The sky fractured. A hissing tear vibrated in Kael's molars, a frequency so high it made the junkyard birds fall dead before touching the ground.
Kael gripped the handle of his rusted pickaxe. The metal, worn by years of picking divine scrap in the periphery's industrial junkyards, sank into his calloused palm, smeared with a mix of engine oil and filtered star dust. A golden lightning bolt pierced the ash-colored clouds, leaving behind a trail of ozone and sulfur that supplanted the usual stench of rust and sewage from district seven.
The air was still. It had become a dense mass of static electricity that made the hair on his arms stand on end and set a metallic taste permanently in his throat. The resulting silence was a physical weight; the muteness of a world that knows something fundamental has just changed.
"Another purge," Kael muttered.
He spat grayish saliva onto the dry quarry floor. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a soot-covered hand. At twenty-two, his body was a map of minor scars, chemical burns, and wiry muscles forged in hunger and exhausting manual labor under the relentless border sun.
His only possession of value was etched into the very circuits of his consciousness.
`[Divine Sanctuary Collector: Level 1]``[Status: No Collections]``[Activation Requirement: Touch a Divine Entity in Collapse State (1 HP or less)]`
He had been trying to activate that inert system for three years. Three years of enduring the mockery of the local gatherers. In the zinc-roofed dive bars where divine scrap was traded for foul liquor, they called him "The Wing Ghoul." To them, Kael was just wasting time following the heat trails of imperial battles, hoping to pick up what even war crows ignored.
He had crawled through smoking craters where two-winged angels, simple heavenly foot soldiers, lay with limbs twisted like old wire. The Inquisition always got there first. He watched them administer the "mercy shot"—a blast of energy that vaporized the fallen's remaining dignity—to then harvest the divine essence that fueled the capital's luxuries.
In this world, hierarchy was biological. You were either born with a stable mana core to study at the Imperial Academy, or you had enough gold to buy a stolen Technique Book. Otherwise, you were nothing. A spare part.
Kael had rejected multiple offers to escape his misery. In the death-scented alleys of the periphery, where magic lamp light didn't reach, shadows moved with their own will. Raspy voices had offered him pacts. "Just a piece of your shadow for the strength of ten men," they said. Or "your ability to dream in exchange for a level five book."
He knew the empty sockets of the "pacted" well. They walked through the district like automatons, with grayish skin and eyes that no longer reflected light. They were tools of the demons, hollow shells devoured by the same ambition they tried to quench.
Being "useless" was the price of his freedom.
The roar repeated. The howl of something solid fracturing reality itself at a speed that human sensors shouldn't be able to record tore through the air.
A white silhouette, wrapped in a trail of nuclear light, descended at a suicidal angle. The glow eclipsed the sun, bathing the junkyard in a surgical whiteness. Kael covered his face with his arm, feeling the radiant heat scorch the fabric of his shirt.
The impact occurred less than a kilometer away, in the Forest of Whispers.
The ground jumped beneath his feet. A shockwave, charged with a spiritual pressure so heavy it made his ears bleed, threw him backward. He flew six, seven meters before crashing into a pile of scrap metal. The metal groaned, yielding under his weight.
The blow emptied his lungs. Kael coughed blood, feeling the salty, warm taste flood his mouth. His ears rang, a constant tone that threatened his sanity.
"Damn it..." he hissed, clinging to a piece of imperial tank armor.
He forced himself to his feet. His ribs screamed a fracture warning, but his eyes remained fixed on the opalescent smoke column rising above the trees. The light emanating from the crater belonged to a spectrum foreign to this realm.
On the horizon, three "Chastiser" class airships emerged from the clouds. Their mana turbines roared at full power while their blue spotlights cut through the atmosphere in search of the essence trail.
He had five minutes. Seven if he was lucky.
Kael took off running.
It was a desperate sprint through twisted roots and bushes that disintegrated into white ash in his presence. Each step sent an electric sting to his brain through his battered ankles. The air burned his throat, dry and electrified. He ignored the survival instinct ordering him to flee.
He reached the crater's edge. Horror mixed with wonder.
The forest within a five-hundred-meter radius had ceased to exist. The trees were now white dust silhouettes crumbling at the touch of the wind. The ground had turned into a pool of molten glass starting to solidify into grotesque shapes.
In the center of that desolation, a monument to beauty and tragedy lay before him.
A pair of gigantic wings spread around her, filling the crater floor entirely. They were shattered. White feathers the size of shields lay scattered, slowly losing their luster. Divine blood, thick as honey and bright as mercury, flowed from deep wounds revealing crystal bones.
A deep red window pulsed before him like an open wound.
`[CRITICAL ALERT! Supreme Entity of "Eternal Seraph" Class detected.]``[Rank: SSS+ (Incalculable in current state)]``[HP: 0.00001% / ???]``[Diagnosis: Divine Core fractured by High Rank Betrayal.]``[Remaining lifespan before soul dissipation: 24 seconds]`
Kael climbed down the slope. The heat from her wings was a barrier of divine authority demanding submission even from the brink of death.
