The dust of the Seraveth Rift Spire's fall still clung to their armor when the war banners of victory rose across both continents. The Rifts were gone—Teravane and Seraveth were free. The skies, once poisoned with abyssal clouds, now carried the clean light of day. For the first time in months, the people could breathe without the weight of corruption pressing against their chests.
Alter and the surviving Commanders and Dragoons returned to Celestia, the white-spired capital where marble walls reflected the sunlight like sheets of polished gold. Crowds lined the streets to greet them, voices carrying cheers that felt too loud for warriors still half-covered in dried blood. The army's colors flew alongside the dragon standard—two continents united under hard-won peace.
Inside the royal court's war chamber, maps were cleared of the black pins marking Rift occupation. The tension that had gripped the table for so long eased, replaced with the weary silence of those who knew the battle was over—at least here. Takayoshi leaned against a column, arms folded, eyes narrowed not in relief, but in calculation. Soryn stood beside the map, his gaze tracing the edges of the world as if he already knew the next storm.
It came sooner than expected.
The great bronze doors to the chamber swung inward without herald. A wind swept in, though no windows were open, carrying with it a faint chime—like crystal struck underwater. A figure stepped through, robed in silver threaded with sunfire, their eyes radiant with divine light that no mortal flame could match.
Every warrior in the room straightened instinctively.
The Divine Messenger did not bow, nor waste breath on pleasantries. Their voice resonated with a timbre that was both beautiful and unsettling, like the echo of a bell rung in the soul.
"Alter of the Sovereign Flame," they said, their tone neither commanding nor pleading, but simply true. "The Divine Realm is under siege. The Demon Gods have breached the outer sanctums. The Heavenly Orders are collapsing. We have held as long as we could—no longer. You are called to return. Now."
The words landed heavier than any battlefield blow.
Alter didn't move at first. His hand rested on Starsever's hilt, his mind already shifting from victory to the reality ahead. The war here was done, but the war beyond the mortal plane had just reached its breaking point. He could almost hear the clash of divine steel and the screams of falling gods in the Messenger's voice.
"When do we leave?" he asked, not if, but when.
The Messenger's eyes softened—just barely. "Before the next sunrise. Gather what you must. When the sky turns gold, the gate will open for you."
Takayoshi stepped forward. "Then we prepare the moment we rest."
The Dragoons, the Commanders—even Soryn—remained silent, watching Alter with an unspoken understanding. They had followed him through rifts and into the jaws of Demon Gods. But this… this was a war only he could fight.
Alter's gaze swept over them all, a silent promise passing between Sovereign and warriors. Then he turned back to the Messenger.
"I'll be ready."
The Messenger's words left no room for delay. Preparations moved like clockwork in the hours that followed. Celestia's corridors became a blur of armor, weapon racks, and whispered farewells. The Dragoons and Commanders remained behind with Takayoshi and Soryn, entrusted with holding the continents. No one said it aloud, but all knew—if Alter fell in the Divine Realm, the mortal world's victory would be only temporary.
By the time the horizon began to pale with the coming dawn, Alter stood alone atop Celestia's Skyward Bastion, the highest tower in the capital. His Sovereignborn Draconic Plate gleamed faintly in the half-light, each scale etched with a faint inner glow. Starsever rested across his back, its edge humming with restrained energy.
The city below still slept. Only the wind spoke, whispering across the stone.
Then the sky changed.
First came the sound—a single, resonant gong that seemed to strike from somewhere beyond the stars. Then the heavens tore open in a great arc of molten gold, light spilling through in molten rivers. Clouds churned into spirals, parting to reveal a widening rift not of corruption, but of pure divine radiance.
The Messenger's voice carried on the wind, though their form was nowhere to be seen.
"Step through, Sovereign. The war waits for no dawn."
Alter's wings of flame and light unfurled in a single, sharp motion. He leapt from the Bastion's edge, descending for only a heartbeat before those wings caught the wind and drove him upward, toward the yawning gateway. The air around him shimmered with heat and power, each beat of his wings breaking sound and scattering clouds.
