Chapter 302: Chapter 301: Falling
They walked.
The cat led.
Its paws left no mark in the ash, no sound upon the fractured stone. It moved as though Hell itself parted to allow it passage, the ruins bending subtly with each step.
Golden eyes cut the darkness with unnatural certainty, each flick of its tail a punctuation in the silence.
The silence—gods, the silence. It pressed upon them heavier than the smoke, heavier than the stench.
It was not absence but presence, thick with memory, with ghosts of screams that refused to die. The kind of silence that made the living whisper so as not to awaken it.
Claire finally muttered, unable to restrain herself. "....this cat, this cat is...is doing something to me, charming, does this cat have Charming skills...."
"Please ..Shut your mouth," Lara snapped, though her lips twitched despite herself. "You’ll wake the dead."
"They’re already awake," Claire smirked, nodding at the corpses. "Look at them. Erased, not killed. Almost poetic, don’t you think?"
"Nothing about this place is poetic," Elizabeth cut in, her voice like steel dragged over stone. "Keep formation."
The ruins grew worse the deeper they pressed. Demons not slain but unraveled, their flesh erased as if the hand of some divine artist had swept them from the canvas of existence.
Walls sagged like wax beneath a candle, melted as though a flame had licked their stone into formlessness. Every step carried them into deeper desecration.
Eli’s gaze never left the cat, but her thoughts betrayed her stillness. If even demons can be erased... what chance have we? She bit her tongue before the thought could take root too deeply, but the metallic tang of blood only reminded her of mortality—hers, her companions’, all fragile before the storm.
And then—
A sound. A whimper.
So fragile it nearly blended into the choking air, like a memory refusing to fade.
"Finally," Claire muttered. "Something with a voice."
Lara lifted her gauntlet, palm flashing in silent command. The column halted. Ash swirled around her boots as she stepped forward, blade drawn, her senses straining.
She moved with the grace of one who had fought too long in too many places, her breath steady even as her heart quickened.
Half-buried in soot and bone, she found him.
A fallen angel.
His wings were gone, torn from his back, leaving raw stumps like butchered limbs. His flesh was charred black in places, peeled in others, feathers scattered like dead leaves around him. His lips moved ceaselessly, whispering a mantra of despair.
"No more... no more... forgive me, I’ll not defy... not defy..."
Lara’s gauntlet hesitated an inch above him. She had seen men broken before, comrades shivering after battle, but this was something beyond.
This was not a soldier—it was a ruin wearing flesh. Still, she touched his shoulder.
The body jolted. His eyes snapped open, wild, rolling with terror. "I’m sorry!" he screamed, voice a raw tear. "I won’t defy the Heavens! Don’t burn me! Don’t—"
Claire winced. "He’s louder than you, Lara."
Merlin’s robes whispered over ash as he stepped forward. His face was grave, yet there was something softer there, too—pity, perhaps, though he would never name it.
He raised one hand. Runes lit along his skin, bright as stars. His voice came low, command woven through syllable.
"Be still."
The fallen seized. His body stiffened, breath caught, eyes glassed over like frozen water. Under Merlin’s binding, the hysteria broke, leaving a puppet whose strings belonged to the wizard alone.
Merlin pressed a palm against the fallen’s scorched brow. His lips moved, shaping words older than kingdoms. His tone carried not comfort but inevitability.
"Tell me. What happened here?"
The angel’s lips cracked open, his voice jagged.
"The demi-gods... so many... they came from the sky. White fire. They destroyed everything. Not demons’ fault... not Hell’s fault... mine. The mortal’s fault. The black-haired one. The golden-eyed one."
The silence that followed was sharper than any blade. Each knight felt it stab their chest at once, a single thought flooding every mind.
Atlas.
Claire broke first. "Of course. Its him."she voiced with a bit of pride. Pride that even hell didn’t bind him.
Elizabeth’s glare cut her like a whip. "Quiet."
But Claire leaned forward anyway, eyes narrowing. "What did he did now—Heaven’s excuse for genocide? They scream his name before dying, they whisper it while they rot. He haunted the mortal realm, now he is haunting hell?"
Lara’s knuckles whitened on her hilt. "And yet you still speak it."
Claire smirked thinly. "Better I speak it than choke on it."
Merlin’s frown deepened into a trench. "Demi-gods... here? Why not Heaven’s hosts, if they meant war?" His hand lingered on the angel’s head, but his eyes drifted upward, into memory, into suspicion. He knew the answer even as he asked.
Because demi-gods were not Heaven’s armies. They were loopholes. Weapons of plausible deniability. Heaven could burn Hell to ash, deny war, and wash their hands in righteousness.
Claire spat, her words sharp as steel. "Cowards. Send bastards to do their will, so no one calls it what it is."
The cat padded closer, tail flicking. It sat upon a mound of bone, golden eyes locked on the sky.
Merlin frowned. "You see something, don’t you?"
The cat purred, long and low.
Claire laughed under her breath. "If that cat starts talking, I’m leaving."
"You’ll stay," Elizabeth snapped.
Her hand trembled at her side. She clenched it into a fist, nails biting palm. They think him a curse. A shadow. But I... I saw his light. Her lips remained closed. She had no words that would not betray too much.
She straightened. Her hand drifted to her blade, steel whispering against scabbard. "Enough. Bind the angel if he lives, release him if he does not. We move. We are not alone here."
Merlin nodded, his spell releasing with a sigh. The angel slumped, muttering once more into incoherence.
And then—
The sky ruptured.
A sound like mountains splitting rolled across the layer. Clouds of ash tore open as something ripped down from the fleshy cealing called sky. A streak of white fire blazed across the gloom, trailing brilliance. One. Two. Then many.
Like comets. Like spears hurled by gods themselves.
The demi-gods were falling.
Claire’s grin widened, feral. "Their are still more coming. Something’s wrong, something’s very wrong here...."
Elizabeth’s blade cleared its sheath fully, gleaming in Hell’s darkness. Her voice cut clean, steady but edged with iron. "Form ranks. This layer is about to burn again."
Knights shifted at once, shields locking, boots grinding into ash. Lara set herself at Elizabeth’s flank, her eyes narrowing as fire bled closer.
Merlin’s lips moved, but not to command. To whisper. Words no one was meant to hear.
"And this time... we may burn with it."
The first spear of fire struck. The ground convulsed. Heat scalded the air, searing lungs, buckling stone.
The corpses around them ignited as though drenched in oil, and the very silence screamed as it shattered.
Above them, the heavens bled fire, and demi-gods descended like a rain of judgment.
And the cat—
The cat only purred.
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