The sky tore with each step they took.
Hermes blurred from one side of the battlefield to the other, a silver comet in motion. His staff twisted mid-air, uncoiling with twin serpents of divine light—one aimed at Luv's neck, the other spiraling toward Astha's heart.
But Luv was already gone.
The Thunder Pulse Core activated again, its energy circling his silver armor with rings of flickering runes.
"Too slow."
He reappeared above Hermes, slamming down with a thunder-infused roundhouse. The resulting shockwave cracked the clouds, bending light and air alike.
Hermes blocked—barely. A flicker of surprise passed through his golden eyes.
"That speed…" he muttered. "Not divine. Not celestial. Human…?"
"No," Luv answered, voice sharp as a lightning crack.
"Beyond human."
---
Below them, Astha watched in perfect stillness.
He raised his right arm, and Smritidhaara, his memory-bound chain-sickle, unfurled with a hiss, wrapping around his forearm like a serpent of living flame.
Then—he vanished.
Hermes twitched, sensing something. Behind him—
CLINK.
The sickle blade skimmed past his cheek, not cutting flesh but memory—reclaiming an instant of thought.
Hermes reeled.
"You… severed a moment of my mind?"
Astha stood behind him, not smiling. The flame-link chain circled him in slow orbit, resonating with forgotten echoes.
"I don't fight with brute force," Astha said.
"I fight with memory. And yours betrays you."
Then he moved.
---
Hermes drew the Seal of Twelve, a ring that shimmered with the signatures of the Greek gods. He pointed it toward the sky, and from it descended a dozen spectral glyphs: divine techniques granted to him by the Olympian court.
Artemis' arrow rained down in lunar spirals.
Ares' roar shook the earth's core.
Apollo's solar lances traced through space.
But Astha's Ashvaanta materialized mid-air, white-hot and furious.
FWOOOM!
He cleaved through every divine technique in a single, sweeping arc—cutting spells mid-cast, incinerating the glyphs as they manifested.
"Your gods give you borrowed power," Astha said coldly.
"Mine… tried to erase me. So I took everything from the ashes."
---
Luv Unleashes Vajra Nirvana
Hermes, staggering from Astha's strike, turned only to face Luv—his hand raised, fingers crackling with pure, refined thunder.
The air began to warp.
Lightning didn't strike from the clouds.
It struck from him.
"Vajra Nirvana: First Bloom!"
A colossal thunder lotus exploded in mid-air, petals made of divine plasma, forming an orb of unrelenting sound and heat. Hermes, caught in the epicenter, was flung back—his divine cloak scorched, helmet dented.
The mountain range behind them disintegrated. A hundred kilometers of terrain turned to glass.
Astha shielded Naira behind him with Smritidhaara's memory veil, protecting her from the storm's echo.
"You said this was a message," Luv said, stepping forward, eyes golden and glowing.
"Here's ours: We're not afraid of gods."
---
Bruised. Burned. But still smirking, Hermes rose.
"I see it now," he murmured.
"You're not messengers of war."
"No," Astha said.
"We're the flame that ends it."
With one synchronized strike, Ashvaanta and a final lightning spear clashed into Hermes' chest.
The Seal of Twelve shattered.
Hermes collapsed, vanishing in a flash of divine teleport—escaping, not surrendering.
But his silence said it all.
---
Aftermath: Whispers Across Pantheons
Far away, in Olympus, Zeus' fist clenched over a clouded basin.
In Asgard, Odin's one eye narrowed.
In the Jade Realm, Sun Wukong laughed quietly and said, "So the flame awakens."