, hurling the god backward.
But Zelus rose with a growl, undeterred. And the battle raged on.
Then came the shimmer.
High above the shrine, as fire and fury raged below, the air seemed to bend—rippling like heat off desert stone. A glowing sigil flared in the clouds, and from it bloomed an image, projected large and high like a vision of judgment.
But the war did not stop. No angel lowered their blade. No demon hesitated. The noise, the blood, the chaos none of it ceased.
Yet still, almost everyone saw it.
In the vision: a chamber of stone, cold and dim. Morpheus stood alone amid the crumpled corpses of the Squibs those same fearful figures who had vanished into the shrine's shadows. They lay blackened and twisted, smoke still curling from their skin.
Morpheus smiled faintly.
He looked tired. Not weak calm, like a man who had just finished setting the final piece in a centuries-long game.
"Zelus," he said, voice slow and clear, amplified in a spell so refined it cut through the storm. "And… you, the other one." His eyes flicked to the second god, whose name he did not bother using. "Look at you two. Bleeding. Sweating. Fighting like dogs for the honor of victory."
He began to walk slowly through the ash-strewn room, his wand twirling in lazy circles. The camera of the projection followed him, as though it too obeyed.
"And yet… what did your lords—your commanders decide was the key to this great, historic assault?" He turned, his smile stretching into something grotesque. "They placed their faith… in Squibs. Ordinary humans. Magicless, broken, beneath you, weren't they?"
He gestured to a still-smoking corpse. Flames flickered into life along its arms.
"Pathetic," Morpheus whispered, and the word echoed across the battlefield. "You, who call yourselves divine, and they sent them to do your dirty work."
Up on the ridge, the Angel General Seraphion narrowed his eyes. The Demon General Malgareth sneered but said nothing.
Morpheus turned his gaze toward the sky now, and though his body remained far below, it felt as though he was looking directly at them.
"You see, this was never your war to win," he said, almost pitying. "You were tools. Pawns. And where are your generals now? Where are your gods' glorious champions?"
He flung his wand upward and the Squibs' corpses ignited in a controlled blaze. Magic fire danced in hypnotic, mocking spirals around their forms. The scent of burning flesh drifted through the projection.
"Do they even care that their little scheme failed?" he asked softly, then chuckled. The sound was not joyful. It was empty, and terrifying in its confidence.
And then, he laughed louder. Full and sharp and cutting.
"How does it feel?" he whispered between laughs. "To be stronger than all of us. To command storms and shadows. To tear mountains in half… and still be used as tools by your allies. I wonder were you sent to conquer my shrine or to die trying? In the past wars you were never allies perhaps now with sweet victory in sight your alliances are waning. Oh, I can't wait to feel your blood."
The last words lingered in the air like venom.
And for a moment, even the gods hesitated.
—
A/N: it might seem anti climactic with the squibs but I wanted to highlight that plans will not always succeed and plans against Morpheus even less likely.