The cavern did not echo.
That alone unsettled Anor.
Stone should have answered force with sound cracks, tremors, the groan of pressure shifting beneath the world. But after the clash between his will and Grim's, the depths remained silent, as if reality itself had decided not to acknowledge what had just occurred.
Anor's knees finally gave out.
He hit the ground hard, palms scraping against jagged rock. His vision blurred, darkness creeping in from the edges. Whatever fragment of strength he had forced out of himself burned away immediately, leaving behind only hollow exhaustion.
Grim did not move to help him.
He watched.
Hands clasped behind his back, expression thoughtful rather than cruel, as though Anor were a puzzle instead of a broken creature gasping on the floor.
"Hm," Grim murmured. "Still standing after pushing back a god. Even if only for a moment."
Anor laughed weakly, the sound torn and ugly. "Don't… flatter yourself."
Grim's lips curved faintly. Not a smile. Something sharper.
"You misunderstand," he said. "I'm not impressed by your strength."
He crouched, bringing himself level with Anor's face. The pressure of his presence intensified not crushing, but precise, like fingers tightening around a throat without cutting off air.
"I'm impressed by your refusal to disappear."
Anor's fingers twitched. His body felt like it weighed a thousand tons, every bone screaming, every breath a negotiation. "If you're going to kill me," he rasped, "do it already."
Grim tilted his head. "Kill you? No."
His gaze flicked briefly to the scars carved into Anor's torso holy marks burned deep, deliberate, ceremonial. Judgement scars.
"They already tried that," Grim continued. "And failed."
Something cold and bitter coiled in Anor's chest.
"I didn't fail," Anor said. "I was cast out."
"Ah," Grim replied lightly. "There's the lie Heaven taught you."
Anor's breath hitched.
Grim rose to his full height. The cavern seemed to recoil from him, shadows drawing inward, as though darkness itself were being pulled into his form.
"Your exile was not punishment," Grim said. "It was containment."
He extended a hand, palm open.
Turquoise light bloomed from his core.
Not fire. Not lightning.
Soul-light.
It spilled outward in slow, deliberate waves, brilliant and unbearable, painting the cavern walls in radiant blue-green glow. Ancient runes older than angels, older than gods ignited across Grim's skin, carving themselves into existence like living scars.
Anor tried to move.
His body refused.
The light wrapped around him, not burning, not tearing lifting. His hunger screamed once, then fell silent, as though something deeper had taken hold of it.
"W–what are you doing?" Anor whispered.
Grim's expression softened not with mercy, but with certainty.
"Removing you," he said, "from their reach."
The turquoise radiance intensified, swallowing Grim's form from the edges inward. His body began to fracture not breaking apart, but folding into light, dissolving as though reality itself were being rewritten around him.
Anor felt his own form unravel.
Weight vanished.
Pain vanished.
The cavern vanished.
For one terrifying moment, there was nothing no up, no down, no self only motion without distance.
Then-
Stillness.
Anor drifted.
Colorless space stretched endlessly around him, layered with faint echoes of sound that were not sound, shapes that were not shape. Threads of pale turquoise light wove through the void like veins through a living body.
The Spirit World.
Grim reformed beside him, whole once more, his presence quieter here no less vast, but restrained, as though this realm obeyed different rules.
"Welcome," Grim said calmly, turquoise light fading from his skin. "This is where souls breathe."
Anor looked down at himself.
For the first time in centuries, his body did not ache.
For the first time-
He was not starving.
Grim turned away, gazing into the endless expanse.
"Rest," the fallen god said. "What comes next will require you to remember who you were… before Heaven decided you were disposable."
The Spirit World pulsed softly around them.
And somewhere far beyond it-
Heaven remained unaware of what it had just lost.