The initial impact turned out to be devastating.
A spherical shockwave swept the top of the castle with hurricane force, pulverizing the stone and flattening the remaining walls as if they were made of sand.
Clang
The sword and the claws collided fiercely, exploding a sound of strident metallic friction that made the air tremble.
The force of the recoil separated the two figures, throwing them in opposite directions.
Taking advantage of the momentum, Lief did a flip in the air and landed softly on top of a broken column.
His sword shone immaculate, without a single scratch.
Dracula, on the other hand, stabilized himself floating a few meters away and looked at his hands.
On the black surface of his claws, there were deep white marks that smoked slightly.
"That sword..." His eyes narrowed.
"Do you like it?" Lief smiled. "I have more tricks."
Raising his right arm and displaying the dark gauntlet that protected his forearm, the red veins running across the surface lit up suddenly with a blinding intensity, pulsating while accumulating a critical amount of power in the open palm.
Boom
Instantly a concentrated torrent of pure light burst from the palm, crossing the distance separating them in a blink, directly toward the vampire's head.
Reacting at the speed of his thoughts, Dracula made his wings close in front of him and intertwined the feathers to form an impenetrable shield.
Boom
The impact shook the air and the light crashed against the dark barrier.
"GROAAAR!"
With a roar that vibrated in the chests of all present, Dracula spread his wings suddenly outward with force, dispersing the remnants of the energy attack.
His absolute defense had resisted and his body remained unharmed, although the lustrous and perfect shine of his plumage had visibly dimmed in the impact zone.
"Is that all?"
Swish
His physical figure lost consistency and blurred before the eyes.
A sharp hum cut the wind behind Lief's back and announced the arrival of death. Dracula materialized right behind his neck and his claws, wrapped in that corrosive miasma, shot toward the exposed flesh.
Without needing to turn around, Lief twisted his wrist and launched a blind and brutal slash backward, intercepting the attack in the last millisecond.
"Clang!"
Again the sword and the claw clashed, making sparks fly just inches from his skin.
From that moment on, the battle abandoned the visible rhythm to become a blur of speed impossible to capture by human sight.
Two comets, one of pure gold and the other of absolute darkness, began to collide again and again in the reduced space of the ruins.
They moved in zigzag patterns, appearing and disappearing from reality amidst intermittent bursts of light and shadow.
Below them, reality seemed to crumble.
Anna, Velkan, and Carl crouched behind Adam's immense back, who stood firm like a bulwark of flesh and steel, receiving on his own body the rain of debris falling from the battle to protect them.
"Is... is this still the world we know?"
Carl murmured hugging the already cold corpse of Van Helsing against his chest, unable to look away from the duel in the heights.
Biting her lip with such force that she tasted her own blood, Anna had dry eyes.
The weeping had given way to a stunned and painful void. Her gaze lowered toward Van Helsing's body with the open chest.
Was this how the legend ended? In such an... insignificant way?
Velkan wrapped his arms around his sister, pale and trembling, praying in silence to survive.
It was then that the atmosphere changed.
A subtle vibration, different from the roar of war, ran through the air and soon a faint light, but impossible to ignore in the gloom, began to spring from the mortal wound in Van Helsing's chest, attracting the immediate attention of those present.
"What...?"
Carl was the first to notice it and lowered his gaze.
The shattered cavity in Van Helsing's thorax stopped behaving like a mortal wound. Instead of viscera and blood, the empty hole began to palpitate with a blinding radiance.
"This... this is…"
Releasing him, Carl scrambled back, covering his eyes before the purity of that brilliance.
Anna and Velkan's gazes were drawn magnetically toward the phenomenon and they watched hypnotized as the light grew exponentially.
An indescribable and heavy aura expanded from inside the corpse, saturating the environment with an energy that made their bones vibrate.
It was an absolute presence...
Even in the heights, the battle stopped.
Lief and Dracula separated their weapons and directed their gazes downward.
"That energy..."
Surprise crossed Dracula's face.
He remembered that presence.
Lief, for his part, arched an eyebrow with interest.
He could feel it clearly, a will was awakening and descending.
And before everyone's astonished gaze, the miracle occurred.
Van Helsing's body defied gravity and rose gently from the ground.
He floated in the air, straightened by an invisible force, and extended his arms slowly until forming a perfect cross.
The light coming from his body exploded, filling the cavity of his chest and knitting flesh and bone at a divine speed.
Finally, the sky responded.
A majestic pillar of white light crashed down from the firmament and connected with the earth, enveloping the floating body in a celestial embrace.
Immediately a voice resonated, but not in the ears of those present, but in the very structure of their souls.
It was a sound that transcended human language, devoid of emotion, cold and impartial.
"Anyone who blasphemes against the divine majesty shall be purified."
"He who embraces darkness shall be judged."
With the final decree, the pillar of light connecting the sky with the earth began to dissipate and fragmented into shining particles, finally revealing the entity that had descended to occupy the mortal vessel.
The figure that previously answered to the name of Van Helsing opened his eyes.
But those were no longer the eyes of a human nor did they reflect the consciousness of the man who had died seconds ago.
His sockets were occupied by a white fire, flames that burned without heat and were composed purely of divine light, lacking pupils or irises that could show mercy.
At his back, the transformation reached its zenith.
The flesh and clothes seemed to tear ethereally, without pain, to give way to three pairs of wings of an immaculate whiteness.
The wings unfurled slowly to their full span, raising a cyclone of wind that purified the air.
The entity tilted its head, observing its new vessel for an instant, before raising its gaze of fire toward the two figures floating in the sky.
"Sinners."
"N-no..."
Carl's legs gave way under the weight of that presence. He fell to his knees with his lips trembling uncontrollably, and whispered the name that his mind refused to process.
"A-Archangel Gabriel..."
When the name escaped from his mouth, Anna and Velkan's minds collapsed.
Looking at that suspended figure, with the six wings of light unfurled and emitting a majesty so dense that it hurt to look at it directly.
The realization hit them hard: That was not Van Helsing.
"Gabriel?"
Above, Dracula's face contorted into a mask of pure hatred and recognition.
"You again!"
"You again! Four hundred years ago you exiled me! You condemned me to this existence!"
His wings beat with frenzy, gathering darkness around him like a storm.
"And now you return to judge me again?!"
But Gabriel ignored him.
The entity did not even turn its head toward the vampire's screams; instead, it slowly raised its right hand.
Its finger, shining with the same light as its eyes, pointed to the other side.
Toward Lief.
"Mm?"
Lief pointed at himself with his finger, arching his eyebrows with a genuinely surprised expression.
Me?
________
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