CHAPTER 36: ANGELS

Cillian stood above Mirethane’s massive heads, the battlefield stretching beneath him like a stage of judgment, and a faint smile curved across his lips.

"You ask me... what do I think of life?"

The seven angels hovered in the air, radiant figures of light, their heads held high as if passing judgment from above. They gazed down at Cillian, waiting for his reply.

"Life... is just life," Cillian said at last. His voice wasn’t loud, yet it carried clearly.

"Life is neither the miracle praised by the gods nor the marvel exalted by scientists. It is just life! Nothing more, nothing less."

He let out a wry sigh. "It’s not particularly special, but it’s not meaningless either. Across the multiverse, life is not rare, if is bountiful, it is inevitable. Born from chance,. It is one possibility among countless impossibilities."

"I am no philosopher, but to me, life is only an ordinary word." His gaze sharpened as he looked upon the angelic forms in the sky. "And yet, you... you disappoint me."

His spat his disdain like poison. "After all you’ve seen, my assault, the countless deaths you’ve witnessed, you still ask me this? ’What do I think of life?’ That’s the depth of your question?"

Cillian’s voice darkened, full of contempt. "Your creator must not be as wise as I imagined, for his greatest servants to be so shallow... he must be more flawed than I thought."

The angels’ composure was quick to crack, and for the first time, a divine wrath overtook their radiant calm. Their wings flared with light.

"Blasphemy!"

"Who are you that would dare insult the almighty ?!"

In unison, they unleashed their judgment. Seven torrents of radiant force tore through the sky, converging upon the lone figure who stood above Mirethane.

But Cillian was already gone.

In the blink of an eye, he appeared at the edge of the battlefield.

His eyes turned toward the abyssal beast that awaited his command.

"Mirethane."

At that name, the monstrous creature of the Endless Abyss stirred, its countless heads rearing back, loyalty burning in its abyssal gaze. Then it roared and surged forward.

The angels struck first. Beams of blinding light rained upon Mirethane, tearing into its monstrous form. Explosions of burning radiance seared the battlefield. Several of Mirethane’s heads shrieked as divine strikes smashed into them, spraying foul blood across the land.

But like every abyssal creature it was no ordinary blood.

The black ichor of Mirethane carried the essence of the abyss itself, and wherever it fell, the world twisted.

Rivers boiled and blackened, their waters turned to rancid swamps. Far-off cities, thought safe from battle, felt ruin descend as the blood soaked their streets.

The native inhabitants screamed in pain, fleeing in vain.

For when the black stains touched them, death was immediate, yet death was not their end. Their corpses rose again, reshaped into twisted, mindless sludge-beasts, spreading plague and corruption with every crawl.

Every wound Mirethane acquired accelerated the death of the world.

And then Mirethane began to fight back.

From its eight colossal heads, spectral horns blazed with abyssal light, unleashing beams of ruin that split mountains and shattered the ground. The earth cracked open beneath the monster’s weight.

One angel had been to slow in its maneuver and was struck by a ray of corruption. With a scream, its form of pure light faltered, wings burning away as corruption spread across its body. It plummeted from the heavens, like a fallen star crashing into the battlefield.

Yet the prayers of countless believers still flooded the heavens with desperate whispers.

"Angel... messengers of the Lord... once again..."

Bathed in faith, the wounded angel stirred. Its ruined body began to mend, radiant wings sprouting once more, reforged by the devotion of mortals who clung to hope. With renewed fury, it ascended to the fight, blade of light in hand.

"You dare," the angel thundered, voice shaking heaven and earth, "to birth such a monstrosity and defile the Lord’s creation!"

With a single swing of its radiant sword, it severed one of Mirethane’s heads. The abyssal monster howled, its shriek echoing across worlds.

⸻———x——————

"It has begun," a voice murmured in the observation chamber far beyond the battlefield.

Professors and tutors of Grimstone Academy watched the clash unfold through their divinely linked projections. A mentor leaned forward, tension carved into his features as he witnessed the angel strike down Mirethane’s head.

"This... this is the assessment world’s final trump card, the ultimate battle."

Another tutor asked quietly, "Who do you think will prevail? The angels, or that abyssal beast Cillian forged?"

His colleague hesitated, lost in thought.

But then Vice Principal Warren, who had remained silent until now, spoke with calm certainty.

"The angels will win."

The room fell silent.

"What?"

Warren did not waver. His eyes never left the screen, where another angel’s blade of light cut deep into Mirethane’s flesh.

"I said..the angels will win this battle."

He folded his hands, voice steady and analytical.

"That colossal beast may look invincible, a mythical monster born straight from pure corruption, but at its core it remains a mortal. Its power is finite."

He gestured toward the angels. "They, on the other hand, draw strength from faith. Every soul in that test world who prays, who believes, fuels them. With that power, they are nearing the threshold of the Sea of the Soul. They are not just constructs of light, they are approaching demigods."

As if to confirm his words, another angel pierced through Mirethane’s defenses, cutting down a second head in a burst of holy fire.

Warren’s voice grew grave. "If the battle continues this way, Cillian’s defeat is inevitable."

Silence pressed down upon the chamber. The other mentors glanced at one another uneasily, realizing the truth in his words.

"So," Warren murmured, eyes narrowing as he studied the calm figure of Cillian watching the chaos unfold, "the question is... how will he overcome enemies that seem impossible to defeat?"

Above the shattered skies, the battle raged on. The seven angels fought with relentless fury, their weapons gleaming with divine light. Every strike they dealt against Mirethane was precise and dangerous, but each counterattack from the abyssal beast carried the corrosive touch of the Endless Abyss.

