The heavens cracked like shattered glass.
Lightning carved jagged scars across the storm-black sky, each arc illuminating the Imperial City below in ghostly flashes of gold and white. The towers of the palace shimmered like bones of a dead god, wrapped in stormlight. The streets were silent. The air was still—too still.
Then it began.
From the eye of the storm, something descended.
A celestial being—neither man nor woman, but something beyond definition. Their form was swathed in robes of living radiance, light cascading from their skin like falling stars. Wings of shimmering energy unfurled behind them, vast and endless, stretching from horizon to horizon.
With every step downward, the world seemed to recoil. Stone trembled. Trees bent. The very fabric of reality twisted around their presence.
They were not simply powerful.
They were law incarnate.
They spoke, and their voice rolled like thunder over the city.
"Kael of the Abyss. Your reign is an affront to divine order. Kneel, and you may yet be spared."
On the balcony of the Imperial Palace, Kael stood alone—hands clasped behind his back, his crimson eyes reflecting the approaching divine.
He did not flinch.
He did not blink.
And then he laughed.
Not out of arrogance. Not out of bravado.
But because this moment was long overdue.
From the beginning, when he tore out the heart of the old order, when he bound empresses, bent heroes, and reshaped nations with nothing but a whisper—he had known.
The gods would come.
They had watched in silence as he rose. Whispered through prophets. Tugged the strings of pawns. But they had not intervened—until now.
Now that it was too late.
Kael stepped to the balcony's edge, the wind tearing through his coat. He looked up into that divine face and met it with cold curiosity.
"You speak as though I should tremble before you," he said, voice calm. "Tell me… why?"
The divine being's radiant eyes narrowed, the light in them flickering like dying suns.
"You stand against the will of the heavens. You have walked paths forbidden to mortals. You are an anomaly, a blasphemy, a stain upon the world."
Kael's smirk was a blade.
"And?"
A pause. And then the being's voice boomed, heard in every street, every room, every trembling heart.
"You will be erased."
And then they moved.
Faster than thought. A blur of divine judgment, a spear of pure celestial fire hurtling toward Kael's heart.
Time froze.
To the world, it was an instant.
But to Kael—it was a choice.
Evade. Counter. Endure.
The Kael of the past would have dodged. Calculated. Stayed one step ahead.
But this Kael… was something more.
With a flick of his wrist, the air fractured—space shattered like crystal. A surge of abyssal energy, blacker than night, met the divine strike head-on.
The resulting explosion rippled across the city like the roar of creation itself. The palace walls screamed. Marble crumbled. Statues cracked and fell.
From the dust, Kael stepped forward. Unscathed.
The celestial hovered above the crater in the courtyard, their expression unreadable—yet something flickered behind their eyes.
Surprise.
Kael brushed dust from his coat, like a man brushing away a leaf. "You'll have to do better than that."
The sky ignited.
They clashed again.
A storm of divine light collided with abyssal force in the air above the city. Gold met void. Fire met shadow. Each blow reshaped the heavens.
From below, the city watched.
Seraphina stood at the steps of the palace courtyard, her robes soaked in rain, her eyes locked on the sky.
Lucian stood beside her, fists clenched. "That thing… it's not even human."
Her gaze did not waver. "Neither is he."
And they knew it was true.
Kael had always been more. His mind, his will, his ambition—they were never mortal things. But now, as he danced with a being of divine fire, they saw what he had become.
He wasn't becoming a god.
He was becoming their end.
Above, the divine being screamed in fury. Their voice became a thousand voices, each echoing across the world.
"You were never meant to rise!"
Kael's response was a quiet laugh. Not mocking—certain.
"You mean you never thought I could."
He raised a hand, and with it came authority.
Not power. Not strength.
Authority.
The kind that made angels hesitate. The kind that made laws of creation unravel. The kind that rewrote reality not by force, but by right.
The celestial faltered.
And that's when Kael struck.
His form blurred—no longer bound by gravity or physics. Abyssal chains erupted from the air around him, anchoring the divine in place. Their wings flared as they struggled, but Kael was already upon them.
They tried to speak—to call upon more power, to summon the wrath of higher gods—but Kael's hand reached into their chest.
Not into flesh—but into essence.
The divine screamed.
"You… what are you…?"
Kael leaned in. His whisper drowned out thunder.
"A godkiller."
And he crushed their soul.
The light died.
The celestial's form unraveled—ribbons of gold fading into ash. Their scream echoed across eternity, and then—
Silence.
No lightning. No storm.
Just silence.
The sky cleared slowly, the stars above trembling in their constellations. Somewhere far beyond the world, thrones shook.
In the palace courtyard, no one moved.
Not even Seraphina.
A god had come.
And Kael had destroyed it.
The priests of the Nine Orders fell into despair.
The High Oracle tore out her own eyes.
In the temples of the divine, flames extinguished themselves.
The people did not cheer. They could not.
They only watched Kael descend from the sky like a shadow fallen from heaven.
He said nothing.
He didn't need to.
From this day forward, there would be no doubt.
He was not just ruler. Not just tyrant. Not just conqueror.
He was greater.
He was the thing gods feared in the dark.
And across the veils between worlds, the true gods—those who had sent their emissary—watched in stunned silence.
They had sent judgment.
And received a warning.
In a chamber of starlight beyond the mortal realm, seven thrones sat beneath an endless sky.
On one, a being of infinite light trembled.
"He should not have been able to do that," it whispered.
Another voice answered, cold and ancient. "We delayed too long."
A third spoke, its voice made of molten stone. "This is no longer a mortal crisis. He has touched the Beyond."
Then the fourth, a voice of song and sorrow: "He has become a pivot in fate. If left unchecked…"
"…He will ascend."
The fifth voice, deepest of them all, rumbled with finality.
"Then we must descend."
The decision echoed through the cosmos.
The war had truly begun.
To be continued...