CHAPTER 377: CHAPTER 366: FINAL PROPHECY

Atlas felt his soul being torn apart—dragged through rivers of void and fire—as the veil between forms collapsed.

One heartbeat, he was fur and frost; the next, flesh and flame. The air of the Third Layer hit him like molten iron, filling his lungs with the scent of sulfur and ash.

His body—his true body—shuddered as he reentered it, the tremor of his soul snapping back into place like a chain yanked taut.

The Guide was still there.

Still fighting.

The world around them was a furnace of shattered light and warring divinities. It was no longer how he had left it.

’what the fuck happened here?’

Every breath carried the echo of broken laws. Asmodeus towered in the distance, his eight wings of obsidian stretched wide, veins glowing with infernal scripture.

The earth beneath him pulsed like a dying heart, magma spilling through runes carved into its flesh. Every roar from the demon king felt like a world ending.

Atlas staggered forward, clutching his ribs, half human, half shadow. He could feel the exhaustion of the Guide bleeding into him through the tether that bound them—the shared agony of two beings inhabiting one flame.

"You should have come quick....," the Guide’s voice boomed through the fractured sky, his shape distorted, luminous—part angel, part ghost. "I got weaker and weaker and weak—"

"It’s fine," Atlas interrupted, his voice ragged, his veins burning with gold light. "My wisdom fatigue... it’s fixed."

The Guide turned sharply, disbelief written across his molten features. "Fixed?" His laughter was hollow, the kind that cracked mountains. "You don’t fix wisdom fatigue, Atlas. You survive it—if you’re lucky—after centuries. Eons." His eyes narrowed. "And you speak as though it were a fever you’ve sweated through."

Atlas met his gaze, the corners of his mouth twitching into something that almost resembled a smirk. "Maybe I just got tired of waiting."

For a heartbeat, the Guide stared. Then, slowly, he smiled—a sad, knowing curve that belonged to someone who had seen too many gods die. "Then perhaps," he murmured, "it’s true what the stars whisper. That you’re not a man anymore."

A shadow passed over them.

Asmodeus moved.

The earth screamed beneath his steps, each footfall collapsing miles of burning plains. His laughter rippled across the sky like a curse.

"The aura, its different again...So the mortal returns," the demon king roared, his voice splitting the storm. "Tell me, oh apostle of the one above and the one below—have you come to witness your Guide’s death, or to share it?"

The Guide didn’t answer. His hands came together in a gesture older than the dawn, light gathering between his palms until it burned white-hot, swallowing shadow and air alike.

The radiance tore through reality, bending it toward a single word, the last of his laws—an invocation that demanded everything he had left.

{Die...}

The syllable fell like judgment.

The Law struck Asmodeus like a falling sun. The heavens buckled. The Third Layer convulsed, its crimson mountains turning black, its rivers evaporating into dust.

The demon king staggered, frozen mid-motion, his wings spasming. Every sigil on his flesh blazed, cracking open, spilling rivers of ichor that hissed as they touched the ground.

Silence fell.

And then Asmodeus roared—a sound that turned oceans to vapor.

Atlas could feel it, the world breaking around them, the Guide’s essence unraveling thread by thread as the Law consumed what little remained of him. The air grew thin. The light began to flicker.

"Guide!" Atlas shouted, reaching out—but the figure of the celestial was already deaming, his form growing small linto threads of gold. The strain of channeling the Law had devoured what was left of his existence.

"Atlas....." The Guide’s voice was softer now, disembodied. "Take.... End... it.."

Then—nothing.

The tether between them snapped, and the silence that followed felt infinite.

Atlas fell to one knee, gasping. The taste of metal filled his mouth; blood, thick and hot, ran down his chin. His mana was nearly gone—drained dry by the Guide’s last act.

But through the exhaustion, through the agony, something else stirred: the return of sensation. His own heartbeat. His own breath. His own skin.

He was whole again....back to his body.

But the world around him was dying.

Steam rose around him as he descended, boots sinking into the scorched soil. The battlefield stretched for miles—ruins of cathedrals half-buried in volcanic ash, rivers of molten light snaking through the bones of fallen angels.

Above, fragments of constellations drifted like shards of glass, reflecting a sky torn in two.

At the center of it all, Asmodeus lay on the ground.

