The stratosphere burned gold and shadow where the two brothers clashed once more.
Emperion's golden-armored fist had already punched straight through Asterial's chest, the arm buried to the elbow in a spray of divine blood that hissed and evaporated into black mist the instant it left the wound. Six wings—now pitch-black, edges frayed and leaking raw void—thrashed behind Asterial like torn sails in a storm.
The silver-haired fallen angel hung impaled in mid-air, silver pupils blazing with fury, blood running from the corner of his mouth in thick rivulets that stained his long hair crimson at the tips.
"You never learn, brother," Emperion growled, voice echoing like distant thunder across the thin air.
His three pairs of radiant wings flared wider, each feather edged in living light, the golden armor on his towering frame gleaming untouched. "This fate was written before your first breath. The souls below will feed the resurrection. It is necessary."
Asterial laughed once— Black energy crackled around the hole in his chest where Emperion's arm remained lodged.
"Necessary?" He spat blood that turned to obsidian shards mid-fall.
"You call slaughter necessary? They have no mana—only terror awaiting them. I will not let you turn their world into a harvest field for that monster we sealed together!"
With a roar that split the upper atmosphere, Asterial clamped his remaining hand around Emperion's forearm, claws of pure darkness sinking through the golden gauntlet.
The black wings beat once, hard enough to create a sonic boom that rolled downward like a physical wave, shaking the clouds far below. He wrenched himself forward along the impaling arm, driving the wound deeper, forcing their faces inches apart.
Emperion's eyes widened behind the hood for the first time. "Fool—"
Asterial headbutted him. The crack of forehead against golden helm rang out like two mountains colliding.
A shockwave of mixed light and void exploded outward, ripping a visible tear through the stratosphere itself—auroras of gold and black spiraling away in opposite directions.
Emperion staggered backward through empty sky, wings flaring to steady himself, but Asterial did not let go.
He used the embedded arm as leverage, swinging his entire body upward and driving a knee straight into Emperion's armored jaw.
The impact lifted the golden angel higher, stars wheeling behind him. Cracks spider-webbed across the perfect golden helm.
Emperion snarled, finally ripping his arm free with a wet, sucking sound that left a gaping tunnel of darkness in Asterial's torso. Black blood poured out in a torrent, yet the fallen angel did not fall. Instead the void around the wound began to knit itself back together, slower than before, the missing arm still absent but the stump now writhing with fresh shadow tendrils.
They circled each other now, thousands of kilometers above the planet, two specks of impossible power against the curve of Earth. Below them the golden sigil in the sky turned faster, as if feeding on their rage.
"You are already broken," Emperion said, raising his blood-slicked hand. A new lance of condensed golden light began to form above his palm, twice the size of the one before, spinning with enough force to warp gravity around it. "Look at yourself. One arm. Wings of ruin. You cannot stop what must come."
Asterial's silver eyes narrowed. The black wings folded halfway, then snapped open again, releasing a pulse of pure negation that made the forming lance flicker. "Then watch me try." He lunged.
They met in a blur.
Emperion thrust the half-formed lance forward like a spear. Asterial twisted mid-flight, the black wings wrapping around himself like a cloak of night, and the golden weapon only grazed his side—yet even that graze carved a smoking trench across his ribs. He countered instantly, manifesting a blade of solidified shadow in his remaining hand and slashing upward. The blade met golden armor and bit deep; sparks of divinity and void exploded outward in a fireworks display visible from the ground as a sudden, unnatural aurora.
Emperion backhanded him. The blow sent Asterial tumbling end over end through the upper atmosphere, black feathers shedding like ash. Before he could recover, Emperion was on him again—teleporting in a streak of gold, grabbing the fallen angel by the throat and slamming him downward at impossible speed.
They broke the sound barrier repeatedly, the air igniting around them in plasma trails.
The impact when they hit the edge of the mesosphere was cataclysmic. A dome of golden light and black void expanded for hundreds of kilometers, momentarily brighter than the sun. Shockwaves raced downward, rattling the golden sigil itself and sending new tremors across the ruined mountains far below where the main character still rode.
Asterial twisted free at the last second, using the momentum to spin behind Emperion. He drove his shadow blade straight through the golden angel's back, aiming for the spine between the six radiant wings. Emperion roared in pain for the first time—the sound so deep it vibrated through the planet's ionosphere.
He reached back, seized Asterial by the wing joint, and flung him away with enough force to send the fallen angel hurtling toward the planet's surface like a black comet.
Asterial corrected mid-fall, wings flaring wide, blood streaming from every wound. His silver hair whipped wildly around his furious face. "I changed fate once before, Emperion," he shouted upward, voice carrying on winds that should not exist at this altitude. "I will do it again—even if I have to drag you down with me!"
