Shadows at the Oblivion Gate

“Heaven’s borders — the place where serenity goes to die.”

Beyond the crystal spires and golden sanctums, the light dimmed — fading into the lower wards, where divine order met the edge of the Abyss.

Two legions guarded that threshold.

The First Legion — Aegis of the Sun, Heaven’s oldest shield, commanded by Crownkeeper Solmar Luciel, wielder of the Solar Aegis — the relic that keeps the divine barrier alive, a wall of living Ryvane-light strong enough to deflect even a god’s strike.

Each Legion served beneath the Crown System — one Crownkeeper, two Twin Mantles, fifteen Officers of the Three Rings, and thousands of Oath-sworn Sentinels.

A structure so precise that even gods called it the spine of Heaven.

And beneath their radiance waited the Eighth Legion — Oblivion Sentinels, those who stared into the dark so others didn’t have to.

Only the Crown Legions may stand at the edge — the Iron Concord to judge, the Aegis to shield, the Oblivion Sentinels to guard the end.

They manned the rifts, guarded the cracks, and stood on the line where Heaven’s light began to bleed away.

It was their vigilance that caught it first — the tremor.

The pulse that whispered: the Gate is stirring again.

The pulse reverberated through the Divine Veins woven beneath Heaven’s foundation — a heartbeat that wasn’t supposed to exist.

✦ Act I — The Alarm ✦

The lower wards of Heaven weren’t the kind of place you took a picnic basket.

Too much stone. Too much silence.
And oh yeah — looming in the middle of it all, the Oblivion Gate.

A vast scar of black crystal carved into the world, ringed by wards, its surface rippling faintly like oil.

Normally, the Gate was sealed tight — quiet, cold, brooding.
But tonight, it pulsed.

Abyssal Ryvane bled through the cracks — resonance twisted backward, a melody that devoured itself.

Ryvane flares screamed up from the ward-stones, signaling what everyone already knew:
Something was coming.

The Sentinels of Flame had already assembled, armor burning with faint crimson glow.

Their spears and swords hummed with heat as Ryvane threads coiled through their Divine Veins in perfect synchrony — ranks forming across the plain, waiting for the inevitable charge.

One officer muttered under his breath, voice tight.

“They’ll breach soon.”

Another spat onto the ground.
“Let them. I’ve been itching to roast a few demons.”

The captain raised his hand, ordering silence.
Their eyes all locked on the Gate.
The world held its breath.

✦ Act II — I Sense It ✦

Meanwhile, me? I was nowhere near the Gate.

I’d been wandering the upper wards, trying to burn off the leftovers of stress, sarcasm, and whatever cosmic indigestion the Divine Tree had jammed into me.

And then it hit me.
Not sight. Not sound. Just… that pulse.
A pressure sliding under my skin, sharp and sour.

Abyssal Ryvane — thick, sour, alive in the wrong direction.

“Oh, fantastic,” I muttered. “Another day, another apocalypse.
And here I thought maybe I’d get an evening off to practice not dying.”

The ember in my chest thrummed in agreement, but I ignored it.

This wasn’t about that.
This was about me needing to hit something before I exploded.

“The Solar Aegis barrier was flickering. The Oblivion Sentinels were already calling for reinforcements.
And me? I was about to do something incredibly stupid.”

So, naturally, I ghosted.

✦ Act III — Parallax Ghosts (Stealth) ✦

The world flickered. My body split into echoes.

One Haise stepped left. Another drifted right. Another stayed in place.

All of them blurred, glitching faintly, until even the air forgot where I really was.

It wasn’t magic — just the shadow half of my Soul-Born gift bending light and thought at once.

A trick born from the darker vein that ran beside my light.

No aura. No Ryvane signature. Not even a whisper of presence.
Invisible. Untouchable.

Even Heaven’s wards didn’t flare when I passed — they only read rhythm, and mine doesn’t play in their tempo.

For once, I felt honest — a ghost pretending to be human.

It was the kind of stealth that made even shadows paranoid.

“Perfect,” I smirked, stepping unseen across the wardstones.

“If the Archons could see me now, they’d probably accuse me of cheating at hide-and-seek.”

