A moment passed after Satan's declaration — a silence so profound that even the stars outside the divine court seemed to hold their breath.
Then, EL laughed.
Not a chuckle. Not a scoff. A deep, echoing laugh that shook the very pillars of Heaven.
"You... you lowly god," he said, still chuckling as he rose from the Throne of Balance. His voice, no longer calm, thundered across the court like the roar of an eternal storm. "You think you can destroy me? Even if all ten of you combined your might, it would not amount to a flicker of my shadow."
His eyes, once calm and indifferent, now burned with black flame — cold, ancient, and unfathomable. It was as if all kindness, all restraint, had been extinguished.
"I am EL — the very Heaven you claim to serve. I am the Kindness God… and the Darkness that comes when kindness is no longer deserved."
Some stepped back. The divine court, for the first time in existence, felt fear pulse through its sacred walls.
Zeus steadied himself. "We did not come here to hear your arrogance."
"And I did not come here to be threatened," EL replied, his voice now quiet, but it carried more weight than a thousand tempests.
Then, murmurs.
The divine court broke into factions. Some gods and demons, hearts trembling, looked at each other with doubt. Others, driven by ambition or fear, nodded silently at Satan. The line between loyalty and treason blurred.
But EL… he didn't see it.
Not yet.
The trap had already been set.
Unseen by even his godlike sight, the very court beneath his feet pulsed with invisible runes — etched in the blood of more than a thousand trillion souls, harvested in silence across endless realms.
A forbidden magic. One that no god had dared invoke since the birth of time.
Its name: The Beginning and the End.
Aether — the God of Time — looked on with grim eyes, standing behind EL. He had sensed the ripples of temporal distortion but said nothing. He had his reasons.
Lilith stepped forward, her beauty untouched by time, her presence alluring and dangerous. She knelt before EL with a twisted smile.
"My lord," she said sweetly, her voice like honey laced with poison, "I have never bowed to gods or demons. But to you? I would kneel a thousand times. Give me the word, and I will slaughter these traitors in your name. Just reward me… generously."
EL looked down at her. His eyes dimmed for a moment.
"You were cast from the heavens," he said. "Now you crawl at my feet."
"Crawling is better than burning," she whispered.
Suddenly, the air changed.
Runes blazed to life — billions of them — lighting up the walls, floor, even the sky itself. The entire divine court became a cage. A seal unlike any other, built not to kill… but to bind.
The Beginning and the End had activated.
A shockwave pulsed through EL's body. For the first time in eternity… he felt resistance.
His foresight blurred. His authority faltered. His ability to bend reality itself was cut, bound by laws ancient enough to predate gods themselves.
He staggered half a step.
"Now!" Satan bellowed.
Two gods and two demons — the ones who had offered their own souls for the spell — erupted into brilliant flames and collapsed, becoming fuel to empower the seal.
Chains of light and darkness rose from the ground like serpents, coiling toward EL.
But before they could reach him…
Aether, God of Time, stepped forward.
"I stand with EL," he said, raising his hand and freezing the court in a single temporal stasis — a moment stretched into eternity.
Only a few could still move.
Anubis, the Demon God of Death, stepped beside Aether. "This is not justice. It is fear disguised as rebellion."
And behind them, Lilith smirked, drawing a blade of pure void from thin air.
"They never wanted balance," she said. "They wanted a crown."
The court erupted into chaos.
The once-united ten fell apart. Zeus clashed with Aether. Satan lunged at Anubis. Fire and lightning, death and time, collided in a celestial war that shattered planets across dimensions.
Each warrior wielded universe-ending power.
But none could overpower the others.
It was as if the very cosmos refused to let one side win.
And through it all, EL stood still.
Even sealed. Even bound. He remained the center of it all.
Finally, without warning, he moved.
The formation trembled.
He walked slowly, like gravity had changed just to allow it. Toward those who dared raise arms against him.
"You think to kill me for your convenience," he said, eyes burning with endless night. "You wish to take what is mine and twist it for your own vanity."
Chains tried to rise again — but this time they crumbled at his feet.
"I gave you freedom," EL whispered. "But now… I will show you what it means to take it away."
Even as the gods and demons stood tall, their eyes betrayed them. They trembled—not from pain, not from doubt, but from the terrifying truth that stood before them.
