The suspended training room of Eden was no longer a setting, but a predator. Each wall rippled with a breath of silver Ether, an artificial consciousness spying on Seven's slightest flaw. Here, the floor and ceiling faded before an infinite void, where energy fell in silent cascades.
A week had passed since Seven had structured his pure Ether. Or perhaps a month. He was no longer sure. Locked in this pocket dimension to assimilate the Arcanum Caelestis, he had lost all sense of time. He existed only through the prism of pain, repetition, and gravity.
Michel stood in the center, motionless, his presence literally bending the light around him. He no longer shouted. His voice was a groundswell, clinical and martial.
— You are backing up again, Michel noted as the young man collapsed onto one knee, his breath short.
— I have condensed the energy to the maximum... Seven panted, his fingers digging into the crystal platform.
— You are forcing it, the Archangel cut in without an ounce of pity. Ether does not yield to brute force, soldier. This is ballistics, not wrestling. A weapon doesn't "give" anything, it executes. You must become the geometric extension of your own strike.
Suddenly, Michel raised his hand. The air froze. The cascades of energy stopped in mid-air.
— The theory is acquired. Your body can handle it. But your mind remains cluttered, the commander decreed. The drills end here.
A spatial distortion tore through the void a few meters away from them. The silence of the room abruptly grew heavy, crushed by a pressure that had nothing to do with Michel's. A silhouette emerged from the rift.
He floated a few centimeters off the ground. Heavy ceremonial robes of immaculate white and pale gold covered his body. Behind his head slowly spun three intertwined rings, covered in closed eyes. His face, of a cadaverous pallor, was of a terrifyingly cold beauty. His own eyes had neither irises nor pupils: just an abyss sprinkled with distant constellations.
Razielon. The Exarch of the Thrones.
— You are late, Michel pointed out, his jaw clenched.
— And you are presumptuous, Michel, Razielon replied in a voice that echoed directly inside Seven's skull, superimposed upon itself.
The tension between the two entities was palpable, almost electric. Military pragmatism against absolute mysticism.
— I thank you for making the trip, Michel resumed in a dry tone that held more reproach than gratitude. Especially for someone who no longer even has the time to attend the official meetings of the Eden council.
Razielon slowly turned his cosmic face toward the commander of the Archangels.
— Do not thank me, Michel. If I stoop to this little performance for your student, it is not to make up for your shortcomings as a teacher. The Emperor ordered me to do so personally. Without his decree, I would not waste a second of my eternity here.
Michel narrowed his eyes but did not reply. He turned to Seven.
— Razielon is going to confront you with the echo of the threat you will have to face. If you cannot defeat this shadow, you will not survive the world of men.
The Exarch of the Thrones raised a spindly finger. The energy of the room condensed, rejecting the golden glow of Eden for a matte, suffocating aura of blackness. A silhouette rose. A young man, barely older than Seven, with slightly wavy black hair. His face was of an austere beauty, but his eyes froze Seven's blood: pupils of an abyssal black, surrounded by a scarlet ring.
A human, but whose aura weighed heavier than that of demons.
The shadow slowly tilted his head. His obsidian lips parted, releasing a voice that was low, sharp, almost polite, yet as cutting as a sacred scalpel.
— An anomaly, the echo murmured, staring at him with sovereign coldness. I am not here to test you. I am here for an execution.
The shadow simply raised a hand toward the sky. A tattoo on his arm lit up in blood red.
「 LEVITICUS — Ira Sacrificii 」
The strike was launched without warning. A tear in reality, an invisible blade of judgment that sliced through space. Seven reacted on instinct.
— Aegis Hex!
The hyper-dense Ether shield deployed in front of him. It held for a fraction of a second. Then, it cracked with a howl of shattered glass. The invisible blade pulverized the geometric defense and vaporized the platform. Seven was thrown backward, his black wings saving him from amputation just in the nick of time.
The shadow advanced at a calm, relentless pace.
Seven caught himself at the edge of the void. No more useless defenses against an absolute concept. He condensed his pure Ether.
— Aetheris Pilum!
A volley of gray geometric lances shot forward at a blistering speed. The attack was surgical. But the shadow raised his other arm, without even slowing his stride.
「 LAMENTATIONS — Ultimus Luctus 」
A black shockwave slammed into the Ether lances, disintegrating them into dust, before crashing into Seven. It wasn't just a physical impact. It was a surge of remembered grief and bitter regrets. Seven screamed, hurled against the void. His human "self" was crumbling under the gaze of this silent judge.
— Get up, soldier! Michel's voice cracked. Or let him erase your existence.
At the edge of the abyss, his muscles screaming, the shadow advanced for the final blow.
"Ether does not yield to brute force... You must become the geometric extension."
Seven stopped fighting against the crushing pressure of Judgment. He abandoned his guard. If he continued to treat his pure Ether as mere ammunition, he would die. He closed his eyes, feeling the very fabric of the room, the absolute void, the invisible lines of Eden's gravity.
He did not try to push the shadow away. He aligned the frequency of his own core with that of the space surrounding him. His heart pulsed to a new rhythm. Divine. Cold. Mathematical.
The gray Ether did not explode outward. It flowed back inside his veins, transforming his blood into circuits of light. When he opened his eyes again, his pupils shone with a brilliant azure blue, almost sepulchral, yet sovereign. The air around him ignited with a light that judged the judge.
The shadow brought down his hand.
Seven raised his own, crossing them slowly, imposing his own law upon reality.
The gray energy condensed into perfect columns, forming a structure of absolute light.
He uttered no name. The sky of Eden had no need of one.
Columns of pure energy erupted in a cross, sweeping the arena, dispelling the marks of Leviticus and the mists of Lamentations. In a blinding flash, Seven crossed the distance. His wings, bordered by a white fringe, cleaved the air. The impact was absolute. The shadow shattered into a thousand shards of black glass, returning to the void.
Silence returned. Sacred.
Seven remained standing, surrounded by floating fragments. His breathing was calm, his aura stabilized. Razielon observed him for a moment, unfathomable, before disappearing without a word.
Michel approached, staring at the boy with a military pride he struggled to hide.
— You have found your place in divine ballistics, Seven. The training is over.
---
When he finally left the isolation room, he crossed paths with Liah.
Her clothes were torn, her arms covered in bruises, the air around her still vibrating with residual lightning. She too had been through hell. Yet, she stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widening, forgetting her own pain.
She felt the change. This was no longer the tormented boy with the explosive attacks she knew.
— Seven... she whispered. You are... different.
He answered only with a slight nod. His gaze now carried the weight of an unnamed Arcanum.
Meanwhile, far from Eden, in the depths of a forgotten sanctuary, Malakiel observed the altar.
Kael levitated at the center of a circle of black salt, plunged into an artificial sleep. Hundreds of spectral filaments, invisible to the mortal eye, slowly sank into her chest, weaving a cocoon of darkness around her beating heart.
Malakiel raised a hand, letting a single drop of an abyssal liquid fall onto the young girl's forehead. The ritual was advancing.
The contrast was absolute: while Eden forged its heirs, the shadow forged its end.
War was no longer a possibility. It was here.