The Reign of Thunder
The sky was bleeding.
Rain fell in red streaks, mingled with dust and ash, pouring from a firmament cracked like a divine mirror shattered by a sword strike. The ground vibrated with a monstrous heartbeat—the core of the ritual—and each pulsation shook the collapsed walls of the sanctuary.
Barachiel advanced without slowing down. His wings quivered, drawing electrical arcs in the air that illuminated the ruins. Behind him, the infernal runes extinguished one by one under his footsteps, as if the world refused to endure his presence.
Beside him, Seven observed the fractured corridor. Faces of imprisoned souls lay in the marble, their mouths wide open in silent screams. The air smelled of metal, burned flesh, and fear.
"It reeks of death," Seven dropped dryly.
"No," Barachiel replied, his eyes fixed on the door at the end of the hallway. "It's worse. It's inverted Ether."
They emerged into the central chamber.
The sight froze them.
A vortex of red and black energy levitated in the center, sucking the light from the room. Intertwined bones formed a giant pillar, coursed with purple lightning. Spheres of souls orbited around it, screaming in silence, like a damned choir.
And within this frozen chaos, a silhouette slowly emerged from the black flame.
Beltharion.
His body was a fallen temple. His charred wings still vibrated with residual Ether, and every step he took left a trail of fire. Around him, chains coiled and shattered as he approached.
His laugh spilled into the air, heavy, echoing like thunder in an empty cathedral.
"Finally... the golden rats of Paradise dare to descend into my pit."
Seven dashed forward first, his eyes turning lapis lazuli. But Beltharion had no intention of letting him cross the line. With a blinding movement, the infernal general brought down a gigantic arm covered in magma to crush the young awakened. Seven didn't slow down. He pivoted on himself at the last millisecond, materializing his onyx chains. They wrapped around the demon's colossal forearm. Using Beltharion's momentum and weight against him, Seven gave a sharp pull, propelling the arm into the ground while using it as a launchpad to catapult himself into the air. He landed smoothly in the upper corridor and disappeared into the shadows, continuing his ascent.
Beltharion growled, ready to pursue him, but a golden discharge struck the ground right before his feet.
Barachiel remained. Alone.
The archangel didn't look at him with a warrior's arrogance, but with an unsettling mix of sadness and nostalgia. His aura crackled softly.
"It's been a while, Rael," Barachiel murmured. "Where is Nyrion? Ah, right... his name is Azariel now. Are you two still glued to each other or has that changed?"
Beltharion stopped. His scarlet eyes narrowed. Utter confusion froze his monstrous features.
"What are you talking about?" the demon spat, incomprehension mingled with rage. "Rael? Nyrion? Has your own lightning fried your brain, archangel? I have no idea who you're talking about."
Barachiel lowered his eyes for a moment. He sighed softly, letting the words float in the Ether-saturated air.
"You used to challenge me... You wanted to become stronger than the primordials or the exarchs, and..."
He let out a small, muffled laugh.
"You surely would have made it, given your teamwork back then."
The archangel raised his head. His voice grew deeper, laden with an invisible weight.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not protecting you during the Second Celestial War. I blame myself so much."
Then, slowly, Barachiel's genuine and luminous smile returned to illuminate his face, chasing away the melancholy to make way for the solar warrior.
"So... in memory of the good old days, let's fight one last time."
Beltharion understood nothing of this angel's delusions. But one thing was certain: he was facing a Primordial Archangel. And against a monster of this caliber, half-measures were suicide.
Space flickered to Beltharion's right. Azariel emerged from a dimensional rift, his face cold, his eyes shining with a murderous glint. The two generals looked at each other for a moment. No words were needed.
Beltharion extended his arms. The chains exploded.
"Adventum Inferni… Rex Bellum."
Azariel raised a hand, fracturing the space around them.
"Adventum Inferni… Illusio Mundi."
Reality tore apart with an atrocious howl. The entire arena was swallowed by the expansion of their combined Chao modes. The world turned into an infinite forge of shifting ash and lava, while the sky and walls fragmented into millions of mirrors, reflecting and multiplying Beltharion's hell infinitely. Every reflection burned, every illusion carried the weight of a mountain.
Barachiel narrowed his eyes, feeling the colossal pressure crushing his shoulders. The two demons attacked in unison. Azariel manipulated space with a distortion Curse, creating rifts that teleported Beltharion's magma fists directly into the archangel's blind spots.
Barachiel took a cataclysmic uppercut that sent him smashing through a pillar of bone. He rolled in the flaming dust, coughing, his mouth bleeding. He lay there for a moment, his breath short.
Then, he burst into laughter.
A clear laugh. Raw. Luminescent.
"Not bad... not bad at all...!" he said as he stood back up.
A bolt of lightning split the geometric space of the mirrors, striking right behind him. His wings unfurled, immense, blazing.