EL.
He hadn't moved.
He didn't need to.
The corpses of gods still steamed at his feet, their blood staining the divine floor with glowing crimson. His black flame curled in the air like a predator waiting to pounce.
Satan wiped golden blood from his lips. "You think yourself untouchable?"
EL tilted his head slightly, gaze dark and unreadable. Then, he spoke—not with wrath, but with stillness. Calm. Controlled. And beneath it all… absolute.
"Do you know what drives even gods to slaughter?"
"Not justice. Not vengeance. Not fear."
"It is greed."
He took a step forward. The flames rippled around him like the breath of creation.
"Mortal or divine… you all crave more. Power. Worship. Immortality. You call it ambition. But I've watched it long enough to know what it truly is."
He looked at them—not with anger, but with sorrow.
"Greed is the one hunger that devours its own master. It turns kings into tyrants. Gods into monsters. And civilizations into graves."
He paused. Then added, coldly:
"Greed has no loyalty. Not even to the gods who birthed it."
The court went silent.
It was the first time anyone had heard EL speak like that. The weight of his words wasn't just divine — it was eternal. A poem carved from truth.
Even Zeus's spirit seemed to stir from the dead.
Some gods stepped back.
Others dropped their weapons entirely.
And then Satan — trembling with rage — pointed at EL with a shaking, bloodied hand.
"Don't listen to him! He speaks like a prophet but acts like a tyrant! Are we gods or cowards?!"
He turned to the remaining divine warriors, his voice rising like thunder.
"NOW! This is the moment we were created for! Take his head and end the age of fear!"
He charged.
So did the others.
And EL… smiled.
"You were warned."
Slaughter.
That's all it was.
Not a war.
Not a battle.
A massacre.
EL didn't dodge. He didn't defend. He simply moved through them like death incarnate.
He caught the first divine warrior by the throat — a god of war — and crushed his windpipe until his head exploded like overripe fruit.
He tore the wings off an archangel mid-flight and sent him crashing to the floor, where EL stomped his skull into shards.
A demon prince charged him with twin blades — EL burned the metal in midair, turned the blades into liquid, and forced the molten steel down his throat.
Screams echoed through the heavens.
Cries for mercy.
Cries from gods.
And EL showed none.
He ripped a sun deity in half — lengthwise — and hurled the pieces into the sky like trash.
Another god tried to flee. EL pointed a finger, and a spear of shadow burst from beneath the floor, impaling him through the mouth and nailing his corpse to the ceiling.
Blood.
It flowed like rivers.
It soaked the thrones.
It flooded the steps of the court where once divine law had been declared.
Now it was a slaughterhouse.
Even fear refused to speak.
Some tried to run.
Others tried to pray.
But nothing reached Heaven anymore.
Because Heaven was now standing in the center of that room — and it had no face left for mercy.
Then, it began.
The Beginning and the End — the ancient forbidden formation — awakened in full.
The seal ignited, glowing with the sacrifice of over a thousand trillion souls, their screams locked in the runes. It wrapped around the entire court in a dome of blinding symbols and divine chains.
It surged against EL's presence, crashing down like a tidal wave of cosmic law.
But the moment it touched him — the moment it tried to bind him…
It recoiled.
EL's flames roared in protest.
The formation, built to destroy Outer Gods, now faced the raw contradiction of its existence.
It was water.
And EL was fire.
They could not be fused.
They could not be balanced.
They could only collide.
The seal tried to drown him. EL's flames tried to consume it.
The entire divine realm began to quake. Reality rippled. Space warped. Time trembled.
And at the center, EL's voice rang out like a goddamn sermon.
"You created this seal with fear. I was born with fire. Tell me…"
"When has fear ever conquered flame?"
He raised both hands.
The seal tried to resist.
It shattered.
The explosion blew open the skies of the divine realm. Fragments of ancient power scattered across dimensions like meteors.
The divine court was no more.
Only a throne of blood remained.
And EL stood atop it, bathed in black flame, crowned by ash and silence.
He looked down at the survivors — if they could be called that.
His voice was quiet now. But it echoed everywhere.
"I gave you eternity."
"You chose destruction."
"Now you will remember this day… as the moment your gods bled."
He turned his back to the ruins.