He crossed the threshold without hesitation.
The shift was immediate. The cool morning air of Celestia gave way to a searing, electric pressure that clung to the skin. The Divine Realm's skies burned with an otherworldly glow—crimson sunbursts bleeding into gold, vast clouds shaped like titanic beasts drifting over seas of light. But the beauty was fractured.
From the far horizon, an endless wall of shadow boiled forward, laced with the red eyes and screaming maws of Demon Gods' legions. Towers of silver flame flickered and fell in the distance as battle raged across the sanctums.
He landed atop the white steps of the Eternal Citadel, the heart of divine governance, only to find its gates shattered inward.
A figure stood waiting—tall, armored in celestial silver traced with starlight, helm under one arm. Their face was sharp, eyes shadowed with fatigue but burning with defiance.
"Alter," they greeted, voice taut. "You made it in time. Barely."
From deeper within the Citadel, the ground shuddered. The scream of something vast and wrong echoed through the marble halls.
Alter drew Starsever, the blade's edge igniting with a flare of gold and scarlet. "Then let's not waste what time we have."
And without another word, he moved toward the sound.
The corridors of the Eternal Citadel were a cathedral of ruin. White marble, once polished to mirror sheen, now lay in cracked shards. Stained-glass murals depicting the first dawn of creation were shattered, their colored fragments crunching beneath Alter's boots. Every few steps, the air quivered under the impact of distant strikes, each one rippling the divine fabric of this realm.
The celestial figure who had greeted him—Solien, the Warden of the Citadel—moved at his side with practiced urgency, their spear trailing a faint comet's tail of light. "The outer wards are gone. The vanguard broke through two sanctums in less than an hour. They're heading for the Heartspire. If they corrupt it, the Divine Realm's authority will collapse completely."
"Then we meet them before they reach it," Alter replied, his voice carrying the same iron calm he'd had on mortal battlefields.
They rounded the final archway—and the world tilted into chaos.
The Vanguard had arrived.
Dozens of Demon Gods' chosen, each towering and warped, armored in living obsidian and breathing smoke thick with sulfur. Some bore weapons forged of chained souls, others wielded claws wreathed in screaming fire. Above them, great rift-beasts clung to the fractured ceiling like shadows given form, their eyes fixed downward with predatory hunger.
And at the center, two Demon Lieutenants of the vanguard:
Khraal the Rift-Breaker, a behemoth wielding a colossal hammer that bent the air around it.
Veythra the Pale Maw, a lithe monstrosity whose jaw split too wide, dripping venom that hissed and burned holes in the marble.
The moment Alter stepped into view, both Lieutenants froze—not in fear, but in recognition.
"The Prime," Veythra hissed, her voice a blade drawn slow.Khraal's hammer hit the floor once, sending a shockwave through the hall. "Then we take his head first."
They surged forward.
Alter met the charge without a heartbeat of hesitation. Life Sprinkler—three golden afterimages burst into existence at his flanks and rear, matching his speed step for step. They split, intercepting the incoming waves of vanguard warriors in blurs of Sovereign steel.
A rift-beast dropped from above, maw gaping, but Solien's spear flashed upward in Stellar Ascendancy, punching through its skull in a burst of starlight that lit the hall like dawn. It fell without a sound.
Khraal's hammer came in a wide, ground-shattering arc. Alter caught it on Starsever, the force of impact blasting out a ring of wind so sharp it flayed the banners hanging along the walls. Sliding past the behemoth's flank, he unleashed Dimensional Slash – Omni Wave, the invisible storm of edges severing the armor from Khraal's left arm in a spray of ichor.
Veythra darted in low, venom spraying in a fan meant to blind. One of Alter's afterimages intercepted, vanishing as the toxin burned through its manifestation. She smiled—right before a second clone appeared at her back, driving a knee into her spine with Heaven-Piercer Step, the force carrying her into the wall hard enough to crack it from floor to ceiling.
