Aurora could tell. Atlas was drifting.
Half of his mind was still rooted in the war around them — the screams, the crumbling sky, the endless tides of devils tearing through fallen ranks — but the other half… it was somewhere else.
She could feel it in the way his gaze flickered, as though he were watching two worlds at once.
Part of him was here, leading, commanding.
The other half was beyond — in the Second layer, thinking about them.
The battlefield of Hell's Third Layer was no mere landscape; it was a living wound. The air stank of sulfur and sorrow, dense with the cries of dying angels and burning demons.
The sky itself had fractured into a thousand blackened mirrors, shards of divinity bleeding starlight into rivers of flame.
Aurora hovered above that infernal chaos, her wings of light flickering beneath the weight of corruption.
