Its voice was not sound, but something deeper — a spiritual shriek that tore through the marrow of reality itself. The ancient columns trembled, their centuries of silent devotion cracking under the weight of an unraveling truth. Stained glass burst into radiant shards, each piece erupting into spectral light, like holy memories shattering into oblivion. Sacred tapestries, embroidered with forgotten prayers, ignited with silver flames that slithered like serpents in agony — writhing, twisting, as if trying to escape their own unraveling purpose.
High above, the suspended Heart — the massive stained glass that had pulsed like a beating organ for centuries — hesitated. Its rhythm faltered, as though even the god it represented felt a moment of doubt, of fear, of crumbling certainty.
And there, suspended above the altar where thousands had knelt in reverence or shame, Kaelis hovered.
His wings spanned the air like declarations. One wing of white feathers, radiating golden light — not warmth, but judgmental clarity, absolute and merciless. The other, a grotesque masterpiece: claws curled around rusted gears, shadowed feathers, twisted metal and veined obsidian pulsing with buried wrath.
The air cracked, fractured — not by motion, but by will, by a presence too enormous for the world to bear.
Below, the high priest fell. His limbs betrayed him. His knees slammed into the stone floor. He tried to crawl, to scuttle like a dying insect toward sanctuary.
He whispered prayers — broken, desperate, the words dissolving before they left his lips. The faith that had given him comfort now offered no refuge.
But it was already too late.
Kaelis raised his left hand — slowly, as if lifting a burdened truth.
In his palm, a dark flame sparked to life. It twisted and spasmed, alive with malice — breathing. It roared silently, carrying within it the weight of countless screams — not just of pain, but betrayal, confusion, and the last fragments of sanity.
He cast it.
It struck the priest head-on.
And then came the screams.
Not of the body, but of the soul.
Convulsions twisted the priest into unnatural shapes. His skin bubbled and split. His voice climbed into pitches the human throat should never reach. He begged — not for salvation, but for forgetting. To unsee, to unfeel, to become nothing.
He pleaded to the Heart God.
But the Heart God was already gone.
The flame devoured him — not just flesh, but thought, belief, love, and fear — until nothing remained but hollow horror.
And when it was done, the priest collapsed into a heap of meat and ashes. A soul reduced to dust.
Kaelis watched, unmoved. Not cold — empty.
He had felt it all. The priest's final moments passed through him like echoes in a hollow chamber: childhood regrets, secret sins, memories of lost lovers, guilt buried beneath layers of holy duty.
He had seen it all.
But felt nothing.
Kaelis was no longer human.
Pain could no longer breach the armor of his truth. Doubt could no longer whisper in his ear. Mercy had long since become a ghost — a forgotten face in a long-dead dream.
He looked down.
Beneath his feet, deep under the onyx floor, lay the Inverted Cathedral — a fortress of hypocrisy, an empire of blood disguised as salvation.
Profane.
Hidden.
Unforgivable.
Kaelis extended his hand.
A lance of divine contradiction — golden and shadowy — erupted downward. The ground cracked with the scream of stone being unmade. The air howled. The light dimmed.
And the Inverted Cathedral exploded.
It collapsed inward — like a dying god exhaling its last prayer. Walls melted, pillars screamed, stained glass burned into ash-light, and the whole structure fell into the Sky Below, dragging centuries of corrupted faith with it.
A thunderclap echoed across the floating city — a final cry of ruin that made the heavens shiver.
--------------------------------------------------
A few minutes before the ruin of the Inverted Cathedral.
The distorted bells had rung. Their sound warped, sickly — like laughter filtered through grief.
And yet, the city celebrated.
Trumpets echoed across bridges of light. Petals rained from towers. Incense poured into the air like memory. Songs of devotion, of salvation, of rebirth.
They believed.
They believed the ritual had worked.
The vessel had awakened.
They did not understand the vessel had awakened… yes.
But what emerged was not submission.
What woke was judgment.
The earth cracked. The sky dimmed. A scream tore through the clouds.
And then — the explosion.
A sound like the shattering of reality. Like a heart breaking loud enough for the world to hear.
And all illusions were erased.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Angel flew over the city that was once sacred, but now he saw it as profane.
Beneath him, the once-majestic towers and golden spires shimmered faintly — not with divine grace, but with the echo of a lie so ancient it had been mistaken for truth. The sacred chants that once filled the air were gone, replaced now by silence fractured only by distant weeping and the flickering of dying fires.