The demon king’s body was a ruin of power and pain—charred flesh knitting back together, black blood bubbling where divine fire still lingered. Every breath he took sounded like thunder caught in a cage.

Yet, even broken, he radiated majesty—a being who had ruled hell itself and refused to bow.

Atlas stopped before him. The heat rippled off the demon’s form, searing his skin, but he didn’t move back.

"....Asmodeus," he said quietly. "....Was it all a lie?"

The demon’s eyes—two burning amethysts—flicked open. A grin carved itself across his cracked lips. "....Which part, mortal?"

"The prophecy," Atlas replied. "Your vision. You said I would die by the hand of Dagon’s daughter.p. Was that truth.....or the game of a coward hiding from his own death?"

The silence that followed was heavy enough to bend time. Then Asmodeus laughed—a deep, ragged, chilling sound that carried no humor. It was the laugh of something ancient remembering its sins.

"Oh, it is truth, little prophet," he said, voice dripping venom and prophecy alike. "You think you’ve escaped fate, but you’ve only stepped into its next shadow. The daughter of Dagon waits, and her hands will be your end."

Atlas’s fists clenched. "?"

Asmodeus smiled wider, blood seeping between his teeth. "Because I have no intention of dying today."

His body began to flicker—sigils along his arms igniting with violet light. The air warped around him as he invoked his last domain.

The Mirror.

"Fuckk..... fucking Coward," Atlas hissed, stepping forward. "...You would flee after—"

The words died in his throat as reality shattered. The world split like glass, revealing infinite reflections—each one a possible hell, a different version of the same moment.

Asmodeus’s form dissolved into them, fragment by fragment, until he was gone.

Only his laughter remained, echoing through every reflection.

"Find me in the mirror, Atlas," the voice whispered, from everywhere and nowhere. "If you dare."

The light collapsed, and the Mirror Dimension sealed.

Atlas stood in the aftermath, surrounded by silence and ruin. The heat had already begun to fade, replaced by the cold weight of emptiness. He felt hollow—like a sword that had lost its edge.

The air still shimmered faintly where the portal had been. He stared into the emptiness, jaw tightening. "Run, then," he murmured. "You can’t hide forever."

He turned away, but the echo of Asmodeus’s laughter clung to the wind like smoke. For a moment, he thought of Lara, of Eli, of Claire—of the warmth of their hands, the snow that once fell in that other layer of hell. For a heartbeat, he wished he could go back.

But there was no going back.

Not anymore.

He walked to the place where the Guide had fallen. The ground was scorched to glass, the shape of a man burned into it—wings spread, halo extinguished. Atlas knelt and placed a hand on the mark. It was still warm.

"You bought me time," he whispered. "I won’t waste it."

The air shimmered again—light bending where there should be none. For an instant, he thought he saw the Guide’s form, smiling faintly, lips moving in silent benediction.

Then it was gone.

Atlas closed his eyes.

His mind drifted—through memory, through pain.

Atlas had thought himself ready. He was wrong.

Now, as the scent of burning stone filled his lungs, he finally understood: there was no victory that didn’t bleed.

He rose, his shadow stretching long across the wasteland.

The sky above him cracked again—faint, distant, like the sound of a door unlocking somewhere between worlds. The layers were weakening. Zeus’s strike had torn more than just heaven’s pride; it had wounded the foundation of creation itself.

If the barriers continued to fall, the lower hells would bleed into one another—and soon, into the mortal plane.

He had to move. There was still one Demon King left. One war yet to end.

But as he took his first step, he felt it—something stirring deep within him. The echo of the Guide’s essence still burned in his veins, interwoven with his own mana, unstable, wild. It whispered in his mind like a second heartbeat, a reminder that divinity was never meant for mortal flesh.

He grimaced, pressing a hand to his chest. The warmth spread outward, both pain and power.

"Not yet," he muttered. "I still need you."

The whisper in his blood answered faintly—neither word nor sound, but feeling. Agreement. Or resignation.

Above him, the Third Layer trembled again, fissures of light webbing across the crimson horizon. The war wasn’t over. The end was only beginning.

Atlas turned toward the abyss where Asmodeus had vanished. His eyes, once weary, now burned with new fire. "The mirror can’t hide you forever," he said. "And when I find you—"

He paused, breath steaming in the sulfur air.

"I’ll end your prophecy myself."

aits for the next wind.