CHAPTER 268: CHAPTER 269: ONE ABOVE ALL

The sky trembled with a dim bronze hue, the clouds grinding against one another like the bones of giants.

From that storm of ash and thunder, Lidia emerged. Her wings snapped open with a tired shudder, feathers smeared with soot, trailing threads of shadow like dying embers. She hovered just beyond the battlefield’s smoke, her throat catching on a whisper meant for no one but herself.

"...ummm... sorry."

Her apology was too thin to touch the world. The wind shredded it away before it left her lips, but still she spoke, because silence felt heavier. She could still hear it — his rage, his roar, the way it had split her bones when he’d beaten her in the first layer.

Fear knotted itself tight inside her ribs, a fear she hadn’t shed since. It had only deepened.

She had failed him.

The ritual had been precise, her homing circle traced with blood and memory, every syllable of the chant perfect. She had tried to drag them closer to safety, to skip through the suffocating labyrinth of Hell’s planes. But Hell was not blind. Hell was not merciful.

It knew.

It knew her trick before the spell had even finished. It smelled the treachery. It knew this was its daughter returning with something foreign tied to her soul. It saw the tether, and it recoiled. It punished. It punished Atlas.

The third layer itself had rejected Atlas. It spat him downward, cursed him, threw him from the bones of its sky with all the hatred of a body trying to vomit poison.

But poison he was not.

The curse hit him like chains, like stone, like fire, but it bent, it cracked, it broke. Atlas did not fall. He rose.

The silence that followed was monstrous.

The battlefield had been roaring seconds before — titans bellowing, goblins shrieking, the scrape of steel, the hiss of curses. And then it stopped. Every fallen, every twisted demon, every goblin-claw looked toward the center where the titan had stood.

Where it had stood.

Now there was only ruin. A dead thing sprawling in broken earth, its body cut apart as though by judgment itself. Their strongest, their fiercest weapon — collapsed in a single beat.

And from the shadow of its ruin, something rose.

Atlas.

Slow, deliberate, a figure that should have been human, but wasn’t. His body unfolded like a blade being drawn. His chest heaved with air that tasted of ash and iron.

His dark shirt hung in tatters, wind-torn, its ends flaring behind him like wings — wings the goblin-kind recognized and hated, because they were not wings of a demon, not wings of their kin.

They were something else.

His golden eyes opened, and their light cut the fog.

{Attack!} one goblin-general screeched, its voice tearing. From the titan’s ruined shoulder a spear the size of a tree trunk was hurled, whistling with jagged runes, aimed straight at his chest.

The world seemed to hold its breath.

The spear struck. With precision.

A sound like stone against diamond rang out, high and sharp, splitting the air.

The weapon shattered. Shards sprayed outward in useless glitter. Only fabric fell — the remains of his shirt, fluttering down like burned wings.

{...Wait. He’s not...}

The words clung to the goblin’s throat but never finished. Because in that instant, Atlas’s gaze shifted toward them. His jaw tightened. His teeth bared. A guttural sound tore from his chest, not language, not word — a growl that became a roar.

His eyes burned with rage.

And rage had always been enough.

Lidia flinched, her wings snapping tighter. She tried to fold herself back into the clouds, tried to vanish. To veil. To be unseen. Because she knew. She had seen this before. His fury was not something to stand beside. It was not something to worship. It was something to survive.

And below her, Atlas answered his own fury with blood.

He broke into motion. His feet struck ground, then air, then nothing, until he was streaking across the battlefield, dark hair snapping, body cutting through fog like a blade.

He hit the titan’s shield with his bare fist — and the shield burst apart like glass. He didn’t slow. His fist drove through the titan’s ribcage, skin, lung, and heart in a single brutal plunge.

The sound was wet thunder.

Blood erupted like a fountain. Bone splintered like kindling. Atlas tore straight through and out the other side, crimson mist exploding across his shoulders, his hair turning black to red in a breath.

The titan collapsed.

Thud.

One titan, one strike.

The fallen army froze. Their goblin generals stared, their jaws slack. For centuries, for eons, titans had been their strongest shields, their endless walls. None had fallen like this. Not in a thousand wars. And now it was happening in seconds.

Atlas did not pause. He was fury made flesh, and his flesh was endless. He moved titan to titan, each blow faster, heavier, hungrier. Shields broke, ribcages caved, hearts burst.

Thud.

Thud.

The ground shook with each corpse, each giant body falling like a building demolished. The fog rippled with each collapse, choked with the iron stink of blood. Goblins screamed in terror. Some tried to rally, some to run, but their words were lost in the thunder of falling titans.

{Retreat! Retreat! All retreat!!!}

But retreat was too late. One by one, titans died with gaping holes punched through their cores. And Atlas did not stop until the last one fell.

Thud.

Silence returned.

Atlas stood in the ruin, his shoulders heaving, his chest dark with blood. His hair clung in crimson strands, dripping. His golden eyes flickered like lamps doused in oil, too bright, too fierce. He breathed hard — not from exhaustion, but from rage. From the storm that had nowhere else to go.

And then he saw them.

The flock of fallen ones. Huddled, whispering, their wings twitching in terror. Their gazes fixed on him like prey watching a predator.

He didn’t think. His body moved, streaking through the fog with sonic speed.

"He’s coming at us!"

"Run! It’s a monster!"

Their cries cracked with hysteria. They scattered in every direction, wings clawing for distance, faces contorted in terror. But one did not move.

An old figure, thin as parchment, hovered in the air. His robe was frayed, his skin pale and creased, his three wings beating slow as if he’d known they would never carry him away in time. He did not flee.

He bowed.

Boom.

Atlas halted. The air buckled from the force of his stop, wind tearing blood from his body in streaks. He stood before the old one, silent, watching.

The priest’s eyes swam with tears.

"...You have finally come."

Atlas narrowed his gaze, words catching at the back of his teeth.

"What are you saying, old man?"

The priest’s voice broke with reverence. "You... you are the prophet, aren’t you? The son of ....the One above all."

Atlas’s breath stilled in his chest.

"...not again...."

The blood on his skin cooled. His golden eyes flickered once, then locked onto the kneeling man.

A silence stretched, deep as the fog.

The priest bowed lower, trembling not from fear, but awe.

"...The prophet..."