Monumental wings — beautiful and corrupted — moved slowly, as if pushing through the weight of all the city's sins. His right wing, composed of light, shimmered like the last ember of a dying sun — the fading memory of a hope that had long since bled out. The left, a jagged construct of twisted shadow and cruel steel, pulsed with a hunger that could never be sated. It dragged behind him like a curse chained to his very soul, as if feeding on the suffering it left in his wake.
From above, The Angel saw the truth in painful, blinding clarity.
The city had never been made of stone.
It was built of lies.
Children branded by blessings that, when seen through his eyes, bled poison from their markings. They laughed and played, unaware that every word they spoke was a hymn to corruption. Devotees marched in processions with blood under their nails — remnants of the innocent they had silenced in the name of piety. Righteous men, cloaked in white and gold, had watched injustice fester like rot in a wound... and said nothing. Their silence was not ignorance. It was cowardice.
And Kaelis — no longer flesh, no longer soul — had grown impatient with all of it.
With a soundless gust, he descended.
He landed before the White Cathedral, the very heart of the city's divine farce. The plaza was crowded. People had gathered, sensing something, perhaps hoping for salvation — or simply clinging to ritual in the face of unraveling reality.
Some prayed, chanting trembling phrases like rusted hymns, desperation clinging to their throats.
Others sang, voices quaking, melodies breaking apart like stained glass dropped from heaven.
Some knelt, weeping openly, not in faith — but in fear.
And Kaelis walked among them like a god of endings. Every step he took warped the world. The ground beneath his feet cracked, not physically, but metaphysically — reality folding in on itself, exposing raw truth. Stone turned to ash. Light dimmed. Faces twisted with confusion and terror as if suddenly seeing their own reflection and not recognizing it.
Everything around him unraveled — not with violence, but with the calm certainty of a truth that could no longer be denied. The illusion of sanctity bled out of the White Cathedral like smoke from a dying candle.
Some ran, tripping over one another, eyes wide with an animal panic.
Others begged, words tangled with sobs, promising anything, everything — prayers, sacrifices, obedience — if only they might be spared.
Some raised weapons — swords, spears, even relics blessed by false miracles.
But nothing helped.
The Angel raised his left hand, fingers curling slowly as if stirring the very essence of punishment. From his palm, black flames emerged — not like fire, but like hatred given form. They hissed with a thousand voices, each one screaming a lie the bearer had once believed.
Those who had lied to themselves — about their virtue, about their loyalty, about their innocence — were devoured.
The flames crawled up their bodies like sentient serpents, whispering their sins back to them, louder and louder, until the screaming mouths could no longer deny it. Eyes boiled. Flesh turned to tar. Their very souls blistered in torment, flaking away layer by layer, until nothing but charred husks remained — still kneeling, as if clinging to their last delusion.
The Angel did not stop.
He raised his right hand now — and from it, golden flames drifted like slow embers caught in still wind. They moved gently, almost reverently. Those flames did not scream. They did not burn. They accepted.
They found the few — the painfully few — who had suffered quietly, who had spoken truth but been ignored, who had bled for the light while the world fed darkness.
The flames touched them, and they ceased.
No pain. No violence.
Their bodies crumbled into soft ash, faces serene, released from a world that had betrayed them. It was a death without agony. A final forgiveness — quiet, like a lullaby whispered at the end of time.
The Angel judged without hesitation. His eyes saw no age, no gender, no title.
Man. Woman. Child. Devotee. Sinner. Saint.
It didn't matter.
All had played a part in the theater of sanctity — some as actors, some as scriptwriters, and others merely as silent spectators who never dared leave the stage.
And the play ended there.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Angel walked through the streets of the floating city — now unmasked, laid bare in its decay. Each step made the world around him tremble, not from physical force, but because he was a mirror no one wished to face. His mere presence tore away veils, shattered masks, and exposed what was most intimate and rotten within people.
The city screamed without knowing why. Those who survived fled, tried to run to nearby cities, or hid inside their homes… But the Angel saw them all.
The Angel understood.
And judged each one.
At the staircase before an alley, the Angel saw two figures.
A woman. Still young, dressed simply. Her eyes were wide open — not with fear, but with pleading. Beside her, a girl of maybe seven years, holding her mother's hand, eyes red from crying, clutching tightly to a small golden idol of the Heart God.
"M-mercy... please..." the mother whispered.
She didn't try to run.
She didn't try to lie.
She didn't try to pray.
She merely placed herself between the Angel and the child, as if her fragile body could shield against the wrath of a divine being.
The Angel stopped before them.
He looked into the mother's eyes — and saw what she had hidden.