Around them, the vanguard and Celestial Guard clashed in blinding exchanges. Blades met with divine sparks, shields locked against hell-forged axes. The air stank of ozone, blood, and burning marble.
Khraal roared, his remaining arm igniting with abyssal flame as he swung again. Alter met the strike mid-swing, twisting into Sovereign Fang Collapse—a meteoric leap-strike that came down on the giant's helm like a falling star. The behemoth staggered, helm dented deep.
Veythra, snarling, reappeared with claws extended, moving to strike Alter's exposed flank. But Solien intercepted, his spear sweeping in Celestial Vein Rupture, cutting across her torso with a burst of golden light that locked her muscles mid-motion.
The battle was not yet won, but the vanguard was reeling—and for the first time since stepping into the Divine Realm, Alter felt the balance shift.
He didn't wait to press the advantage.
"Hold the line," he ordered Solien, his wings igniting once more. "I'm going for the Heartspire before the next wave hits."
And without another word, he surged deeper into the Citadel toward the source of the shaking.
The corridor broke open into a wound of a chamber—no floor, no ceiling, just ribs of white crystal curving toward a vertical spire of law that pulsed like a heartbeat. The Heartspire. Every pulse pushed against the abyssal smoke strangling it, and every time the smoke pushed back, the entire room stuttered, lights flickering like a failing star.
Solien hit the threshold beside Alter, helm tucked under one arm, spear level. "Guard wings will try to hold the perimeter," they said, not slowing. "If the spire fractures again, the Realm's gravity will go with it."
They didn't get to finish.
A shadow peeled from the Heartspire's base and unfolded into Voryth the World-Rend—limbs stitched from broken constellations, torso a curtain of eclipse. Beside it boiled Shyrras the Thousandfold Maw, a storm of jaws and runes that whispered as teeth ground together. The temperature dropped. Color bled toward gray. Voices of dead sanctums hummed in the bones.
"Mortals. Celestials," Shyrras rasped in a dozen directions at once. "We eat what believes itself immortal."
Voryth raised an arm. The chamber folded. Ribs of crystal bent into a horizon that met the floor at the wrong angle; banners of light ran uphill; broken columns slid sideways like rain. Celestial guards lost their footing—one screamed as he drifted toward a rent in space and disappeared without a trace.
"Anchor lines!" Solien's voice cut through the tilt. Dozens of luminous grapnels fired, biting into moving stone. Lines went taut. Ranks steadied, shields locked.
Alter's wings flared, catching the new gravity. "With me."
They didn't charge. They stepped—a half beat apart—into the opening cadence of the Dance of Destruction.
Shyrras spat voidfire. It came like sleet, heavy and fast, burning holes in reality where it landed. Three Celestial lancers were caught mid-stride; their armor bloomed with black flowers and collapsed inward. The nearest Lord—silver-clad Asterion—rammed his halberd into the floor and barked, "Ward Dome!" A hemisphere of starlight sprang up, catching the worst of the storm as it hissed against the barrier.
Alter's first hand set the rhythm—Fist of Ruin—a straight drive through shifting gravity that met Voryth's eclipse breastplate and sent a shockwave scudding across the bent horizon. Solien's follow kept time a spear thrust that burned a clean hole through a ring of lesser maws trying to flank.
"Left wing, advance," Asterion snapped. Twenty shields slid forward in chevrons, their edges linked in a saw-bright line. Behind them, Lady Seraphyne lifted both palms and unleashed a scatter of Starshard Barbs—dozens of needle-thin lances that nailed a swarm of abyssal flyers to the air.
Voryth replied by tugging down a strip of sky. It fell like a slab of starfield—ink and fire and points of cold. Solien vaulted, spear spinning once, then snapped into Celestial Vein Rupture. The meteor split in two with a ripping KRAK, halves sliding past the formation to shatter harmlessly on a distant, curving wall.
Shyrras fractured. Its mass split into scores of smaller maws, each with its own rune-etched tongue. A chord of whispers built to a scream as they vomited scythes of black glyphs. The first rank of Celestials braced; anchors held; shields buckled—then held again.
