Chapter 24: Wrath Upon the Heavens

The skies over Earth were no longer blue. They rippled with fractures, bleeding white and violet light into a realm that could no longer be called mortal. Gravity stuttered. Mountains floated. Oceans boiled at the edges, as though afraid to spill further into the broken lands. And in the center of it all stood Aria—her silhouette alight with divine fire, her eyes twin embers of cruel serenity.

The war had begun in earnest.

Six billion were already gone. The remaining two clung to hollow earth and crumbling sanctuaries, praying to gods who no longer answered—because Aria had slain most of them.

She stood above the ruins of Cairo, her feet hovering inches from the cracked dome of a once-proud museum, now a scorched husk. The latest envoy’s corpse still smoldered behind her, its crystal armor shattered across continents.

More were coming.

A rip in the sky widened like a mouth inhaling the last breath of the world. From it descended three figures—envoys more terrible than those before. No longer cloaked in the drapery of faded angels, these bore the regalia of war. One held a staff of inverted time; another, a blade that split the concept of pain itself. The third carried no weapon—only a face veiled by constantly shifting truths.

Aria raised her hand. A thousand chains tore from the crust of the Earth, ensnaring each of them.

“Still playing with rope?” the blade-bearer, Veyla mocked, shattering the chains with a thought.

They struck at once.

The Battle of Ruin

Time unraveled. Space buckled.

Aria clashed with the Veyla in a spiraling vortex above Earth’s atmosphere. Each strike rewound and replayed moments in time, turning their duel into a chaotic strobe of violence. Aria was impaled—undone—restored—ripped apart—and still, she fought.

On the ground, the staff-bearer unleashed wave after wave of anguish, splitting through dimensions to target her memory, her identity. Her scream tore through ten kilometers of land.

But she endured.

Her counterattack summoned not chains, but sentient monoliths that erupted from the crust. They roared in agony, channeling her will as they hunted Veyla, striking faster than light. Veyla bled conceptually, leaking metaphors from her wounds.

The third envoy—shifting-faced—tried to reason.

“The Entity is not your end. Nor your beginning. We offer mercy if you give us the anomaly.”

She smiled with lips now too bright to be flesh. “Mercy is for those who regret.”

She killed him by naming his true self.

With a whisper, she scattered his existence across the timelines.

When the battle was over, the Earth had lost another one billion people—not by Aria’s hand, but collateral. The sky was ash. The stars above looked down, terrified.

Ren in the Sanctum

Far away, Ren stood in the Sanctum, the last untouched place. It had become quieter. He could no longer feel the world.

He stared at the mirror-pool Aria left for him, watching her as she fought gods like they were insects. He no longer feared her.

He pitied her.

He wrote by candlelight, words of memory. Of her silence in that alley. The times she smiled—not out of happiness but out of cruelty. The way she stood closer to him when afraid but denied it fiercely.

“I will save you,” he whispered. “Even if you never ask me to.”

He pressed his hand to the Sanctum’s inner gate.

Ascension’s Edge

Aria stood alone on the shattered peak of what was once the Himalayas. She had amassed over 15 billion mana units. Her soul strained against its casing.

Above her, the sky split.

The veil between worlds cracked. Higher-realm energy poured through like blood from a wound. Shapes unseen by mortals flickered. Thoughts screamed. The world shook as the Unseen's voice echoed not just in her ears—but through every atom.

“Ascension without understanding is suicide, Aria.”

“You believe you walk toward truth—but all roads built on agony lead only to silence.”

She bled light. Her breath came as fire. Her voice was wrath.

“Then let silence scream back!”

She hurled her fist skyward, and with it, the veil tore wider. The light of the higher realm rained down like divine plague.

And from a realm even further beyond that void, the Unseen watched.

Waiting.