The night descended upon the church like a shroud of mourning obsidian. The light was dim, the silence heavy and sepulchral. On the walls, ancient frescoes of angels—frozen in time yet seemingly teeming with life—fixed their unblinking, all-seeing gaze upon the empty sanctuary. The spiritual atmosphere hung thick in the air, pregnant with the weight of impending doom.
Then, in a heartbeat, the serenity of the night was shattered by hellfire!
The vaulted ceiling groaned and sundered with a deafening crack. A colossal, blazing entity tore through the heavens like a falling star, crashing into the very heart of the sanctuary. The marble floor yielded like parchment; pews that had stood for centuries were scattered like dry leaves before a gale. Dust, debris, and a searing heat instantly choked the holy place.
As the smoke of the cataclysmic impact slowly dissipated, the silhouette of a woman became visible within the massive crater.
She stirred, groaning in agony. She was not clad in the clothes of her former life, but in crimson leather armor that hugged her form, taut against muscles that rippled like those of a battle-hardened beast. As she clutched her head and looked up, the dim church light revealed her face—it was Dr. Toram.
But this was not the Dr. Toram she knew. The white lab coat of the quantum physicist was gone, replaced by golden gauntlets and heavy plating. The thick glasses she once needed to see the world were missing, yet even in the gloom, she could perceive every floating mote of dust with terrifying clarity.
"I... In a church? How?"
Her voice was not her own. It did not speak; it thundered like a lioness waking from slumber.
Her hand flew to her neck, her pulse galloping like a warhorse. As a woman of science, her mind raced to find logic in the chaos. "This is a dream. It has to be... I must have been in an accident. I'm in a coma," she muttered, trying to rationalize the impossible.
Stumbling backward in shock, she heard the distinct, metallic clink of steel behind her. She spun around, catching her reflection in a shard of broken glass. What she saw shattered her resolve. Two massive, terrifying swords were mounted upon her back.
"Madness! This is absolute madness!"
She reached over her shoulder to unsheathe them, desperate to prove they were mere figments of her imagination. But the moment her fingers grazed the hilts, the steel transmuted into pure, roaring fire. The flames did not burn her skin, but the heat was visceral, undeniable. In panic, she released them, and before they could hit the ground, they defied gravity, flying back into their sheaths of their own accord.
Toram collapsed to her knees. The pain was real. The weight of the armor was real. The fear seeped into her very marrow.
She slapped her face hard. The sound echoed through the ruins.
"Wake up, Toram... Wake up! Get out of this nightmare!" she screamed.
But the sting on her cheek lingered. This was no dream from which one could wake. This was her new, horrifying reality.
With a heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, Toram dragged herself toward a shattered window. Squinting through the jagged glass, she looked outside—and what she saw was a truth the human mind was never meant to comprehend.
The church seemed suspended in its own dimension, encased in a shimmering, golden barrier of light. Outside this celestial dome, though it should have been midnight, the world was bathed in a blinding, unnatural brilliance.
Rain fell from the heavens, not as water, but as heavy drops of sorrow and prophecy. Surrounding the church were majestic beings—human in form but possessing the wings of doves. They sat atop celestial steeds, arranged in perfect battle formation, their eyes fixed on the church roof as loyal sentinels. Toram, a tiny witness to this grand spectacle, watched from above.
But the vista beyond them was even more jarring.
The air between heaven and earth had become a theater of war. The Lightborn—those with dove wings—clashed violently with the Darkborn, entities possessing the leathery wings of bats. The atmosphere itself screamed, wounded by the collision of steel and the vibration of a thousand beating wings.
Suddenly, the earth shuddered like a living thing preparing to vomit. The church grounds cracked from horizon to horizon. As the fissures widened, small, charred beasts dripping with magma clawed their way out of the planet's core. The sky and earth swarmed with them, and the celestial cavalry defending the church braced for impact.
Toram watched the apocalypse unfold, her mind numb, her eyes wide and unblinking like stripped stone.
The rain intensified, pounding against the church roof. Then, descending with the torrent, creatures of both black and white wings fell from the sky like hail.
As if in a divine vision, powerful beings clad in golden armor—dove-like yet imposing—descended. Among them, one figure stood out. He possessed a dark, dove-like majesty, a visage of terrifying beauty. Two massive swords rested on his back. He spread his colossal wings, cutting through the heavy rain, and landed on the edge of the church roof.
His legion followed, landing in formation to his left and right. A heavenly army, ready for the final slaughter.
In that moment, Toram realized a singular, chilling truth: This night is not the end of history; it is the beginning of everything.
Though the darkness outside was pierced by flashes of war, a heavy, tangible malevolence draped over the church grounds like a suffocating tent. This was no ordinary night; the air hummed with high-voltage tension, waiting to snap.
On the roof, the Light Angels stood at attention. To the right of the commander stood Kaduel, a being who resembled a pure white dove. He stepped closer to his leader, Saruel.