"Clone shelf," Alter said, and vanished.
Three golden afterimages burst into existence—Life Sprinkler—each taking a vector of glyph-scythe, blades crossing to parry what shouldn't have weight. Sparks of inverted light ran up Starsever's edge as he reappeared inside the storm, cut once—Dimensional Slash – Omni Wave—and a ring of maws dropped, their runes sputtering as their shapes unspooled.
A rift of teeth lunged for Asterion's exposed back. Seraphyne slid, palm up, and a Fallen-Star Screen detonated between jaw and spine—white noise, white light, then shards. "Keep your line," she said, breathless.
"On me!" a younger captain—Lyr, armor cracked, eyes bright—waved a squad through a coil of warped floor. They hit a cluster of abyssal soldiers with textbook form: two shields up, two spears over, one blade down and through the knee. The formation chewed forward a body length before Voryth snapped a finger and inverted their footing. Three slid toward the ceiling—Lyr dove, slammed an Anchor Sigil into a passing rib of crystal, caught two by their wrists. The third didn't scream; he saluted with his free hand as gravity took him. Then he was gone in a clean, cold silence.
"Eyes!" Solien warned.
Shyrras' central maw yawned, every tooth rotating like gears as it drew in color from the room. The banner lines dimmed. Armor dulled. The skin on hands looked gray.
"Kill that mouth," Solien said.
Alter went first—Graviton Sever—his blade drawing a seam through space that locked the maw in place for a heartbeat. Asterion took the shot, halberd flicking into Comet Breaker, a descending impact that smashed three fangs to powder. Seraphyne's follow, Corona Lance, drove a beam into the maw's palate. It howled, a dopplered sound that turned everyone's stomachs inside out.
The right flank broke. Not from fear—from numbers. A thicket of abyssal infantry surged around a stuttering ward to slam into shieldmen on the split horizon. Lyr's voice went hoarse: "Rotate—rotate!" They did, stabs precise and low, blood black and steaming—and still the mass came on.
Solien saw it. "We don't hold that with bodies," they said, and threw their spear. It whistled once, then split into six phantasms mid-flight, each one threading a different knot of the onrushing pack. Six holes appeared in a line; six demons folded in half; the charge stumbled.
Voryth seized the moment, palm opening. Space buckled toward the god like a held breath, then exhaled. The floor slid sideways. Anchor lines snapped like harp strings. The chamber's ribs tilted again—this time with teeth.
Alter's clones re-staggered the rhythm. One took the next glyph-scythe. One bled and winked out. The original ducked under a falling rib, boots skidding on nothing, and planted Soulbreaker Dive into Voryth's jaw. Eclipse broke; constellations scattered like glass.
"Push the tongue lanes!" Asterion shouted, voice raw. Celestials obeyed—two squads drove spears into Shyrras' nearest cluster of maws, then yanked up as gravity flipped again, ripping the cluster free like weeds. A third squad finished with synchronized Sun-Edge Cuts. The cluster collapsed, its runes unraveling into smoke.
Losses mounted. Asterion took a bite to the calf; armor held, flesh didn't. Seraphyne's barrier hand trembled. Lyr dragged another guard back from a narrowing, lightless seam and didn't bother to check whose blood slicked his gauntlet.
"Solien!" a distant Lord called, voice thin across bent space. "Our rear ward is failing!"
"Hold three breaths," Solien said, already moving. "Make them count."
They and Alter crossed in mid-air, the Dance's second measure picking up without a word. Spear and sword cut clean shapes in a room that refused shape—straight lines through curves, hard edges through liquid geometry. Shyrras tried to meet them with a hail of teeth; Starsever's edge hammered those into snow.
Voryth reached again—for the sky. A strip of night sagged above the Heartspire, heavy with stars. It started to fall.
"Mine," Solien said.