The Sentinels didn’t notice as I slipped past their lines.

Their eyes were glued to the Gate.
They didn’t feel me. Nobody ever did.

Good.
This was my hunt.

The Gate pulsed again, and I didn’t wait for demons to crawl out.

I stepped into it.

✦ Act IV — Inside the Portal ✦

Crossing the Ryvane-Rift was like walking through a mirror that remembered pain.

The Abyss smelled like rot, metal, and every mistake I’d ever made.

The ground cracked under my boots — black stone threaded with molten veins of crimson.

The air shimmered with heat and static, and somewhere above, a sky of fractured void stretched like broken glass.

And then I saw them.

More than a hundred.
Low-tier demons — hulking, snarling, their bodies stitched from shadow and fang.

Rows of them, shoulder to shoulder.
Their Abyssal Veins pulsed with corrupted Ryvane — crimson fractals that beat against Heaven’s harmony like a reversed heartbeat.

Massing at the threshold, a full vanguard preparing to surge into Heaven.

Too bad I RSVP’d early.
(answer me, demons.)

I grinned.
“Guess you forgot to send me an invitation. Rude."

✦ Act V — Silent Hunt ✦

I moved first.

A hundred demons.
One heir.

The math didn’t bother me.

Parallax Ghost split me into three — Each echo shimmered a beat apart, my soul splitting faster than Heaven could count. The air flickered — a breath late, a heartbeat slow — like reality itself trying to remember where I was.

Pain stitched light through my ribs, but rhythm felt better than rest — each lunging from a different angle.

My divine sword hissed into existence in my grip — silver-white steel, etched with runes, thrumming with hunger.

The first demon didn’t even scream. One clean slice — gone.

The second turned, but my echo blurred through it, and when the real me struck, its head rolled before the body realized it was dead.

Third. Fourth. Fifth.

One by one they fell, shredded by an enemy they couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, couldn’t even sense.

Panic spread fast.

Demons growled, stumbling over each other, swinging claws at empty air.

Shadows lashed out at my ghosts, hitting nothing.

“Oh, come on,” I whispered, stepping past another falling corpse.
“You’re not even trying.”

The silent hunt worked too well.
In fact, it got… boring.

I sighed, dismissing the stealth.
“Alright, fine. Let’s make this interesting.”

✦ Act VI — The Reveal ✦

Light flared around me as I stepped into full view.

For a second, color and sound traded places — the Abyss went silent as flame sang.

Dozens of glowing eyes snapped toward me.
Growls rolled like thunder.

For a heartbeat, the Abyss forgot how to breathe.

I raised my sword lazily, smirk tugging at my lips.
“Good news: I brought all the elements. Bad news: I don’t share.”

The first wave rushed.

I swung — flame roared down the blade, cutting three in half in one fiery arc.

Another leapt — lightning exploded from my grip, spearing through its chest, leaving the smell of ozone.

Two flanked me — ice walls erupted, skewering them in frozen shards.

One tried to leap from above — wind slashed upward, slicing it to ribbons midair.

The ground trembled with their charge, so I answered with earth.

Spikes of crystal tore up beneath their feet, impaling them in shrieks of black blood.

Water surged at my call, a tidal crash drowning another cluster.

Every swing. Every breath. A different element.

Each shift burned through my Veins.
Every element sang out of tune — yet together they made my chaos feel like a hymn, like a symphony too loud for one soul — but the ember inside kept time.

A different storm.

The Abyss glowed with my chaos.

“Next!” I barked, cleaving another pair apart.
“You missed rehearsal!” Lightning split another skull.
“Too bad you didn’t RSVP.” Slice. Blood sprayed.

The fight blurred into rhythm — step, strike, smirk.

A dance of murder and mockery.

By the time my sword dimmed, the Abyss was quiet.

My Veins burned hot — too hot. Multi-element combat wasn’t free; every switch scraped my ribs like broken glass.

Bodies smoked. The ground hissed with melted frost, burnt stone, scorched ash.

And me? I was grinning.
“All frustrations officially vented,” I muttered, wiping my blade clean.
“Best therapy session yet.”

The portal flickered behind me.
Time to leave before I got caught.