Saruel, the Commander of the Light, was a paradox—a Light Angel with the dark, imposing grandeur of a storm cloud, possessing an aura that could make demons tremble in the dark.
Kaduel looked down at the chaos below, listening to the screams of the innocent, his patience wearing thin.
"Saruel! How long must we wait? The lines below are breaking! As you can see, the enemy has left us no ground to stand on, no sky to fly in. Our kin are falling like leaves, melting like wax! They await only your command!"
Saruel did not look away from the carnage. He exhaled slowly, his breath seeming to tear the very air. When he finally turned to look at Kaduel, the calm ocean in his eyes was rapidly churning into a violent tempest.
"There is nothing left to wait for," Saruel's voice rumbled, low and guttural like distant thunder. "If we do not descend now, there will be no history left to write. I believe there are angelic tribes down there in need of salvation... do you see them, Kaduel?"
Kaduel bowed his head. The world below was a churning grinder of meat and steel.
Saruel raised his voice, a clarion call that echoed across the heavens.
"Therefore... expect no mercy! Draw your blades! I want no survivors among the enemy. Leave nothing but ash! Finish them!"
The command given, Saruel unfurled his massive wings and plummeted from the roof like a kinetic missile. The sound of him slicing through the air was deafening. His army followed, a swarm of locusts blotting out the sky.
Saruel tucked his wings, diving until the last second, then flipped in mid-air to land on the ground with cataclysmic force. The earth shattered beneath his boots. Before he could even move a centimeter, a massive enemy wielding a giant black sword descended upon him from above.
As the blade threatened to cleave him in two, Saruel's left hand moved faster than time itself, snatching the enemy by the throat. The demon's scream died in its windpipe. Holding the beast aloft, Saruel drew his right-hand sword—wreathed in crackling blue lightning—and in a single motion, bisected the creature. The dark angel's flesh turned to molten slag, sinking into the earth as a bubbling black puddle.
Saruel roared over the trembling battlefield:
"Leave nothing standing! Mercy is dead! Slaughter them all!"
He became a blur of motion, mowing down the bat-winged Dark Angels like wheat before a scythe. To the naked eye, he was nothing but a streak of light and the thud of falling bodies.
High above, Toram watched Saruel's impossible velocity, her scientist brain reeling. "How can his body withstand that G-force? By all laws of physics, his bones should have disintegrated!"
Kaduel stayed close to his commander, his own movements a dance of death. He grabbed an enemy by the wings from behind, his lightning-sword flashing as he severed the head, sending a fountain of blood spraying like fireworks.
As Saruel carved a path forward, four Elite Dark Angels—clad in tattered black robes and wielding swords of solid fire—blocked his path. The shadow of death clung to their faces.
With terrifying coordination, the four attacked from all sides—front, back, left, right. Their flaming swords screamed through the air, creating a vortex of heat. But Saruel was an impregnable fortress. He stood in the eye of the storm, parrying their strikes until the friction of their clash began to melt the surroundings.
Finally, Saruel's eyes turned blood-red with rage. Tendrils of lightning erupted from his body, forming a whip of pure energy that lashed out and strangled all four Elites simultaneously. He channeled millions of volts through the tethers; their internal organs ruptured, their bones shattered.
Kaduel looked up just as the lightning storm detonated in a blinding flash. For a second, the entire battlefield paused. The four Elites fell in pieces. Saruel landed, flapping only one wing. He was gasping for air, leaning heavily on his sword. His other wing hung broken and bleeding.
"Commander!" Kaduel cried out, rushing to support him.
But there was no rest. The ground lurched violently. A massive seismic tremor tore the earth apart, and from the widening abyss, a fresh wave of magma-armored Dark Angels poured out.
The Light Angels formed a defensive wall around their wounded leader. The commander of the cavalry, his face dark with grief and exhaustion, rode up to Saruel.
"We cannot hold them like this," the cavalryman said, his voice trembling. "We have lost too many. Our power is drained."
He dismounted and placed a glowing hand on Saruel's broken wing. "Forgive me, Saruel... but unless the Twelve Tribes arrive, we will break."
As the healing light knit flesh and bone back together, Saruel gritted his teeth against the pain. His strength returning, he stood tall, spreading both wings in a magnificent display of defiance.
"Your counsel is wise," Saruel said, his confidence restored, his eyes burning like twin suns. "But there is a greater Commander. Until the appointed time, I will hold the line. But if they break through me... prepare for the final stand."
The cavalry leader nodded and returned to the fray. Saruel, now leading the vanguard, marched toward the tear in the earth where the two armies faced off.
The vast battlefield was bisected by the Light and the Dark. Suddenly, a subterranean growl shook the foundations of the world. The ground exploded outward, and a colossal figure, bathed in magma and wielding a sword of living fire, rose from the depths. The heat of Hell rose with him.
The Dark Angels roared in triumph; the Light Angels recoiled in horror.
The monster that had crawled from the abyss was none other than the Prince of Darkness, Daruel.