The divine realm trembled.
Once flawless and eternal, its skies now bore fractures like shattered glass, each fissure spilling faint streams of darkness into the luminous expanse. The once-constant hum of harmony—a music older than mortals, older even than the stars—was faltering, replaced by a low, resonant groan as if the very bones of creation cried out.
The Order of Balance, woven into every corner of existence, was unraveling. What had long been whispered in prophecies, what had been hinted in the shifting alignments of stars and the stirrings of old powers, was now manifest.
Beneath the sundered firmament, the golden spires of the Spirit Citadel blazed brighter than ever, their wards crackling like torches battered by stormwinds. Goddess Cecilia, her silver mantle torn and bloodied from battle, raised her scepter against the tide spilling in from the cracks—flames of the underworld, black fire that consumed even light. Her wings, once a radiant white, now shimmered with streaks of gray, smoke curling from their edges where infernal blades had struck her.
Beside her, striding like a storm given flesh, stood Kaelerith, Beast God of the Eternal Wilds. His form was a shifting conflux of creatures—lion's mane, serpent's scales, talons of an eagle, and eyes that burned like a wolf under moonlight. Each shift of his body birthed a new beast to fight in his stead, a chorus of snarls, roars, and hisses answering Cecilia's chants. Together, they fought, gods of spirit and beast united in desperate defense.
But the cracks grew wider.
Through them, the Underworld's horde poured. They were not creatures of flesh alone but amalgams of nightmare—horns twisted around skeletal faces, bodies dripping tar, eyes that shone like pits of fire. Every strike Cecilia dealt burned away dozens, but each death was answered with another swarm, darker, heavier, relentless.
And on the high terrace of the broken firmament, leaning languidly against a fragment of fractured sky, Azeriel watched.
He did not fight. He did not bleed. He did not lift his blade.
Instead, he smiled.
Where Cecilia's every breath was agony, where Kaelerith's claws tore raw just to hold the flood, Azeriel remained untouched, cloaked in a shadow so delicate it looked almost like silk, falling about him with careless elegance. His long hair shimmered faintly like obsidian beneath starlight, and his eyes—those strange, abyssal eyes—tracked every movement with a detached, almost lazy interest.
"You fight so beautifully when you're desperate," he mused aloud, his voice lilting, carrying like a whisper despite the chaos. "Cecilia, radiant even when she burns. Kaelerith, your fury paints the air red. How stirring. How… tragic."
"Enough of your silence, Shadow!" Kaelerith snarled, claws tearing through a beast that screamed with a thousand voices at once. His mane burned with celestial fire, his voice like rolling thunder. "If you will not stand with us, then quit your hollow mocking and be gone!"
Cecilia's chant faltered for a heartbeat, her luminous gaze turning to Azeriel. There was pain in her eyes—plea and reproach both. "Azeriel… the balance falters. Do you not see? If the realm falls, everything falls. Even you."
Azeriel tilted his head, tapping a finger against his chin, as though considering whether her words carried merit. Then his lips curved into something between a smile and a smirk.
"Oh, I see it," he answered softly. "The unraveling. The great tapestry of order fraying thread by thread. I have always seen it, Cecilia. I simply chose to wait for the moment when beauty becomes ruin."
His tone was not cruel, yet it was colder than cruelty—it was playful, dangerous, teasing, the way a cat might speak if it could to the bird it had pinned beneath its claws.
The ground beneath them heaved. Another fissure split the skies, spilling molten darkness across the clouds. Screams echoed—not of mortals, but of spirits themselves, voices tethered to the threads of balance breaking free, unmoored, lost.
The divine host fought bravely. Legions of lesser gods, guardians of rivers and forests, took arms. Their radiance struck down demons only for more to rise in their place. The realm shook with the clash of divinity against abyss.
But above it all, Azeriel remained still.
The other gods did not understand. Some spat curses at him, others begged him to intervene. Yet he only laughed, a soft, velvet sound that did not belong in a battlefield. His laughter seemed to deepen the shadows already spreading, like ink poured into clear water.
Then, at last, as Cecilia's strength faltered and Kaelerith howled in fury, Azeriel rose.
He stepped forward, each footfall soundless, shadows curling at his heels as if the ground itself bent to let him pass. He moved not toward the horde, but toward the edge of the sundered realm, gazing into the void.
"Farewell, my valiant friends," he said lightly, his voice carrying over the screams and crashes of divine war. "Fight bravely, bleed gloriously. I will not rob you of your moment. It is, after all, what gives your existence meaning."
Cecilia's voice cracked with anguish. "Azeriel, you cannot—!"
But he silenced her with a raised hand, almost tender. "Do not waste breath on me, sweet Cecilia. Save it for your prayers. You will need them."
Kaelerith snarled, lunging as if to strike him, but a tide of underworld fire forced him back.
Azeriel looked once more at the chaos, his gaze unfathomable. And then he whispered, his words so soft they might have been mistaken for the sigh of the wind—yet they carried into the heart of every god present:
"I have found the cause of this lovely collapse… a fragile spark wrapped in mortal guise. The weapon your dragon-kin father once stole from the abyss lives on in her veins. And I think… I think I shall make her mine."
His smile deepened, playful, wicked, yet strangely tender, as though savoring a secret only he understood.
"I shall not take your thrones, my dearest comrades. I have no need of them. I will take her. And through her, all this ruin shall sing my name."
The shadows coiled tighter about him. The battlefield shuddered.
Then, with a careless wave—like a man dismissing a banquet he had grown bored of—Azeriel stepped backward into the darkness.
"Goodbye, Cecilia. Goodbye, Kaelerith. Do fight well. I'll be watching."
And with that, he vanished into the void, laughter trailing like velvet smoke, leaving gods and demons to clash in his absence.
But in the silence that followed, one truth weighed upon every divine heart:
The realm was breaking.
And Azeriel had chosen not to stop it.