CHAPTER 267: CHAPTER 268: THIRD LAYER

The sky was wrong.

It did not weep rain, nor promise storm—it was only smoke. A condensation of ash and soot, a shroud drawn thick across heaven until even the pale day bent into something dim and sickly.

The clouds had no weight of water, no promise of cleansing. They were simply the residue of ruin, a ceiling of suffocation that seemed to press lower with every passing breath.

The smell of charred iron and burned flesh clung to the wind like a second skin, and those who breathed it tasted bitterness on their tongues.

It should have been morning—time of reprieve, time of awakening. Yet the Demon Empress still stirred, awake in her palace, and all of Hell’s Third Layer trembled under her insomnia.

Below that smothered sky there was no stillness, no calm. Aurora had spoken once of what she saw here: chaos. But words were too soft.

What festered beneath the smoke was worse. Murder poured through the alleys like wine. Screams became the lullaby of children too starved to cry.

The laughter of thieves carried louder than the psalms of priests. And in corners where the smoke settled thickest, worse things happened, unspeakable things, done in shadows that feasted on silence. It was not night. But it was darker than night.

And over it all, titans plunged.

They crushed stone homes beneath their feet without pause, without care. Every step cracked roads into rivers of rubble, every careless motion shredded cities into dust.

Their massive shadows swung like pendulums across the broken lands, their weight grinding memories into unmarked graves.

Above, the winged Fallens swarmed like black birds. Their feathers were dark, yet their eyes burned with the last stubborn spark of faith.

Their wings beat heavy winds, spears hurled and arrows loosed in volleys that rained against the titans’ hides. Metal clanged, wood splintered—but nothing pierced deep enough. The giants laughed through the wounds, a thunder that shook whole spires to their foundations.

The Fallens fought anyway.

They always had. Even here at the western corner of Hell, where the shadows bred like weeds and the last breath of faith struggled against rot, they endured. Hated by demons, hunted by titans, they fought still.

For they were the faithless—the ones who once shone as angels, who fell into fire and refused to kneel. The demons despised them more than any enemy.

Long ago, when commanded to worship the One Below All, they spat their defiance. Even in Hell, they clung to another name: the One Above All. They bled, starved, burned—but they did not bow.

Now, with wings torn and armor cracked, they still called that name into the smoke.

"Die, faithless bastards!" a goblin-demon shrieked as he leapt from a titan’s shoulder. His jagged teeth sank into a Fallen’s neck, and the two of them plummeted, locked together in death’s embrace. They hit the ground with a splash of bone and blood, the goblin grinning even as his chest collapsed.

"Retreat!" came the cry.

It was the voice of a commander—three-winged, white-haired, his beard long as the smoke itself. Though age bent his back, his arms still swung with brute strength, blessed once by the One Above All in a time of light.

His voice thundered as he prayed: "Please bless me, O Lord... take pity on my companions, who still pray Your name." His grip tightened on his spear until the veins swelled along his wrist. Then with a roar he surged forward, charging the titans.

Pierce!

Pierce!

Pierce!

The spear sang as it struck, each thrust blooming with sparks against stone-like flesh. But before his shout of valor could rip from his lungs, it ended.

Three long spikes erupted—from skull, from chest, from wing. His cry choked out as blood dripped down his beard. He slumped, a monument of faith undone, crumpling beneath the titan’s sneer.

"Commander!!"

The cry tore from every throat of his soldiers.

"Commander Erwin!!"

Grief was a fire, and it burned faster than fear.

"We will die with a fight!" one Fallen bellowed, his tears swallowed by the wind.

"We will die like Commander Erwin!" another vowed, slamming his spear into the air and lifting it high again.

A tide of black wings rose. A bundle of Fallens surged forward, bodies filling the sky until they blotted out what little pale light crept through the smoke. They screamed their defiance as they dove upon the titans, voices uniting into one ragged roar:

"HAAAAAA!"

And then the world split.

The sky itself seemed to tear.

At first it was only a glow, a brightening behind the smoke, like an ember hidden inside coal. But then it spread. Wider. Brighter. The black veil of clouds split apart as though some hand ripped it open, until the battlefield below was drenched in an alien light.

All heads turned.

The Fallens gasped, their flight breaking. The titans raised their heads. Even the demons froze, their grins faltering.

It was no sun. It was no moon.

It was a star, plummeting.

A comet blazed down, burning a path straight through the smoke. Its scream was louder than a thousand spears loosed at once, a sound that vibrated bones and shattered teeth. Its heat seared the air until it smelled of melted iron.

"NOOOO!" a giant bellowed, raising an arm thick as a fortress wall to block it.

But no flesh could block a falling star.

The comet struck.

The explosion swallowed sound, swallowed sight. Fire erupted outward, brighter than any torch in Hell, a blossom of white-gold flame that cracked stone mountains and shook the entire Third Layer.

The impact rippled through the ground like the beating of some colossal heart, collapsing houses miles away and splitting rivers into steam.

The titan vanished in the blast—body ripped apart, swallowed whole, fragments hurled across the plain like broken idols.

Silence followed.

Then the echo came. Not of sound, but of gutteral instinct.

It rolled outward across every corner of the Third Layer, not just the battlefield, not just the broken lands nearby. Villages cowered beneath the quake. Demons paused in their feastings. Even the Empress stirred on her throne, her eyes flicking toward the west. Just for a second.

All had seen it.

The star had fallen.

When the smoke finally parted, when the fire dimmed to embers, something remained.

At the crater’s heart, within the ruined bones of the titan, a figure stood.

His shirt was gone, burned away. His trousers clung somehow still, blackened by ash. His hair whipped wild in the heat’s aftermath, dark strands curling against sweat and smoke. And his eyes—his golden eyes—burned brighter than the comet itself, staring across the battlefield with a rage that no titan nor demon could endure.

"LIIIIIDDDIIIAAAAA!!!" He roared, his aura leaking out with rage.

The name ripped from his chest like thunder given voice.

Atlas had come.

The Fallens trembled from the echo of the sound alone. Some whispered prayers. Some forgot how to breathe. For in that figure they saw not a man, not a savior, not even a monster—they saw inevitability.

The demons, once jeering, now felt their spines crawl with the memory of fear, a memory they had long thought buried.

Atlas stood in the wreckage, the dust of a god-killing strike still curling around him, his shadow long and terrible, even to the titans.

His golden eyes swept the battlefield, and everything that met their gaze knew: judgment had fallen, and it wore human flesh.