She had denounced an innocent man months ago, only to protect her position among the devout. She knew he would be executed. She knew it was a lie. She never looked back.
The girl... had grown up within that faith, indoctrinated, marked with blessings carved into her flesh — now glowing red, revealing their profane origin.
Truth burned in the guts of the moment.
The Angel raised his right hand. Golden flames emerged gently, almost beautifully — like a flower blooming at dawn. They did not roar. They did not scream. They simply floated toward the two.
The mother pulled her daughter close, shut her eyes.
The girl wept in silence, but did not scream.
The flames wrapped around them like a warm blanket.
And then… nothing.
When they dissipated, only soft ashes remained on the stone step. There was no pain. No scream. It was a silent death — almost poetic.
But in the air, sorrow lingered. A lament. As if even the wind knew this had been an inevitable tragedy.
--------------------------------------------------
In an alley behind the market, the stench of burned flesh was already beginning to fill the air. He walked among the wreckage, stepping over bodies — the remains of lies that had once been lives.
There, between broken crates and overturned cans, a man was hiding.
Old.
Skin stained by years of dust. Torn garments. He didn't pray. He didn't scream. He only cowered — eyes wide like a cornered animal.
The Angel stopped in front of him.
"I'm not like them..." the beggar murmured, spitting blood between broken teeth."I never had power... never had anything..."
The Angel said nothing.
But his eyes — gold and black — turned slowly, like living mirrors, and reflected the man's past.
Years before, the beggar had murdered a man in cold blood. A traveler from another floating city. He stabbed him seven times out of sheer sadism, out of pure rage and hatred for how his life had become miserable after abandoning his family — and living like a rat ever since.
The Angel extended his left hand.
The black flames were born ravenous, growling like a beast that recognized its meal.
The beggar screamed — a distorted, desperate sound.
The flames didn't kill him immediately.
They entered him.
Burned from the inside — through memories, nerves, convictions. Each sin screamed with its own voice inside the man's mind. He tried to scratch himself, tear off his skin, gouge out his own eyes.
It didn't matter.
The flames tore him apart from spirit to flesh.
When he finally collapsed, dead, his body was a black, twisted husk, and the air around still pulsed with the echoes of the agony he had endured.
-----------------------------------------------------
In the outer courtyard where the Ivory Cathedral stood, a group of devout men and women had gathered — all clad in black robes, faces covered, sacred symbols hanging from their necks.
They had not fled.
They were waiting for him.
"Blasphemer..." one of them growled, voice drunk with blind faith. "You are not the Heart. You are a plague."
"We are the true flame," said another, raising a staff carved from the bones of martyrs.
"We carry the light... the Heart."
The Angel stared at them. Not as enemies. As lies made flesh.
To his eyes, their bodies shimmered with mystical scars — marks of pacts, of sacrifices. Among them were traitors, torturers, inquisitors disguised as saints.
"The light..." the Angel said, his voice sounding like thunder in a sealed chamber, "...does not hide behind shadows."
Then, without warning, he released both hands.
Black flames erupted like violent rivers, wrapped in living shadows. They slithered across the ground, crawled up the legs of the devout, entered through mouths frozen in screams, through eyes wide with terror.
One by one, they began to convulse.
Blood streamed from their ears. Limbs twisted in impossible directions. The ground drowned in roars of dread.
They cried out divine names.
Kaelis heard them all.
And did not answer.
One of them fell to his knees, begging. His skin was already smoking. Flesh peeled from bone like burning paper.
"Why... why us...?"
"Because you believed faith made you untouchable..."
"But faith... without truth... is only power wielded as a blade."
The last of them fell.
And then, silence.
Only black ash remained in the courtyard.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Angel entered the cathedral at the city's center.
His golden and dark eyes spun with living runes — glyphs alive with ancient magic, twisting like serpents of judgment within his irises. Every symbol glowed with meaning older than time, written in a language that punished the soul just for recognizing it. Anyone who dared to meet his gaze found their thoughts fraying, their faith unraveling into madness.
It once stood as a monument to divinity — grand arches, silver domes, and stained-glass saints suspended in eternal praise. But now, its sanctity was hollow, its walls nothing more than ornate graves.
Inside, the devotees waited.
Armed.
Kneeling.
Insane.
Their eyes wide and hollow, gleaming with fanaticism twisted into psychosis. Some whispered prayers to gods that no longer listened. Others grinned with broken teeth and whispered verses as if their minds were shattering syllable by syllable. Many clutched weapons — relics, staves, blades carved with divine scripture — trembling in their hands not from anticipation, but from terror they dared not acknowledge.
