Realizing his healing would not finish in time, Raziel abandoned the attempt. Instead, he threw a desperate, powerful punch with his remaining arm, aiming to knock Lucifer back and buy himself a single, crucial moment.
Thwip.
His fist connected with her face.
Or rather, his wrist did.
His hand was gone. Severed at the point of impact. Dark, shimmering blood splattered across Lucifer's cheekbones as the stump of his arm slammed into her. The blood hung in the air between them, a constellation of gore.
Lucifer did not flinch. Her hand closed around his jaw, her fingers digging into the divine bone. She lifted him, pulling him close until they were face to face. He struggled, kicking, but her grip was absolute.
"Of what use is a Commandment," she mocked, her voice a low, menacing purr, "who can no longer command?" Her smile was a cruel slash.
She lowered him slightly, then brought her other hand up to grip his throat. With terrifying, deliberate slowness, she began to pull, putting immense pressure on his jaw. The bone creaked, a sickening sound that vibrated through his skull.
Panic, pure and primal, surged through Raziel. He retracted his bleeding stump, his mind screaming. His other fist, the newly healed one, shot out in a wild, concussive blast aimed at her midsection, driven by insufferable pain and the need to break free.
Thwip.
Mid-swing, his entire arm vanished from the shoulder down. It was replaced by another eruption of dark blood. Raziel could only watch in stunned horror as the limb he had just regenerated was erased from existence.
The cracking of his jaw intensified. Blood welled in his mouth, overflowing his lips. Tears of agony and fury spilled from his eyes, crystallizing instantly in the vacuum.
Then, with a final, wet rip, Lucifer tore his jaw clean off. A massive amount of blood followed, freezing into grotesque, dark shimmering sculptures in the space between them.
From her distant observation post, Gabriel watched, her expression unreadable. She observed Lucifer's brutal efficiency, how she grabbed one of Raziel's six magnificent wings and used it as a handle. She flew, dragging the maimed angel with her, and smashed him bodily through the frozen debris of Saturn's rings. She used the celestial wreckage as a bludgeon, pulverizing him against kilometer-sized chunks of ice while he desperately tried to heal his catastrophic injuries.
Lucifer raised her hand for a final, annihilating blow.
But Dumah was there.
He had recovered, his body whole, his eyes burning with vengeance. He intercepted, his form a blur of holy light. He grabbed Lucifer and hurled her with all his might toward a nearby medium-sized moon.
The impact was cataclysmic. Lucifer struck the moon's surface like a divine meteor. A web of deep, glowing fissures raced across the entire celestial body, and a large portion of its crust exploded outward into space.
As Raziel finally managed to fully regenerate, his jaw and arms restored, his body trembling with rage and pain, he and Dumah watched the expanding cloud of debris.
From within the destruction, Lucifer emerged.
But she was changed.
Two more vast wings of obsidian had manifest on her back, bringing her total to eight. And these wings were not merely dark. They were wreathed in roaring, divine flames—a contradiction, a union of fallen state and heavenly fire.
She shot toward them, and the true brawl began.
No more careful tactics, no more silent commands. It was a brutal exchange of raw power. Lucifer traded blow for blow with both Commandments simultaneously. The effect of Raziel's repeated "Stop" commands grew visibly weaker each time he uttered them. Their battle became a storm of collateral destruction. They shattered moonlets, ignited asteroid fields, and sent shockwaves rippling through Saturn's remaining rings. Dark blood and golden ichor mixed in the void, each combatant inflicting and receiving terrible wounds.
Raphael stared, his analytical mind struggling to process the spectacle. "I cannot articulate my astonishment," he breathed. "A Fallen One, meant to be diminished, is holding her own against two Commandments at once. It is… unprecedented."
"Fascinating," Gabriel murmured, a slow smirk spreading across her face. "So that is how you maintained your footing against my sister."
Raphael turned to her. "My Lady? What have you discerned? To my eyes, she fights with a brute force reminiscent of Archangel Michael, yet without Michael's overwhelming power."
"She is obviously adapting," Gabriel stated, her violet eyes tracking every motion. "Those two halos are the key. But her method is different from Michael's. Michael increases her own output to overcome. Lucifer… she is somehow reducing her opponents' output. That is why Raziel's authority weakens with each use. Given enough repetition, she will become completely immune to it."
She paused, her smirk fading into a frown of genuine curiosity. "But this is a problem. Before I declared this war, I studied every record in the Library of the Tree of Life. 'Adaptation' was not listed among Lucifer's known capabilities. So how is she doing this?"
Raphael was impressed. "Your analysis is remarkably impressive, My Lady, to perceive such subtleties." A practical question followed. "Now that you understand this facet of her Authority, have you formulated a method to overcome it?"
"I do not believe that is her Authority," Gabriel countered, her eyes squinting as she focused on the distant flashes of combat. "I believe it is a side effect of the slashes."
This single sentence sent a tremor through Raphael's understanding. An adaptation that complex, not an Authority? Aside from Michael, no angel was recorded to possess such a trait. Was this the true reason Michael personally pursued Lucifer's escape from Hell? Did she alone know the extent of Lucifer's latent power? A cold doubt whispered in his mind: If she is this formidable, can I ever truly fill the void she left among the Seven?
Gabriel continued, thinking aloud. "It is not a simple bisection. If it were, body parts would merely separate. But we have witnessed entire limbs… removed. Vanish."
"Perhaps she erases them from existence?" Raphael ventured.
"Impossible," Gabriel dismissed immediately. "Existence erasure does not function on angelic beings. Our essence is anchored to the Creation itself."
The scene snapped back to the raging battle. Raziel barked a command, and Dumah amplified it with a gesture. A vast section of Saturn's remaining rings, thousands of cubic kilometers of ice and rock, shuddered. It broke free from its orbit and hurtled toward Lucifer, each fragment igniting into a fiery projectile as it accelerated to a significant fraction of lightspeed.
Lucifer reacted instantly. She flew in a tight, evasive spiral, weaving through the incoming storm of flaming celestial debris. She needed a clear line of sight. The two Commandments were not attacking; they were buying time, building up a terrifying concentration of energy between them.
"She is growing desperate to end this," Gabriel observed coolly. "I can see the energy she is amassing. Her next move will be decisive."
The Commandments sensed it too. To prevent her from unleashing whatever cataclysm she was preparing, Raziel intensified his barrage of spatial commands, trying to lock her down, to deny her any opening. His goal was clear: create the window for Dumah to strike first.
Still dodging the fiery hail of ring fragments, Lucifer's form underwent another transformation. Her eight obsidian wings shimmered, then dissolved into motes of dark light. From her back, eight new wings erupted—these were not dark, but pristine, breathtakingly beautiful wings of pure, radiant white. They glowed with an inner luminescence, a haunting echo of her lost grace.
VVVVMMMMM.
She tried to hold her position in the chaotic space, still evading, but preparing to counter. She extended a hand, energy coalescing into a point of impossible density before her.
She was too late.
"Phenomenal Singularity." Dumah's voice thrummed across the void, final and absolute. He formed a complex, ancient handsign with his gauntleted fingers.
A sphere of absolute darkness, a pocket of condensed nothingness, bloomed from his hands. It expanded with voracious speed, rushing to engulf Lucifer, to swallow her and the energy she had gathered.
But just before the sphere of annihilating darkness could completely close around her…
"Divine Divide."
Gabriel and Raphael's eyes flew wide in unison. A shock so profound it was physical jolted through them.
No one had seen this coming.