Chapter 20 – When Heaven Burns

Silence had weight.

It pressed down over the crater like a storm not yet thundered. The Divine Assembly floated high, seven halos spinning in a synchronized pattern, each one radiating judgment, power, and millennia of untouchable authority.

Kairos, seated on the Throne of the Unwritten King, leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees.

His voice broke the stillness like a dagger.

“Come on then… gods.”

One of them moved.

Without sound, without flash — just a blink, and the sky was cleaved.

A massive fissure split the air behind Kairos, stretching miles, revealing a starless void that whispered in forgotten tongues. Yet he didn’t even flinch.

He grinned.

From beneath his cloak, the ancient blade — Yureigan, the Soul Severer — appeared, burning with violet flames. Its edge shimmered with unstable runes, constantly rewriting themselves mid-glow.

A god descended, veiled in silver chains, wielding a staff longer than a mortal lifespan. Its name was Kheriel, the Arbiter of Finality.

“You, Kairos, are a paradox,” Kheriel spoke, its voice laced with disgust and wonder. “You unmake the logic we preserve.”

Kairos rose from the throne slowly, dragging the tip of Yureigan against the stones. “Then stop preserving it.”

With no war cry, no warning — he moved.

Faster than sight.

Yureigan clashed against Kheriel’s staff, creating a shockwave that shattered clouds across continents. The ground beneath them fractured like fragile glass, and space itself rippled violently.

Their fight was not one of swordsmanship.

It was belief vs. rebellion.

Faith vs. fury.

The other gods watched, unmoving, analyzing.

Kheriel’s chains lashed out — not physically, but metaphysically — trying to bind Kairos’s existence to a “truth” it could erase. But Kairos’s form shimmered, defying absolutes. He was no longer tethered to rules the gods understood.

He was rewriting them.

He screamed — not out of pain, but freedom.

“I was denied a place in your world. So I made one in your blind spot!”

With a roar, he plunged Yureigan into the center of Kheriel’s chest.

Not into flesh — into identity.

The god didn’t bleed.

It shattered.

Kheriel collapsed in light, dissolving into a mist of forgotten laws and weeping prayers. One of the Seven had fallen.

The others still didn’t move.

They merely watched.

One said: “He’s adapting too quickly.”

Another: “He is no longer bound by myth. He feeds on narrative.”

And the eldest among them, cloaked in robes stitched from timelines, whispered, “He is becoming... one of us. Or worse—something other.”

Kairos turned, Yureigan humming in his grip.

“I’m not like you,” he said. “You’re remembered because you rigged the ending. I’ll be remembered because I broke it.”

His eyes glowed black and violet.

The Erosion had deepened.

And the gods, for the first time in eons, felt a sliver of something alien.

Fear.