Suddenly, the light vanished.
Or rather, it seemed to be sucked back into its own source—back to where Orubos was—with terrifying speed.
The capital was plunged into darkness once more, and everyone looked up, searching for the magician.
Reno stared at the sky as well, but there was nothing he could do.
Everything around him was drowned in a bottomless blackness that could not be pierced. Even daylight itself seemed unable to penetrate it.
For the first time in his life, Reno experienced a fear of the dark.
Not because he could see nothing, but because somewhere within that terrifying veil of darkness lurked a mage whose power seemed to know no limits.
The Ogre had no way of knowing what that transcendent horror might be capable of inside the abyss.
Then suddenly, Reno felt a dreadful premonition. A sense of impending doom so overwhelming that his entire body shuddered.
The Ogre's instincts screamed at him to get away.
And he was not the only one.
At that exact same moment, every warrior trembled and looked back toward the heavens.
The sky seemed to split open as though carved apart by an enormous blade. The darkness slowly parted, revealing a growing fracture overhead. A violent wind burst from the rift, sounding like a thousand voices crashing against the fragile walls of the capital.
Then, as everyone struggled to keep their footing, a brilliant light emerged from within the opening.
A single narrow beam, nowhere near large enough to replace the sun, yet it alone was capable of piercing the oppressive darkness.
Slowly, the beam began its tragic descent, serving as the sole source of light in this scene shrouded in darkness.
But while everyone watched the beam descend, mesmerized, Rita quickly realized that they had miscalculated the distances.
A nervous laugh escaped her lips.
The beam was not descending slowly. It was plunging downward far faster than a meteor.
"Shit."
The source of the light descended like a column at breakneck speed, cutting through the air like a floating missile and creating a high-pitched, piercing sound so loud that everyone in the arena could hear it.
Moments later, it struck the ground where one of Rita's warriors was crouched on all fours.
The instant the beam touched him, a shockwave blasted across the area, and everyone was blinded.
Reno and Rita threw an arm over their faces while the others stumbled back in terror. But as soon as they could see, a horrifying sight met their eyes.
The warrior was literally disintegrating. The light burned away everything he was, reducing him to smoke. His entire body seemed to disintegrate under such intense heat—without a single flame—that the sound of his flesh sizzling reached everyone's ears.
A scream of unbearable agony tore from his throat as his face rapidly lost its skin, then his nose, his eyes, his hair, and finally everything else.
He stretched out a hand, begging for help.
He reached out for help, but no one had the courage to move.
It was brief, yet at the same time, it felt like an eternity; the strong, sturdy warrior vanished into thin air. Not even a speck of dust remained. All his limbs went up in smoke. Just as the disintegration seemed to have reached its peak, a mysterious force seemed to make him raise his head. Then, from every orifice, an intense light burst forth. He screamed one last time, and in that horrible scream, he transformed into a blinding golden light and exploded without a sound. Just a light that vanished along with the column.
Reno stood frozen in shock. So did Rita. The rest of the group could no longer move, unable to comprehend what they were witnessing.
Until now, they had fought out of anger, out of duty, out of a desire to protect, but now all strength abandoned them.
Suddenly, while he was still reeling from the first victim, a second beam struck; a warrior nearby suffered the same fate, her body slowly disintegrating. Then she raised her head and vanished as the beam faded away.
At the same moment, two other warriors met the same fate.
Then another..
And then another...
Throughout the capital, the columns came and went, destroying every warrior and every person they found. Not even the warriors of the Valon clan were spared. The columns of light disintegrated people and sent them back into the light as if they had never been there. Everything in the capital was struck by the divine light.
Reno watched the spectacle in horror.
All around him, pillars of radiance erased living people.
The capital, which only moments before had been buried beneath darkness, was now filled with countless shafts of light—each one marking a human soul.
It was a nightmare beyond any battlefield he had ever known. A horror greater than every war he had fought.
And for the second time that day, the sky itself had become his enemy, delivering judgment upon the arena that had drunk the blood of millions of men...
In a moment of overwhelming dread, Reno looked toward the heavens and noticed two things that would remain etched into his memory forever.
The first was the way the pillars descended.
They did not fall at a constant rhythm.
Each beam tore through the black clouds stained with darkness, ripping open great wounds in the sky. Yet whenever a pillar faded, the clouds seemed to heal themselves, swallowing their own scars as the darkness slowly stitched itself back together.
