The climb was really tough. The Star-Shattered Peak wasn't made of rock; it was a spine of frozen starlight and obsidian that pierced the very top of the world. Here the air was super thin. Felt like nothing and the silence was so heavy it could crush a guys ribs. The 5.6% Divinity in my blood was screaming, a pitched vibration that made the ice beneath my boots shatter before I even touched it.
I stood on a ledge that overlooked the curve of the world. Everything I had broken—the forests, the mountains, the seas and the deserts—lay beneath a shroud of violet mist. My empire. My cage.
Beside me Isabella was like a pillar of frost her eyes fixed on the aurora that swirled above us like a snake. Elara stood close her fingers blue from the cold. Her gaze was crazy. She was staring at the Aether Gate, a swirling vortex of fire at the summit that shouldn't have been visible to mortal eyes.
"The barrier is thin here " Elara whispered, her breath freezing into needles. "I can hear them, Alaric. The Gods. They're laughing. They think the Seraph is enough to turn you."
"They've always been bad at math " I said. My voice was rough. Seemed to anchor the reality of the peak.
[CURSE STATUS: 5.6% DIVINITY]
[OBJECTIVE: BREACH THE HEAVENLY THRESHOLD.]
As we reached the summit the white fire of the gate condensed. It took the shape of a woman. There was nothing human about her. The Seraph Auriel. She was twelve feet of incandescent light. Six wings, made of what looked like metal unfurled behind her each feather a blade that hummed with a dying star. She had no face— a mask of polished gold that reflected the void in my eyes.
"Turn back Abomination," Auriel's voice wasn't sound; it was an impact that knocked the breath from my lungs. "The Heavens are closed to the filth of the earth. You are a parasite wearing the skin of a prince."
"I'm the parasite you created " I replied, stepping into the circle of her radiance. The skin on my face began to blister. I didn't stop. ". I've come home to feed."
I didn't call the Legions. They couldn't breathe this high. I didn't call the Sisters or the Queens. This was a reckoning. I signaled Isabella and Elara.
Isabella slammed her palms into the obsidian and a wave of cold surged forward trying to freeze the Seraph's light. Elara opened the God-Slayer's Codex, her voice chanting the inverse-psalms that turned the air into a suffocating shroud.
Auriel moved fast. A wing-blade swept through the air shearing the top off a spire. I didn't dodge. I raised my cane, the 5.6% Divinity flaring into a shield that groaned under her celestial fury.
"Viper! Helga!" I growled.
They came from the Void itself. Helga swung her hammer at the Seraph's knees while Viper climbed the mythril wings like a spider, her daggers seeking the joints.
"You think a wall of light can stop a man who has walked through the fire of his soul?" I stepped through the Seraph's aura the violet veins on my chest glowing bright.
I grabbed the edge of Auriel's golden mask. The metal screamed as the Void in my touch began to corrode the gold.
"I don't want your heaven, Auriel. I want to watch it burn."
[Status: The Aether Gate besieged. Auriel's light is flickering.]
[Condition: The threshold of 6.0% is within reach.]
The summit was a mess. The Aether Gate pulsed with a dying radiance its fire turning a bruised purple color. The air smelled of ozone and celestial blood.
Auriel, the Seraph of the Gate was pinned against the swirling vortex. Her six wings were shattered, hanging like glass. The golden mask was torn away revealing a face of perfection.
She was naked her body a towering column of marble. Her breasts glowed with a light and her vagina wept a thick incandescent fluid.
"You... You are a sickness " Auriel gasped. "To touch me... Is to burn."
"I've been burning since the day I was reborn Auriel," I said, stepping into her space.
My dick was thick, rigid and pulsing with heat. I grabbed her by her wings pulling her forward. I forced her legs wide positioning myself at her entrance. The heat of her "purity" tried to blister me. The Void absorbed it.
I drove into her. One brutal thrust that pierced her divinity.
Auriel's scream was a shockwave that cracked the floor. My thickness filled her until her skin began to glow with fractures.
I kept going, a rhythmic pounding that ignored the celestial fire. Every thrust hit her cervix like a depth charge invading her marrow.
"Is this the 'Light' that looks down on the world?" I growled, my teeth sinking into her glowing neck.
Isabella and Elara moved in working on the Seraph's broken form. Isabella's cold touch drew the heat away from me while Elara chanted the final verses of the Codex.
Auriel's resistance collapsed into a search for darkness. Her vagina began to gush coating my thighs. She started thrusting back against me her broken wings flapping.
"Master! I am... Falling! The Heavens... They are far! Fill me!" she shrieked.
The climax was a supernova. I felt the [Seraph's Brand] ignite, feeding on the Aether Gate. I erupted, a scalding torrent of cum flooding her womb.
[Status: Auriel broken. The Aether Gate is unstable.]
[Condition: The bridge to the Heavens is being paved in gold.]
The incandescent light dimmed into a bruised violet. The Aether Gate was a wound, in the sky weeping liquid starlight.
Auriel lay draped across the ruins her six wings charred, blackened husks. Her skin was etched with a spiderweb of veins that pulsed in sync with my own heart.
"The... The bridge is open " she whispered. ". The weight... It will crush the world before you reach the throne."
"The world is already crushed, Auriel. I'm just clearing the debris " I said.
I turned to look at Isabella and Elara. They stood at the edge of the vortex their clothes torn and their skin pale but their eyes burned with a shared madness. They had followed me from the poison of the Valerius household to the roof of the world.
"Master " Elara stepped forward her book glowing so brightly that the leather was starting to smoke. "The count... Its moving."
I felt it then. My Divinity didn't just tick up; it jumped. The essence of the Seraph, the energy of the gate and the total submission of the continent below all came together into a point in my body.
[CURSE STATUS: 5.7%... 5.8%... 5.9%...]
The air around me started to distort. The gravity on the peak. Pebbles and shards of mythril began to float up toward the bleeding gate. My vision broke. I wasn't just seeing the mountain anymore; I was seeing the code of the world. The golden threads that the Gods used to control people.
"Alaric " Isabella whispered, her hand finding mine. Her touch was the thing that felt real in the changing reality. "Don't leave us behind."
"I'm not going anywhere without my shadows " I replied, my voice echoing loudly.
I stepped into the center of the Aether Gate. The violet veins on my chest burst through the skin turning into a crown of thorns that floated above my head.
[CURSE STATUS: 6.0% DIVINITY]
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: THE BRIDGE IS COMPLETE.]
[EVOLUTION INITIATED: SOVEREIGN TO GOD-SLAYER.]
The world below disappeared. The Star-Shattered Peak dissolved. There was no more up or down a vast white space filled with huge indifferent statues of the entities who had started this game.
I wasn't a prince anymore. I wasn't a man. I was a 6.0% error, in their creation a parasite that had grown big enough to swallow the host.
"Wake up you bastards " I growled, the sound of my voice shattering the celestial statue. "The guest of honor has arrived."