"You're the first to send me flying in a long time. And damn it, I love it."
Lightning erupted from his hands. The ground shook. The Primordial Archangel's aura ignited, physically repelling the ashes and cracking the illusions.
**Overdrive – 50%.**
The storm took shape. Lightning serpents coiled around him like celestial dragons. His voice rose, rumbling, imperious, tearing through the generals' Chao mode.
"Arcane: Regnum Fulminis."
Thunder descended from the sky. Dozens of luminous silhouettes, forged of pure energy, surged behind him. A choir of winged judges sang a war hymn. The overwhelming shockwave that followed escaped the cathedral, shaking the entirety of Eryndor and streaking the night with blinding light.
***
This same storm light briefly illuminated the western flank of the city, where the rain seemed to fall upwards.
Nicole Lawyer wiped the blood from her chin, her gaze implacable behind her tactical lenses. The battlefield was nothing more than a smoking crater. Abezethibou, the Scourge, was on his knees, cornered. His perfect body was covered in chemical burns and necrosis. The commander had methodically dissected every single one of his offensives. She was crushing him.
Pushed to his absolute limits, the demon howled. His six shattered halos aligned.
"Adventum Inferni… Divinitas Inversa."
The entire space flipped. Gravity inverted, tearing debris and soldiers from the ground. Light became darkness, sound became silence. But Nicole hadn't blinked. Using her armor's thrusters, she stabilized herself in this chaos, continuing to harass the demon with a deluge of toxins and purified scientific Arcanes. Abezethibou's Chao mode wasn't enough to bridge the tactical gap.
Seeing that he was losing the frontal assault, the Scourge looked for a flaw. He noticed a group of soldiers from the infiltration squad, trapped in the inverted gravitational currents. With a vicious gesture, he projected a wave of slashing Curse straight at them, hoping to force Nicole to intervene.
She didn't move.
Worse, she used the opening left by the demon's attack to dive at him and deliver a concentrated shot of synthetic Ether at point-blank range, pulverizing his left shoulder. The soldiers in the distance screamed under the demon's residual strike.
Nicole landed heavily on a floating section of wall.
"Did you think killing my men would do something to me?" she said, her mechanical voice echoing coldly in the inverted air. "Everyone in this battle got involved in this shit on their own. They are ready to die to stop you."
She reloaded her gauntlet valves with a hiss of toxic gas, her eyes locked on the monster.
"Even if they had been civilians, it wouldn't have affected me. After all, I don't know them."
Abezethibou spat a puddle of black blood. His grin stretched, cowardly and twisted.
"I suppose then... that even the death of this child would mean nothing to you."
Nicole frowned imperceptibly. She followed the demon's gaze. There, amidst the levitating rubble, a few meters from a concrete pillar about to collapse under the gravitational pressure, stood a small silhouette.
Maya.
Nils' little mute sister. Trembling, her eyes wide with terror.
Nicole's brain didn't have time to formulate the slightest logic. Maternal instinct, or perhaps the simple humanity she claimed to have buried, took over.
Her thrusters screamed. She threw herself forward, interposing herself between the little girl and the black attack the demon had just released.
The impact was devastating.
The commander's armor exploded. The spear of inverted Ether pierced her through and through, crushing her ribs and throwing her violently against the destroyed ground.
Nicole coughed up a spray of blood, her vision blurring. She raised a trembling hand toward the little girl... and saw Maya dissipate into wisps of blue smoke.
A hallucination.
Abezethibou's cavernous laugh echoed, amplified by his Chao mode.
"It was a risky bet!" the demon cackled as he approached, savoring his victory. "I inverted my hallucinatory state with yours using Divinitas Inversa! With the density of your Ether, I knew it would only last a single second. Double or nothing!"
Nicole remained on the ground, blood rushing into her throat. She closed her eyes for a moment, a faint laugh escaping her reddened lips.
"Idiot..." she murmured to herself. "How could a mute kid have even made it here..."
Abezethibou raised his hand, concentrating an orb of black energy to finish her off.
"Die, human."
Nicole didn't try to get up. She simply looked up at the inverted sky, a strangely serene smile on her lips.
"Finally back..." she breathed.
The demon froze, confused.
Then the air vibrated.
Not a sound. A pure, absolute pressure that fractured Divinitas Inversa from the inside out.
Liah landed silently in front of him, her daggers glowing with blinding amethyst, her eyes burning with a resolve that was no longer human.
"Arcane: Requiem Resonantia."
The sonic shockwave that exploded pulverized space. It struck Abezethibou with unprecedented violence, sweeping away his Chao mode, shattering his defenses, and sending him flying through dozens of collapsed buildings in a shower of dust.
The Scourge, though stunned and half-broken, quickly emerged from the rubble, snapping his jaw back into place with a sinister crack. This wasn't the end. It was the beginning of the real fight for Liah.