The sight was both magnificent and horrifying.
Yet even that was nothing compared to the second thing he saw within those transcendent skies.
The second thing he saw added a divine quality to the scene; in the midst of it all, high in the air, a feminine figure took shape.
She was an angel—he was certain of it—with six wings behind her back. Her feathers seemed to be made of a pure, graceful material. She fell slowly toward the ground, seemingly unaffected by the columns of light. Her wings remained motionless. She was the source of an immense light in the sky.
Reno found himself unable to look away.
Her white robe was beautiful.
It bore no elaborate decorations, no symbols of power or authority.It was simply white made from a fabric so exquisite it seemed unreal.
Reno's eyes were captivated.
Even though he could not imagine anyone in existence surpassing Rita's beauty, this being's appearance stole his breath away.
It was beauty beyond the world. And that made it deeply unsettling. Disorienting.
As though his soul, rather than his heart, was being forced to acknowledge an undeniable truth. An unwanted feeling of love seemed to be ripped from the deepest corners of his unconscious mind.
Such was the effect of witnessing something extraordinary and for a long minute, he actually lost his breath.
Or perhaps even his mind...
There were also legends about angels in Nozras, though they weren't really acknowledged because only visible power was recognized.
The stories claimed that angels were the greatest warriors of all, beings capable of lifting mountains and tearing entire forests from the earth.
Before bedtime, parents sometimes told tales of a nameless angel—the first warrior—who had once walked these lands beside another angel, seeking only to satisfy an endless thirst for battle.
But up until then, even the children slept soundly. For apart from Nozras himself, no one believed such beings existed.
Reno remembered the stories his father had told him. Even if the description didn't match, even if the legend was false, he was convinced. What stood before him was one of those beings capable of uprooting mountains...
The angel had the face of a young woman in the prime of her life. Her eyes had no pupils. They were simply two almond-shaped eyes that radiated pure, gentle light. Her perfect face was unsettling. It didn't belong in this world, and that was what Reno couldn't understand...
How could such a figure exist? Every feature seemed sculpted to perfection.Too perfect.
And then he noticed something else...
She looked sad.
For some strange reason, Reno didn't want her to cry; he couldn't help it—he just didn't want her to cry. He really didn't. It was truly breaking his heart, making him feel almost sick.
And yet, once again, he knew those feelings were not truly his own.
Something was wrong.
He was admiring a woman who was slaughtering every warrior in sight. He was admiring a murderer whose beauty could bring any human being to their knees. And yet, even knowing this, he couldn't tear his eyes away even if they were starting to burn.
Without realizing it, he was slowly going blind.
Rita was in the same state.
She watched the singular being summon descending pillars of light that annihilated everything in their path. Every warrior present in the capital was looking at her—completely captivated by her overwhelming presence.
And yet, she herself shone in the sky, looking down at them with sadness.
In truth, it was toward her that the disintegrating warriors had turned their gaze. They were all looking at the angel in their final moment of strength. They lifted their eyes to behold the celestial.
Outside the capital, the pillar of darkness seemed to fracture, and every warrior could now see the magnificent being within. No one could look away anymore. They had stopped fighting entirely.
Her light spread across all of Nozras. Everyone could see her.
The being was rewriting their perception, erasing resistance itself. Completely hypnotized, the entire nation was frozen in place.
Azraüs stared at the source of light coming from the capital. His eyes were locked, as if he were dead. Azraël too was watching, lost in a trance.
All of Nozras was watching her.
Nozras was contemplating her.
Motionless, like gravestones.
It was beautiful and terrifying. Radiant and horrifying. Numinous, overwhelming, divine.
An entity from another world—different from Orubos.
And that fact is what disturbed Reno.
Orubos was deceitful and mischievous. He trapped people with tricks, spells, and manipulation. He was unpleasant, unwanted, hostile.
But this presence was nothing like that.
This being was pleasant to look at. Filled with a gentle warmth that destroyed you from within.
Everyone wanted to approach her.
Everyone wanted to touch her.
So where the hell had that bastard gone?
Reno thought of two possibilities.
Either she had taken the magician's place to punish them—punish Nozras for its crimes, punish Reno for his killings.
And strangely… that felt almost legitimate.
Or...
"You son of a—"
Reno noticed a faint, almost imperceptible malicious smile on the celestial being that confirmed his second theory.
"It is an imitation..."