The angels’ radiant bodies burned and faltered under the venom of its power.

Yet no matter how grievous the wounds were, they rose again. Every time they staggered from the brink of collapse, their strength returned.

Warren’s judgment was proving correct. Across the assessment world, the remaining faithful prayed with desperation, their voices trembling yet unbroken. It was their devotion, their unwavering belief, that sustained the angels. As long as prayers echoed through the hearts of mortals, these celestial warriors would never truly fall.

Even though countless had already perished in this ruined world, the survivors clung to their faith with greater fervor than ever before.

Their voices rose like a storm, fueling their champions. Like the Ring of Virtue that circled endlessly in the heavens, the cycle of faith turned without pause. The angels would fight until the very end.

"Begone!"

One angel swung its blade, the weapon burning with holy fire. A rainbow arc of sanctified light cleaved toward Mirethane’s neck.

Boom!

The impact shattered the monster’s scales, what had seemed like impenetrable defense in his own domain, was now being consistently broken.

With a deafening crash, one of Mirethane’s colossal heads slammed into the earth like a meteor, unleashing shockwaves that fractured the continent itself.

The land heaved and split. Poison seeped into the air, and multiple cities collapsed into ruin as native races fled in panic, only to be swallowed by the earthquakes or drowned in the spreading corruption. Few could escape.

And all of this devastation, nothing more than the byproduct of a clash between creations born of two supreme forces. Mirethane of the Abyss, and the Angels of Faith. Their war tore at the very foundation of the plane.

With a guttural roar, Mirethane lashed out again. One of its heads lunged, clamping its fangs around an angel in an attempt to crush it utterly. The beast bit down with abyssal force, determined to annihilate the so-called immortality granted by prayer.

But their faith did not break.

The angel burst free, radiant light ripping open Mirethane’s skull from within. It soared back into the sky, leaving behind another of the monster’s heads hanging limp and ruined.

"Hmm..."

A low sigh drifted across the battlefield. It came not from Mirethane, but from the figure who stood watching, Cillian, the Lord of the Endless Abyss.

"Lord ..."

Even amid its fury, Mirethane’s heads turned toward him, its loyalty absolute. To Mirethane the sigh cut deeper than any wound, for him it sounded like disappointment.

"Back down," Cillian said. His face was still calm. "Enough."

In his eyes glowed a certain reluctance "I can still...."

Mirethane still had four heads, and even now they twitched with regenerative force. It could still ’fight’, injure the angels a bit more and drown this world in ruin. But Cillian shook his head.

"It does not matter. I have already seen the outcome of this battle. Return to the Abyss."

. Mirethane hesitated, but the command was final, he obeyed. He pulled back, its massive form retreating into the void as the angels’ blades rained down upon it. It did not resist further, vanishing into the abyss and leaving behind a planet broken and poisoned by its presence.

Wherever its shadow had lingered, the land was scarred. But Cillian no longer looked at it. His gaze was fixed on the angels.

"Foul being," one of them declared, wings spread wide. "Have you accepted death?"

The seven surrounded him, holy weapons raised.

Cillian only smiled, then burst into laughter.

"Death? Me?"

His laughter grew, rolling across the sky. "Hahahaha...!"

The angels tightened their grip, their blades gleaming with judgment.

"No, no! you misunderstand," Cillian said, lifting a hand in mock reassurance. "I was not fighting you. I was observing, for research ."

"Research?" the angels hissed, their voices sharp.

"Yes," Cillian replied smoothly. "From the beginning, I knew nothing of your existence. I was simply... curious."

As he spoke, his body blurred and shifted. His form unraveled into a swirling mass of dark mist. Within that mist, two eyes opened, black irises marked with red spirals, staring at the angels with cold disdain.

"Now," he whispered, "pay attention."

The angels tensed, uncertainty coming over them.

They expected an attack, but what came instead was something stranger. From the fog, Cillian hurled a soul into the air.

The angels froze.

It was not a demon’s soul, or even a creature of the abyss.

It was a native of this very world.

But it was foul, corrupted beyond measure.

Where once there had been a seed of virtue at its core, the light of faith had blackened, rotted into something twisted. The angels reeled as they saw it, this was someone who had believed, one who had been of their flock, now consumed by darkness.

Before they could act, the soul began to unravel. Its essence dissolved, breaking apart into nothingness.

Cillian’s voice rang out, cold and sharp.

"Your creator is a fool, and so are you. You claim to know life? You know nothing."

As the soul disintegrated, a black wisp clung to one of the angels like a maggot burrowing into bone. The angel screamed, thrashing, but the corruption did not fall away. Even the Ring of Virtue could not purge it.

"Life cannot be built on virtue alone!" Cillian’s voice rose, echoing across the battlefield. "Life is chaotic! It is desire, based on instinct, it contradicts. To deny this is to deny reality itself!"

The corrupted angel convulsed as its strength weakened. The change was slight, a single fracture in its radiance, but it was permanent. The angels saw it and faltered.

"As long as there is life," Cillian continued, his mist swirling, "there will be gluttony, there will be lust. There will be greed! And envy! wrath!"

Another soul emerged from the mist, just as blackened, just as twisted. Then another, and another. One by one, he conjured them, each a mortal who had fallen, each dissolving before their horrified eyes.

Cillian inhaled deeply as their essence burned away, smiling as if savoring a fine aroma.

"I love the taste of sin," he said softly. His eyes gleamed with abyssal delight. "But now..."

The mist surged outward, wrapping around the circle of angels.

"Now it is your turn."