He stopped in front of her. The angel was imposing, a woman of perfect features etched by an agony no mortal could understand. Only one eye was open. It was a sphere of pure sapphire, a window into a universe of agonizing stars. In that iris, Kael found a loneliness so deep it made his own outcast life seem like a party.
She looked at him. Her lips moved, but only a trickle of luminous blood flowed. Her fine hand trembled on the dust before giving up.
Kael felt a human sting in his chest. He remembered the days he scavenged for food in others' leftovers, the feeling of being a speck of dust in a universe of giants. For the first time, he was the giant.
Above, the roar of the "Chastisers" became deafening. Searchlights already swept the crater edges. In few seconds, inquisitors would descend with capture nets and essence extraction knives to dismember this being and sell its grace.
`[Initiate Collection of Entity: Eternal Seraph? (Y/N)]``[WARNING: This action is IRREVERSIBLE. You will become the first "Heir of Betrayal."]`
Kael didn't hesitate. If this world wanted gods to die in the mud, he was going to give them a reason to tremble.
He reached out and touched the tip of one of the central wings. The contact was like putting his arm into a forge. He felt his tendons stretch to the limit, his mind expanding violently to house an infinite presence.
"Inside," he said with a broken voice.
He pressed **[Y]** mentally.
Time froze. The sound of engines vanished. Dust particles in the air stayed suspended.
`[Confirmation received. Initiating Emergency Asylum Protocol...]``[Extracting Entity from hostile environment...]`
Kael felt his insides tear and reconstruct. A pocket dimension, vast and cold, unfolded within his consciousness. It was the Sanctuary. For an instant, he saw his own spirit's landscape: a crystal plain under an amethyst-colored sky.
The Seraph's body fragmented into billions of light sparks that swirled in a vortex toward Kael's hand. Light pierced his closed eyelids. He felt an immense heat etching into his palm, a complex design like a royal seal of molten gold. The entity flowed into him, filling the Sanctuary's void with a presence that made his mind walls vibrate.
`[Blood Link Consolidation: Completed.]``[Absolute Obedience established: The Angel belongs to you.]`
Kael perceived an invisible silver thread connecting his heart to the woman's essence. It wasn't a bond of companionship; it was a chain of authority he held with a trembling hand. He could feel the echo of her pain, now muffled by dimensional stasis, and an instinctive obedience emanating from her—a submission forced by system laws.
Opening his eyes, the crater was empty. The silence of victory returned.
`[Collection Successful: "Eternal Seraph" added to your Personal Sanctuary.]``[Status: Creature in temporary recovery stasis (Dimensional Ice active).]``[Wing Recovery Progress: 0/12]``[Divine Sanctuary: Level 1 Unlocked.]`
An instant revelation hit his brain. Divine arts unfolded before him like an infinite scroll writing itself in his mind's air. He saw attack patterns defying gravity, defenses that could withstand a star's fall, and knowledge of heaven's anatomy that would burn a common man.
`[First Divine Skill Unlocked: Celestial Arts Register - Level I.]``[Passive: "Collector's Eye" (Sees divine weakness and essence trail)]``[Active: "Light Feather Shield" (Energy impact absorption of Rank A or lower)]`
Kael clenched his fist. He felt a power note resonating with the creature hidden within him. It was a pure power that should always have been there. His senses sharpened. He could perceive the mana flow in the airships' engines above, the soldiers' thermal signatures, and the exact composition of the energy charging their weapons.
A spotlight of artificial white light lit up the crater.
"TARGET LOCATED!" an amplifier shouted from the airship. "By order of the Red Inquisition, stay on the ground! Show your hands right now!"
Three shadows descended via essence cables. Rank 1 Inquisitors, their white armor glowing under protection spells and their energy swords emitting a threatening hum.
Kael stood up slowly. He brushed the dust off his dirty shirt, a garment that now seemed ridiculously small for the man he was becoming. For the first time in twenty-two years, he looked an Inquisitor straight in the eye, without the weight of fear pressing on his chest.
"You're late," Kael said. His voice was firm, charged with a vibration that made the very air around his lips ripple.
The Inquisitors froze at his lack of fear. The squad leader, a veteran with a golden shoulder plate, pointed to the empty crater center.
"Where is the angel?" he asked. "The essence trackers indicated a Seraph in this radius. What have you done, trash? Where have you hidden the Empire's prey?"
Kael looked at his palm. The seal no longer glowed, but the heat remained, comforting and dangerous, like an ember in midwinter.
"I've stopped collecting trash," Kael replied, flashing a smile that made the Inquisitors instinctively step back. "Now I'm going to collect the world."
Kael was no longer there when the ground exploded before the first high-frequency blue energy bolt. His body moved with a speed his ten-minutes-ago self would have considered magical, leaving only a trail of light feathers that dissolved before touching the scorched earth.