They kicked off a rotating rib, shot into the path of the descending night, and stabbed Celestial Vein Rupture into its heart. The starfield tore along a seam, folding into a ribbon that whipped back toward Voryth and wrapped his arm to the shoulder. He hissed, voice like oceans grinding rocks. The ribbon burned his eclipse flesh with its own starlight.
"Now," Solien said, eyes never leaving the god.
Alter answered with Void Fang Rend to the wrist, Heaven's Dismantle to the elbow, Seraph Shatter Palm to the shoulder. Fractures spidered across the god's arm. The constellation bones inside flickered, went out.
The chamber held its breath.
Then the Heartspire pulsed—once, hard—like a heart threatened. Cracks along its facets glowed, then dimmed, then glowed brighter. Abyssal smoke threaded deeper.
Asterion set his halberd, limping. "We can't hold this line much longer."
Seraphyne wiped blood from her lip with the back of her shimmering hand. "Then we don't. We cut a new one."
Lyr—face gray, eyes fierce—lifted his spear. "For the Heart."
Shyrras laughed with a hundred mouths. Voryth flexed his one maimed arm. The ceiling remembered it was a ceiling—and snapped back into place with a boom that threw dust from heights no one could see.
Alter rolled his shoulders. Solien re-gripped their spear. The Dance's third measure waited—faster, sharper, meant for killing gods and anything too stubborn to know it.
"Chapter two," Alter said, a tight smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Worlds," Solien finished, "unmade."
They stepped in together as the Heartspire's light stuttered again—and the battle changed.
The Heartspire flared—once, twice—before its light went inside out. For a heartbeat, all illumination inverted: shadows became radiant, and light sank into hollows. Everyone felt it, like being turned inside out without moving.
The pulse was not just sound—it was a command. Reality stuttered under it, and in the pause between beats, the Demon Gods moved.
Voryth's eclipse form split down the center, the crack yawning into a gravity well that drank in stone, light, and screaming Celestials alike. Shyrras multiplied again—this time birthing mirror maws from the reflections in the crystal ribs. The mirrors distorted them, each version gnawing at a slightly different angle of existence.
"Anchor reality now!" Solien's voice cut through the folding air. Their spear spun into Reality Lash, anchoring a ten-meter sphere of stability in the chaos. Asterion immediately threw his shield into the zone, dragging wounded in with one hand while his halberd lashed out in brutal sweeps.
Alter didn't go to the safe zone. He stepped forward—directly into the gravitational maw Voryth had opened. His wings flared against the pull, body dragging through the air as though wading through molasses. "You want the Heartspire?" he called, voice echoing in impossible harmonics. "You'll need more than hunger."
Star-searing light gathered along Starsever's edge—Thunderclap: Skybreaker. One beat of his wings, and he was above the well, blade raised high. When it fell, the impact wasn't on Voryth's form but on the gravity well itself. The strike cracked the singularity like glass, shattering its pull into a million splinters of inverted force that sent abyssal troops flying backward into the ribs.
To the left, Shyrras' mirrored maws closed in on Seraphyne and Lyr. "Left flank will collapse!" Lyr shouted, bracing his spear. Seraphyne answered with Corona Lance—a beam that punched through three mirrored maws at once, but the fourth lunged in from above. Lyr met it mid-air, planting an Anchor Sigil on the roof and using it as a pivot point to drive Sky Piercer: Heavenfall Rend through its skull. Black ichor sprayed upward, defying gravity before evaporating.
"Hold formation!" Asterion barked, though blood streamed down his calf. He spun his halberd in Comet Breaker, caving in two more mirrors before they could reach the wounded in Solien's sphere.
Then came the second pulse.
This one was angrier. The Heartspire's glow rippled, cracks racing up its length like lightning in slow motion. From them, tendrils of abyssal ink began to pry it apart. Reality here wasn't just breaking—it was being rewritten.
Solien cursed under their breath. "If it falls—"
"It won't," Alter cut in.
He vanished in Life Sprinkler, three golden afterimages spreading into the cracks between abyssal tendrils, each clone driving Void Fang Rend deep into the living ink. The tendrils recoiled, shrieking without sound. But more surged to take their place, climbing the Heartspire's facets like veins.
