Fire consumed the horizon.
Not ordinary flames, but living infernos—twisting, roaring, devouring everything they touched. The sky itself appeared wounded, torn open by black smoke that spiraled endlessly upward, as though the world was trying to suffocate the heavens in retaliation.
From within that sea of destruction, something stood.
Unmoving.
Unburned.
Unbothered.
A silhouette slowly revealed itself as the flames parted, as if even fire recognized its master.
Arakin
.
His long black hair drifted freely, brushing against currents of heat that should have reduced it to ash, yet left it untouched. His body bore no armor, no divine ornament, no symbols of authority—yet his presence alone crushed the battlefield beneath an invisible weight. His crimson eyes glowed faintly, not with rage, but with a deep, ancient stillness, like blood frozen within the veins of a dead god.
The Angelic Knights felt it instantly.
A pressure.
A primal warning carved into their very existence.
Their wings stiffened mid-beat. Their instincts screamed retreat, but divine law held their feet in place. Weapons trembled—not from weakness, but from the refusal of holy steel to face what stood before them.
They were trained for war.
They were born for judgment.
Yet none of that mattered now.
Before any command could be issued, before the first blade could descend, Orakin spoke.
His voice was calm.
Almost bored.
"Who am I?"
The words drifted across the battlefield, carried effortlessly through fire and smoke.
A pause.
Then—
"What is my identity?"
For a moment, the battlefield itself seemed confused. In the midst of a war that could shatter realms, the question sounded absurd. Almost laughable. Like a child asking about himself while the world burned.
Yet no laughter came.
No mockery.
No disbelief.
Because every Angelic Knight knew the truth.
The being before them was not bound by predictable logic. He was not governed by emotion, morality, or divine law. His actions did not follow cause and effect as lesser beings understood it.
He was an anomaly.
A contradiction given form.
The Evil God Arakin.
Across countless worlds, his name had been erased from records, sealed within forbidden scriptures, whispered only in places where even gods feared to listen. To speak his name openly was to invite calamity.
Now, he stood before them.
Real.
Present.
Alive.
The Angelic Knights tightened their grip on their weapons. Holy blades hummed with restrained power. Their hearts began to beat in unison, not from courage—but from survival instinct.
High above them, suspended in the air by divine authority alone, a god unfolded his radiant wings. His presence distorted the light around him, bending it into halos of brilliance.
"Activate formation," he commanded, his voice echoing like thunder through the heavens.
"Channel your divine authority. All units—now!"
At once, weapons vanished into spatial rings. Hands moved in perfect synchronization, forming complex divine seals passed down through millennia of celestial warfare. Holy light erupted from every Angelic Knight, surging outward like a rising tide.
The darkness recoiled.
The clouds above tore apart violently, as if ripped open by unseen claws.
Runic symbols ignited across the sky—vast, intricate, ancient beyond comprehension. They interlocked, forming a colossal divine array that stretched from horizon to horizon, dwarfing mountains and eclipsing the sun itself.
The air vibrated.
Reality groaned.
Purifying Holy Light of the Nine Heavens.
The formation completed.
A beam descended.
It was not merely light.
It was judgment given form.
When it struck the ground, the world screamed. Earth evaporated into fine ash. Stone liquefied before vanishing entirely. Even the air itself seemed to burn, releasing a shrill, piercing sound as space warped under the intensity.
At the center of it all stood Arakin.
He blinked.
Once.
Twice.
As though mildly inconvenienced.
Black smoke began to rise from his body, thick and suffocating, coiling like shadows torn forcibly from his flesh. The heat intensified, enough to melt divine alloys and fracture enchanted barriers.
Yet Arakin did not scream.
He did not shield himself.
He merely stared forward, eyes half-lidded, as if watching a distant memory unfold rather than standing at the heart of annihilation.
The gods noticed.
Their expressions darkened.
"The Radiant Light is ineffective," one of them growled, disbelief bleeding into his voice.
"Do not waste power on partial judgment."
Another god raised his hand sharply.
"Unleash the second sequence," he commanded.
"All of it. At once."
The atmosphere shifted instantly.
Thunder rolled—not from clouds, but from the Nine Heavens themselves responding.
The sky dimmed, as if the world instinctively lowered its gaze.
Valour of the Gods.
Lightning erupted across the runic formation, tearing through symbols like veins of molten silver. Massive wheel-shaped constructs embedded within the array began to rotate, grinding against reality itself. Each rotation released shockwaves that shattered distant mountain ranges and collapsed cities light-years away.
Runes bled red light.
Divine energy surged to its absolute limit.
Across distant planets, mortals looked up in terror, witnessing the heavens glow with unnatural brilliance. Priests fell to their knees. Kings abandoned their thrones. Even demons paused, sensing something that transcended war itself.
Never in tens of thousands of years had such power been unleashed.
And never—until now—had it been directed at a single being.
The energy condensed.
Compressed.
Shaped itself.
A sword began to form—vast beyond comprehension, forged not from metal, but from divine authority itself. Its blade stretched across the sky, its edge humming with the combined will of gods.
At the same time, the gods activated their domains.
Invisible territories expanded outward, overlapping, merging, stacking atop one another. Heavenly laws replaced natural order. Gravity bent. Time slowed.
Then—
Chains descended.
Forged from holy law and divine judgment, they burst forth from earth and sky alike. They wrapped around Orakin's limbs, his torso, his neck, binding him midair.
Where they touched him, his dark energy hissed and burned violently. Black smoke erupted in torrents so dense that his physical form became indistinct, reduced to a living shadow suspended in divine restraint.
For the first time—
Arakin reacted.
A sharp pain tore through his mind.
Not physical.
Something far deeper.
Memories stirred.
Thoughts fractured.
His vision blurred.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
He found himself standing in a void—absolute, endless, silent. No light. No sound. No sense of direction.
Then, faintly, something appeared before him.
A translucent, glass-like screen, glowing dimly.
He stepped forward.
Reached out.
Touched it.
Cracks spread instantly.
The void shattered.
Fire.
Screams.
A ruined street soaked in blood and ash.
A small boy stood alone amid the destruction, his clothes torn, his face smeared with soot. Bodies lay scattered around him—burned, broken, half-melted. Bones gleamed white through charred flesh.
The boy did not cry.
He did not tremble.
There was no fear in his eyes.
Only emptiness.
Only one thought echoed endlessly within his mind.
Kill.
I want them dead.
All of them.
The world around him collapsed like shattered glass.
Arakin's eyes snapped open.
The chains ignited.
Black-red flames erupted from his body, devouring holy metal as if it were dry leaves. Divine domains cracked violently, shattering like glass under a hammer.
The sky turned crimson.
Blood rained from above.
The earth screamed.
Gods lost balance and fell from the sky, their authority unraveling. Angelic warships plummeted helplessly, crushed by an unseen gravitational force.
The formation vanished.
The divine sword dissolved into nothingness.
Arakin stepped forward.
Reality recoiled.
"I am Arakin," his voice echoed—not loud, not furious, yet impossible to escape.
"The death that awaits you all."