They fled when they saw him.
They prayed.
They screamed...
Some ran for the side exits, tripping over fallen pews, clawing at one another like rats in a sinking ship. Others collapsed to their knees, shaking, mouthing incomplete prayers as their minds fractured under the weight of guilt and divine exposure. A few, too far gone, laughed — shrill, high-pitched laughter — as they began to stab themselves in desperation, as if spilling their own blood might erase what they had become.
But no prayer would save them.
No escape.
No redemption.
The Angel raised his hands before his face.
Slowly. Deliberately. As if the act itself carved a line between past and present.
From the space between his palms, two swords emerged — born not from metal, but from essence.
One made of golden energy — pure, blinding, holy. Its light hummed with the sound of children's laughter, long-lost hymns, and memories of a world that might have been good.
The other, made of black fire — thick, violent, consuming. It whispered with every sin ever hidden, every prayer used as a mask, every innocent crushed beneath robes of sanctity. It was not simply flame. It was curse incarnate.
The cathedral air twisted.
Walls groaned. Time itself seemed to slow. Candles flickered backwards. Shadows bled upwards along the walls like reverse ink stains. A pressure filled the sanctuary — not physical, but existential — a choking weight that made even breathing feel like sacrilege.
Kaelis spoke.
His voice was calm. Unshaken. But within it was absolute judgment — not rage, not vengeance… just the cold, inescapable authority of truth.
"You used the name of light to perpetuate darkness."
The words hit harder than any weapon — some fell where they stood, eyes rolling back, unable to withstand the echo of what they'd become.
"You lied to the world and to yourselves."
Cries erupted. Denials. Sobs. Blood poured from mouths as the weight of truth clawed through their insides like broken glass.
"And now… You will be judged."
Kaelis crossed the swords.
The moment the blades met, the wind itself was cut — not blown away, not redirected. Erased.
Sound ceased. A silence so total it was deafening, pressing into the skull like a scream held just beneath the surface of the mind.
And then — the explosion.
But it was not an explosion of force.
It was an unmaking.
Golden and black flames erupted in concentric waves — spiraling like celestial storms. They did not burst outward. They devoured the world inwards.
Walls ignited, not from heat, but from truth too unbearable to exist any longer.
The flame crawled into hidden rooms, where tortured innocents had once wept.
Through cells, where the righteous had rotted in chains.
Through secret passages, where priests had whispered the names of ancient gods while bathing in stolen light.
Everything burned.
There were no screams anymore — not because they did not cry out, but because the very concept of sound had died within those sacred halls.
Judgment spread like a plague down every corridor, beneath every altar, across every relic. The city's underground — once thought untouchable — was exposed, punished, cleansed. Souls shrieked silently as they were unraveled into ash and shadow.
No one escaped.
No god intervened.
Nothing remained.
Not even echoes.
The floating city had been purified… completely. And with that final act, the line between heaven and hell blurred into smoke.
-----------------------------------------------------
Above the skies, The Angel hovered alone.
The heavens, once so full of silent judgment and divine wrath, now seemed infinitely empty. There was no song of triumph. No voice of approval. Only the void, stretching above him — cold, uncaring.
His blood, once golden and dark — vibrant with celestial rage and abyssal curse — began to change. The divine glow faded. The cursed shimmer died out. Slowly, steadily, the blood in his veins turned red again — human, fragile, mortal.
The runes across his skin — ancient glyphs of command and revelation — unraveled like whispers forgotten by time. One by one, they faded into nothing, taking with them the remnants of a power that had once made the skies tremble.
His wings drooped.
What had once been brilliant — a terrible beauty, one wing blazing like hope, the other like judgment — now lost all majesty. The glow dimmed. The feathers cracked. Even light refused to reflect off them anymore. One wing twitched feebly, as if trying to hold on to the last breath of divinity. The other simply hung, tattered like a banner after war.
Kaelis looked to the other floating cities on the horizon.
So many.
Still standing.
Still full of people.
Full of sins.
His eyes trembled — not with hatred, but with exhaustion. There were more lives to judge. More lies to burn. But… his body could no longer endure. His limbs felt distant, as though submerged in ice. His thoughts began to echo and slip away, each one harder to catch than the last. Even rage had abandoned him. What remained was… silence.
His mind threatened to shatter under the weight of what he'd done.
In his final act, the Angel conjured a weapon — a sword forged from both the sacred and the profane. It radiated contradiction: warmth and decay, hope and despair, beauty and revulsion. A weapon fit for no man and no god. A weapon of truth.