By the time I slipped back out, the air outside still quivered from the chaos I’d left behind.

✦ Act VII — Confusion (Sentinels of Flame) ✦

The silence pressed against my ears.
Even victory felt like a bruise — heavy, quiet, real.

Outside the Gate, the Sentinels stood in formation, waiting for the demons to pour through.

They never came.

One officer frowned, staring at the runes.
“The readings were clear.”

Another tightened his grip on his spear.
“Then where are they?”

The soldiers shifted uneasily, murmuring among themselves.
“...Something killed them. Before they reached us.”

The Gate pulsed once more — then went silent.

The Oblivion wards blinked, confused, then sealed themselves again — too slow to realize they’d opened at all.

The Ryvane around them shivered, recording an impossible absence where hundreds of Abyssal signatures should have been.

The silence was heavier than battle.

Victory always sounds like guilt when no one else hears it.

None of them realized the heir they guarded had already walked away, whistling — the calm after a war no one knew had happened.

✦ Act VIII — Aegis Command Tower (Solmar Luciel) ✦

The Aegis sang wrong tonight.
Not loud. Not cracked. Just… off.

A hum too deep, a shimmer too sharp — like sunlight that remembered being shadow.

From the command tower, Crownkeeper Solmar Luciel watched the Solar Aegis pulse — then twice.

The readings stuttered. Not from the outside — no. From within.

Earlier crossings had been calm — but this pulse was jagged, off-beat, like a rhythm that had burned too bright and returned wrong.

For a fraction of a breath, the Aegis light dimmed — not failure, but hesitation. As if Heaven’s shield had blinked to catch up with something that moved faster than its own light.

“The light of the barrier shivered. ‘Only a Crown signature could bend light that way,’ he murmured, half to himself — like something had brushed through it, first outward, then inward again.”

“Report,” the Crownkeeper said quietly.
The aide’s voice trembled. “No breach detected, Commander.

No demonic flux. The readings suggest… displacement.”

Solmar frowned. “Displacement of what?”

He hesitated, muttering something about residual Ryvane flux.
Maybe. But the Aegis doesn’t lie.

For a moment, he swore the sunlight around the console dimmed — as if the wall itself was holding its breath.

Then, everything normalized. Smooth. Perfect. Untouched.

Still, he couldn’t shake it.
Something had slipped through Heaven’s light — and come back again without leaving a trace.

He leaned back, eyes narrowing toward the horizon where the Oblivion Gate shimmered faintly in the dark.

“Maybe a relic echo,” he murmured. “Or maybe the light just blinked.”

But even as he said it, he didn’t believe himself.

Because the Aegis of the Sun never blinks.
And whatever it was — Heaven allowed it.

✦ Act IX — Demon Prince POV ✦

Deep in the Abyss, a chamber of black iron shook as a messenger fell to one knee.

“My Prince— the vanguard… gone. Slain near the portal.”

The Demon Prince rose from his throne of bone and iron, eyes burning with void-fire.
His jaw tightened, teeth bared.

“Gone?”

The messenger shuddered.
“Erased. Before they crossed. No survivors.”

Silence. Then the Prince’s voice cut the air like a blade.

“Who dares slaughter my kin in my territory?”

His claws tightened, veins of voidfire crawling up his arms.

“Find the scent.
If it belongs to Heaven… I felt it — a dual vein signature. Light and shadow entwined. Impossible… and yet.”

He smiled, because the impossible was always his favorite prey.
“I’ll burn their sky myself.”

✦ Act X — The Return ✦

Back in Heaven, I slipped through marble corridors like nothing had happened.

No applause. No suspicion. Just me, grinning to myself.

“Note to self,” I muttered, “Oblivion Gate field trips are excellent stress relief.”

The ember in my chest pulsed once, warm.

“The Solar Aegis shimmered far above — dimming for half a breath. Not in failure, not in warning. Just in… hesitation. As if Heaven’s own heartbeat had stuttered, trying to keep up with mine.

For tonight, that was enough.

Above it all, the stars blinked once — and remembered.

✦ End of Chapter 21 — Shadows at the Oblivion Gate ✦