Shyrras saw its opening. All mouths screamed in perfect sync, and from the sound came a cone of anti-light that burned the soul instead of the flesh. Celestials nearest it clutched their chests, stumbling as their divine cores guttered.
"Cover!" Solien shouted. They launched their spear into Celestial Vein Rupture, ripping a vertical seam through the cone's path. The anti-light broke, spilling sideways in harmless shards.
Alter didn't stop moving. He and his clones leapt from the Heartspire's surface, converging mid-air in Dance of Destruction. Each measure of the Dance carved another god-level strike into the Demon Gods—Fist of Ruin, Hellpulse Eruption, Sovereign Fang Collapse—until the sequence reached its crescendo: Creator's Banishment.
Starfield and abyss collided as the final blow struck Voryth's chest. The god's form twisted, constellations unraveling, eclipse bleeding light. But even banishment wasn't final here—not in the Divine Realm's contested space. Voryth screamed, a sound that dragged galaxies through glass, and wrenched free, falling back toward the abyssal rift.
Shyrras followed, but not before its thousand mouths snapped shut in unison, leaving behind echoes that made the Heartspire's cracks widen another two meters.
The battlefield fell into a panting silence. Of the Celestials that had marched in, nearly a third lay broken.
Solien lowered their spear, eyes locked on the abyssal rift. "They'll come back."
Alter's gaze stayed on the Heartspire, its light trembling, its surface fractured but still standing. "Yes," he said quietly. "And next time, they'll bring the rest of them."
The Heartspire pulsed again—weak, but steady.
For now, the battle was over. But the war in the Divine Realm had just begun.
The rift tore wider.
From its black edges, abyssal lightning arced down the Heartspire's outer walls, ripping banners from their poles and shearing whole balconies into the void. The air howled with a sound that was not wind, but the collapse of a thousand prayers at once.
Two more Demon Gods emerged through the breach. Their silhouettes were jagged wounds in the light — one with a crown of writhing chains and another that walked on four inverted limbs, its head an orb of burning shadow.
The Divine Realm did not flinch.
From the golden terraces above, three Celestial Lords descended in spears of light — Lord Kaeryn, whose staff commanded the constellations themselves; Lord Vorthys, wreathed in shields of layered moonlight; and Lady Ilyra, her gown trailing rivers of pure flame. Each landed in the frontlines with an impact that split the ground into radiant channels.
Alter and Solien advanced at the center. Around them, the Celestial Legions moved in disciplined formations, shields interlocking as divine sigils flared into the air.
The clash was instant.
Kaeryn swept her staff in an arc, and the sky above the battlefield inverted — constellations bent into spears, plunging down through the ranks of abyssal horrors. Vorthys strode into the maelstrom, each step shattering incoming voidfire with discs of moonlight that orbited him like grinding millstones. Ilyra's voice rang out in a high, cutting note, and her flames took form — draconic serpents of white fire that coiled and struck, burning even the armored hides of the lesser demon gods.
The two newly arrived Demon Gods countered in unison. The crowned one — Shaltheris — extended its chains, each link inscribed with inverted runes. Where they landed, divine light unraveled into screaming darkness. The four-limbed one — Azzorath — exhaled a tide of black gravity that tore chunks of the Heartspire from its base and slung them at the defenders like meteors.
Alter broke through the first volley, his blade carving glowing scars across the collapsing terrain. Beside him, Solien's spear spun in great sweeps, redirecting incoming meteors into the abyss rift itself.
High above, two more Divine Gods entered the fray — Aramion the Stormlord, hurling storms so vast they blanketed entire districts of the Heartspire in protective cyclones, and Yserath the Dawnforged, whose twin greatswords shone with the light of creation itself.
The fighting turned into a god-scale siege.
The Heartspire's central spire-bastions became killzones where gods locked gods in mortal holds. Divine magic detonated against abyssal counterspells, blasting rings of destruction that peeled layers off the mountain. Void tides surged up the outer walls, only to be forced back by waves of blinding solar light.