He cast it at the city's heart.
The blade became a streak across the sky — a final sentence written in burning contradiction.
Destruction was absolute.
The explosion swallowed the holy city, erupting like the collapse of heaven itself. The force rippled outward — like thunder tearing through glass — and all the other floating cities shook violently in response, their foundations trembling beneath centuries of lies.
And then it fell.
The once-sacred city, now nothing but ruins and flame, began to sink into the Sky Below — a void that awaited like a grave carved into the underside of existence.
The Angel's body finally reached its limit.
The final rune in his eyes flickered… and died.
The sacred and the profane abandoned him completely. His blood was just blood now — red, tired, vulnerable.
His wings turned white, no longer divine. Just wings. Broken, feathered limbs unable to hold him aloft. They flapped once. Weakly. Then gave up.
His entire body went numb.
He could no longer tell if he was falling, floating, or simply ceasing to exist.
So he let go.
And he fell...
And fell...
And kept falling, past clouds torn by fire, past the smoldering remains of the city he had just judged, into the deepest chasm of the Sky Below, where no light lived.
Above him, the floating cities vanished.
Then the ruins disappeared.
And then, even the sky was gone.
There was only darkness.
No stars.
No sounds.
No gravity.
Just Kaelis, alone with his thoughts… and even those were beginning to fragment.
He couldn't move. Couldn't even feel his breath. The sensation of falling was gone — replaced by a slow drift, like a soul detaching from the world.
Even fear abandoned him.
The mind had no more strength to fear the void.
"I guess… this is it?"
His voice echoed nowhere. Not even he could hear it.
"This is how I die? Falling into the infinite void?"
He raised his hand with great effort.
His fingers trembled. Stained red. He stared at them, as if trying to remember what they used to look like before they held a weapon. Before they ended lives.
And he felt it — not on the skin, but deep in the marrow of his spirit.
The weight.
The blood of innocents.
Of devotees.
Of children.
Of liars. Of saints. Of people who never even knew why they were dying.
It clung to him, not as punishment, but as truth.
And truth was heavier than any blade.
The thought didn't leave.
It burned.
He hadn't wanted this.
He didn't want to be a killer. Didn't want to burn families, silence prayers, destroy everything.
He had only wanted… to do the right thing.
To be human.
To live an honorable life — to protect, to love, to hope…
But that path had closed the moment he stepped into the Inverted Cathedral.
Now he had nothing.
He had judged an entire city.
Thousands dead by his hand.
And now he fell with them.
Forever.
Tears broke free.
Silent in the darkness. No one to witness them. No one to absolve them.
Just grief — pure and endless — floating with him into the void.
And then...
She was there.
Falling beside him.
A shape made of light — soft and divine, yet flickering like a candle against the wind. Her arms wrapped around him without a word, and Kaelis didn't resist.
He couldn't.
He didn't have the strength to fight compassion anymore.
Her body glowed with warmth, but her eyes... her eyes were shadow, bleeding black tears — the kind only a god could shed.
"You… did what I could not. Thank you."
Her voice was soft, broken — not divine in its strength, but in its sorrow.
"They chained my body and soul after deceiving me. All I had left was this weak manifestation of part of my soul."
Kaelis braced himself for pain, for madness. For that old pressure her presence used to bring.
But it didn't come.
There was no agony.
No mind-rending light.
Only her.
Only warmth.
And through it — her emotions bled into him:
Sadness. Pain. Regret…
But above all…
Compassion.
"Kaelis. You survived all my trials in the Inverted Cathedral and destroyed it completely, releasing my last living soul."
"But letting you die here… would not be fair to all that you and the young Hadriel endured."
From the ether, she summoned something.
A silver dagger — the very one Kaelis had lost somewhere in the Cathedral's endless torment.
She placed it in his hand.
Closed his fingers over it, gently.
Guided it to his chest.
The same dagger he had once used to pierce her heart.
"Live, suffer, love, and destroy everything you judge as worthy. Accept your divinity and accept me as your deity… And prepare for the merciless and unjust world you will live in."
And just like that…
She was gone.
Vanished into dust, scattered like a prayer left unanswered.
Kaelis was alone once more.
And then… the spell whispered:
-----------------------------------------------------
[You have slain a Cursed Titan, the fragmented soul of the Heart God.]
[Your body has become the vessel for a deity's power.]
[Your soul bears the deity's mark.]
[Awaken, Kaelis! Your nightmare is over.]
[Prepare for evaluation...]