The days in Eden burned with an almost tangible intensity. The shifting light of the hanging gardens reflected shards of Ether upon the crystalline waterfalls cascading from the celestial lakes. Every breath of wind carried the thrill of ancient energies, oscillating between divine tranquility and contained violence. The days stretched on, relentless, leaving behind trails of luminous dust, as if the city itself were etching the progress of its guests into the sky.
Several Ether leagues away from the grand temple, the sky was streaked with golden lightning, punctuated by deafening detonations. Liah was training under the sharp vigilance of Barachiel.
But this was not mutual sparring. It was a one-sided beatdown.
Liah was thrown backward with unprecedented violence, her back slamming into a crystal pillar that cracked under the impact. She spat blood, her breathing ragged, her muscles screaming in pain. Ten meters away, Barachiel hadn't even taken his hands out of his pockets. Electricity danced lazily across his shoulders.
— The goal of the exercise is quite simple, kid, the Primordial sighed with a carnivorous smile. Touch me. Just once.
Liah wiped the blood from her chin, her eyes gleaming with a cold rage. Around her, sound glyphs—the direct legacy of Uriel's teachings—floated in the air. She focused her Ether, forcing her sound frequencies to amplify through the runes in order to multiply her own velocity.
She exploded forward. The ground blurred beneath her feet. Her hand, wreathed in a destructive wave, shot straight for the Archangel's neck.
A sharp crack tore through the air.
Liah struck nothing but empty space. Before she could even process it, Barachiel's boot crashed into her ribs, sending her rolling miserably across the sacred paving stones.
— Your glyphs are accurate, but your body is too slow, Barachiel judged, taking a slow step forward, the air vibrating with ozone. Sound has a physical limit. If you don't use your Ether to break the sound barrier, you will never even hope to graze my shadow. Come on, get up. We have all eternity ahead of us.
The crash of Liah's body against the marble echoed across the hanging gardens, the sound wave dissipating against the gravitational resonance field generated by Michel, kilometers below.
At the center of this pressure dome, Seven was on his knees, his forehead beaded with cold sweat. Every fiber of his body was strained to the breaking point. The air around him was saturated by his own Ether, a dense, gray fog that exploded chaotically every time he tried to project it.
Michel stepped forward into the maelstrom, the compressed air gliding over his armor without making him so much as blink. His silver pupils, ringed by incandescent golden irises, fixed the young man with a crushing demand.
— Stop, the Archangel ordered in a voice that brooked no argument.
Seven halted his flow, panting, his lungs burning. The resonance field stabilized immediately. The young man kept his eyes glued to the ground, his fists clenched, his pride still wounded from what he had felt on the pearly square.
— You envy the progress of the forgotten soul, Michel declared coldly, reading him like an open book.
Seven clenched his jaw but did not answer.
— Stop watching her ascension, the commander of the heavenly armies cut in. Your goal isn't to crush her. Your goal isn't to be better than her. Your only goal is to acquire enough power to save Kael. Keep your eyes on what matters, or you will lose your way.
The mention of Kael acted like an electric shock in Seven's mind. The face of the young girl, sleeping against him in that house bathed in earthly light, rose to the surface. His chest tightened.
Michel took a few steps, observing the gray Ether residues dissipating miserably around them.
— You are fighting against yourself. You stubbornly seek the resonance of the souls you left behind. It is your natural affinity, yes. It is the very essence of the Angel of Death. But without them, you are striking at thin air, hoping a ghost will come to support you. It is a dead end in your current state.
The Archangel stopped a meter away from him, towering over the boy with his full stature.
— You carry the heavy burden of Azrael, and you were polished by the hands of Metatron himself. The last disciple of the Divine Scribe cannot settle for striking at random. Do not look for your affinity of souls where there is none. Return to the very origin of energy.
Michel pointed a finger at the boy's chest.
— An Ether without affinity. Raw. Like the one you used for your *mors luminis*. Do not reject it: give it a structure. Compress it until it becomes a mathematical extension of your own will.
Seven slowly stood up. He closed his eyes, shutting out the pressure of Michel's resonance field, chasing away the frustration, the jealousy, and the absence of the dead. He focused solely on Kael. On the promise he had made to her.
He pulled the veil of gray Ether toward him, crushing it, condensing it deep within his human core.
The density of the energy became terrifying. The pure Ether no longer swirled; it solidified into a perfectly stable halo, glowing with an ashen light, devoid of any elemental or spectral affinity.
With a simple gesture of his fingers, he molded this energy. The Ether deployed in the form of a series of translucent, gray geometric lances. He lowered his arm. The lances shot forward at a blinding speed and pierced Michel's resonance field with absolute cleanness, without the slightest explosion. Surgical precision.
Without hesitation, Seven reshaped his Ether once again. He transformed it into a hexagonal shield of impenetrable density, then into a network of invisible, razor-sharp wires that slashed the air with a sinister hiss. Without the souls, he had just invented an arsenal of pure Ether arcanes.
Michel observed the perfect cuts left in his force field. For the first time, the Archangel's golden irises shone with a sliver of silent acknowledgment.
The celestial commander raised his hand, entirely dispelling the training dome.
The wind froze. The hanging waterfalls seemed to halt their descent. The sky of Eden was abruptly illuminated by a golden and violet light that came neither from the sun nor the clouds. The atmosphere grew heavy with a dizzying sacredness.
Michel crossed his arms behind his back, his gaze weighing on Seven with a newfound intensity.
— You have understood the geometry of your pure Ether, he decreed, his voice now echoing in the silent immensity of the garden.
He paused, letting the weight of the violet light envelop the young man.
— Good. Now... it's time to learn the Arcanum Caelestis.