Emperion hovered above, one hand pressed to the bleeding hole in his back, golden blood dripping upward against gravity before evaporating.
The cracks in his helm were spreading. His three pairs of wings trembled with power.
"Then come," he answered, voice cold and final. Another lance—larger, darker at its core—began to manifest in both hands this time. "Let us finish what our war began."
--------------------------
The stratosphere ignited in a final, blinding crescendo as Emperion's body erupted with divine light.
A pillar of pure golden radiance exploded outward from his core, washing the upper atmosphere in searing white-gold. His form swelled violently—bones lengthening, armor expanding, wings stretching until the golden angel towered a hundred meters tall, a living colossus suspended above the curve of the planet. Cracks in his hood sealed shut.
The hole Asterial had carved through his back knitted together in threads of liquid sunlight. Power rolled off him in visible waves, distorting the thin air into heat mirages.
"Try to protect them now," Emperion boomed, voice shaking the heavens like judgment itself.
He raised one colossal arm in a throwing stance, fingers splayed.
Between his palm and the sky, a colossal circular pattern ignited—kilometers wide and thick, a spinning chakram of molten gold-brown energy edged in burning runes that shifted and realigned with every rotation. The inner rings pulsed with ancient sigils, the outer edge serrated with blades of condensed starfire.
It screamed as it spun, trailing auroras of light that painted half the planet in false dawn.
Asterial's silver eyes widened mid-air. 'This bastard still has this much mana left… hah.'
He snapped his remaining arm wide, black wings flaring to their full ruined span. The chakram left Emperion's hand with a deafening whoosh that tore a visible scar through the clouds below. It crossed the distance in a heartbeat—
BOOOM.
It slammed into Asterial's outstretched hands. He caught it—clasped it—between bloodied palms, the impact hurling him backward like a meteor. He skidded across the upper atmosphere, heels carving glowing trenches through the air itself, teeth gritted so hard they cracked.
The spinning wheel burned white-hot against his skin, turning bright crimson as hellish black flames erupted along its edge. Then, in a single violent flash, both the chakram and Asterial vanished from sight.
Emperion blinked, shrinking rapidly back to his usual three-and-a-half-meter height, golden armor steaming. "What?"
A low, mocking voice cut through the silence behind him.
"Searching for me?"
The crimson-black chakram reappeared in Asterial's single remaining hand, spinning viciously, wreathed in roaring hellflame that licked across the golden armor like acid. It slammed into Emperion's chest plate with a wet, corrosive splash. The golden metal hissed and bubbled where it touched.
"Hellflame?!" Emperion roared, staggering.
"How?! We stripped that power from you—!"
Asterial's bloodied lips curled into a savage grin. "Just shut up."
He floated back a few meters, silver hair whipping in the thin wind. His fingers danced through three rapid hand signs—ancient, forbidden patterns that left trails of black-violet light. Crimson chains erupted from nowhere, lashing around Emperion's entire body in an instant.
The flaming chakram fused to his chest, corroding through armor and radiant wings alike, eating away divine essence with black fire.
The golden sigil hanging in the sky above Earth suddenly flared open like a hungry maw. A vortex of swirling gold and black tore downward. Emperion's eyes widened in fury as the chains dragged him upward, wings thrashing uselessly.
"Arghhh—!"
His roar stretched into a fading echo as the sigil swallowed him whole. The portal snapped shut with a thunderclap that rattled the planet's ionosphere.
Asterial hovered alone for a long moment, chest heaving. Then his remaining arm began to disintegrate—silver particles peeling away from his fingertips, drifting upward like glowing ash. His black wings frayed at the edges, dissolving into the same shimmering dust. He looked down at the ruined world far below, at the flattened mountains, the smoke, the distant screams still rising on the wind.
"Heh… who thought it would come to this."
He let himself fall slowly, wings gone, body breaking apart piece by piece. When his feet finally touched the scarred earth , he crumpled to his knees, then lay flat on his back, staring up at the sky where the golden sigil still turned.
"This… will be my final gift to mankind."
A soft, tired smile touched his lips.
"Please Survive."
Then Asterial exploded—not violently, but gently—into a storm of silver-black particles that caught the wind and scattered in every direction. The shimmering motes turned invisible as they spread, carried on currents no mortal eye could follow. They drifted across oceans and continents, slipping through walls, through skin, through souls.
Every living human on Earth felt a faint warmth brush against their heart for the briefest instant.
Then nothing.
The particles had already merged with them—silent, invisible, waiting.
Asterial was gone.