And then, for the first time in the battle, the cries of the Celestials faltered.
One of the smaller spire-bastions cracked under the combined assault of Shaltheris' chains and Azzorath's gravity maelstrom. The Celestial defenders there were torn apart in seconds, their weapons falling in slow arcs into the void before being consumed by the rift.
Alter saw it — and moved. Solien matched him, the two cutting a swath straight for the breach, carving through abyssal warforms that clung to the Heartspire walls like centipedes made of molten night.
At their backs, the Celestial Lords regrouped, forming a cordon to stem the tide. Kaeryn locked constellations into defensive alignments. Ilyra burned another dozen horrors into ash. Vorthys pulled wounded gods back through collapsing terrain.
They held. But the ground underfoot was slick with divine ichor, and even gods can bleed.
The ground shook under the weight of gods.
Alter vaulted over the cracked bastion wall and landed in the breach just as Shaltheris' chains swept low, their hooked ends dragging screaming arcs through the stone. He caught two on Starsever's edge, sparks of gold and shadow bursting into a storm around him. Solien struck from the other side, her spear thrusting through three links in a blur — each rupturing in a flare of voidlight before disintegrating entirely.
Azzorath leapt, all four limbs digging into the side of the spire. Its head — the orb of burning shadow — opened in a vertical split, revealing a screaming maelstrom inside. A beam of compressed abyss tore toward them.
Alter met it head-on.
He invoked Strike XVII: Sovereign Fang Collapse, leaping high, twisting in the air, and slamming down with meteor force. The impact collided with the beam in a dome of clashing realities, shattering both into an expanding shockwave that peeled banners from towers two miles away.
Above, Aramion's storms broke apart as a third Demon God emerged from the rift — Khyrrath the Riftborn, carrying a staff made from the spine of a dead god. It pointed the staff toward the Heartspire's core, and space began to bend inward like water down a drain.
The Celestial Lords roared defiance. Kaeryn's constellations plunged in defense, Ilyra's flame serpents wrapped the imploding space in searing coils, and Vorthys layered moonshields to keep the singularity from reaching the spire's foundation. But Khyrrath's pull was relentless.
Alter and Solien moved as one.
Solien swept his spear in a wide arc, channeling a planar fracture that split the battlefield into mirrored halves. Alter stepped into the seam, his form blurring into the Dance of Destruction. The world slowed — each step leaving afterimages of gold fire, each slash accompanied by a resonant crack in the air.
He struck Shaltheris first — eighteen hits in the span of a heartbeat, every one a different technique from the Demon God Killing Martial Arts. Armor crumpled. Chains snapped. The crowned god staggered, black ichor spraying into the void.
Without pause, he pivoted to Azzorath, delivering Strike XIV: Celestial Vein Rupture followed by Strike XVIII: Creator's Banishment. The abyssal orb-head shuddered, then detonated into fragments of unbound shadow, each wailing before dissolving into nothing.
The retreat began.
Shaltheris reeled back toward the rift, clutching at the remnants of its chains. Khyrrath turned its collapsing gravity inward, creating a shield of warped space to cover the escape. But Solien was already there, her spear spiraling with destructive light as she cut through the barrier.
"Now!" she shouted.
Alter's aura surged into a column of pure sovereign energy. With a single breath, he leapt the distance, Starsever raised high, and carved a vertical slash that split the Heartspire's outer sky. The rift itself flickered under the blow, unstable for the first time since the battle began.
The surviving Demon Gods threw themselves through before it could collapse, their forms swallowed by the abyss.
Silence fell — not peaceful, but hollow. The spire's upper terraces were rubble. Divine ichor streamed in golden rivers down the walls. Of the Celestial Legions that had stood at the battle's start, nearly a third were gone.
Alter lowered his blade. Solien exhaled slowly beside him, eyes scanning the ruin. The Heartspire still stood, but its pulse — the steady thrum of divine resonance — was faint.
They had won.
But the wound left by this day would not heal quickly.