CHAPTER 349: CHAPTER 338: CONFRONTATION

Fire poured like blood through the cracks of the obsidian floor, spilling between the chains that webbed the air.

Every link glowed faintly with sigils that pulsed in rhythm to a monstrous heart. The Serpent’s Hall had become alive — and at its center stood..

Asmodeus, disgusting bat like wings unfurled, eyes twin suns drowning in crimson.

"I gave you a chance, aurora..." he murmured, voice as smooth as smoke.

Aurora’s boots hissed against the molten stone as she stepped forward, cloak whipping in the wind that wasn’t there. "No....it was your plan ..it was you, You made me come."

Her staff blazed to life, runes flaring gold and violet. A halo of sigils spun around her — six circles of celestial geometry interlocking with a seventh that pulsed faintly, unstable. The Fang of the First hung from her belt, vibrating like a living thing.

Asmodeus smiled. "You still wear Heaven’s arrogance like perfume."

"Better that," she said, raising her hand, "than the stench of your draining reign."

The first spell tore reality open.

A storm of light and flame burst outward, lancing through the throne hall. It struck Asmodeus like divine lightning, detonating with a sound that shook the veins of Hell.

The walls screamed — serpents of obsidian twisting as if alive.

When the light cleared, Asmodeus stood untouched. The blast had torn his robes, but not his flesh. His grin widened.

"You’ve learned to bite," he said softly. "Now let’s see if you can bleed."

He moved.

One moment he was standing before her, the next — gone. The air cracked. A dozen chains erupted from the ground, coiling around her arms, legs, wings — dragging her down.

She answered with a gesture, her eyes blazing white. The sigils around her spun faster, each one igniting into shards of celestial glass that cut through the chains.

Asmodeus appeared behind her. His hand brushed her shoulder — not cruelly, almost gently. The touch seared through armor and bone alike.

{Vanish}

Aurora screamed, spun, and unleashed a blast point-blank — a solar flare of raw magic that split the throne in half.

Asmodeus staggered this time, half his body dissolving into molten gold before reforming. He laughed, low and beautiful. "Good. You remembered what power of LAWs hold."

"Shut up," she hissed. Her third eye unfurled, catching the wind of her own fury. Lightning bled from her body., as it shone golden with marks all over.

She began the invocation — ancient, forbidden. The sky above the chamber cracked open, revealing not stars, but a void of moving light. Words older than angels spilled from her mouth:

"By the Fang that split the Dawn, by the Choir that fell in silence — I name the flame unbound!"

{Burn}

From the wound in the air descended a lance of pure solar wrath. It struck Asmodeus dead center, impaling him through the chest. The ground shuddered.

For a heartbeat — for one impossible heartbeat — he burned.

Then the laughter came again.

He stepped through the fire, the lance still protruding from his chest, molten blood dripping from the wound — blood that turned into serpents midair.

His eyes were endless, golden-red suns devouring the world.

"You use their words," he whispered, "but not their faith."

He tore the lance free, flung it aside, and the flame died as if ashamed.

Aurora fell to one knee, blood on her lips, lungs burning. Her magic flickered, collapsing under the weight of his presence. Every shadow bent toward him, worshiping him without permission.

He walked closer, voice like silk dragged through ruin. "You cannot kill what defines death. You cannot save what does not wish to be saved."

"Then I’ll remind you what you were," she spat.

Her hand found the Fang.

The relic pulsed with impossible light — gold bleeding into white. The air rippled, the chamber howling. For the first time, Asmodeus’s smile faltered.

He raised a hand, but too late.

Aurora drove the Fang into the ground.

The impact split the hall. A pillar of light burst upward, cutting through every layer of shadow.

The serpents turned to ash. The chains shattered. Asmodeus staggered back, his molten wings flaring to shield his face.

Through the light, Aurora’s voice rang, ragged but unbroken. "Oh .. King of Kings — I am no one’s acolyte."

The relic’s power swallowed her. The hall folded in on itself, the light consuming all.

When it faded, she was gone.

Asmodeus stood alone amid the ruin, one hand pressed to the faint cut across his palm — the first blood he had shed in an age. He looked at it, smiled faintly, and whispered to the air,

"Run, little flame. The Gate is almost awake...the fourth layer will open soon....."

There was noise of destruction The flight back through the fissure felt endless.

Aurora burst from the Serpent’s Hall like an arrow loosed from the dark, her body scattering cinders across the hollow sky.

The molten wind clawed at her feathers, whispering fragments of Asmodeus’ laughter.

Every heartbeat was an echo of that vision — the Gate yawning open, Aiden crowned in light, her own reflection kneeling before him.

She climbed higher, until the stone melted into smoke and the air thinned to silence. Only then did she stop, hovering between two shadows: the black clouds of the lower Veins below, and the bruised red glow of the frontier above. Between them, she felt hollow — a spark adrift in a dead wind.

Her hands still burned from touching him.

Not from pain, but from knowledge.

Completion is death.

The words turned in her mind like teeth. Was that the truth Asmodeus wanted her to see — or the lie meant to turn her against the Guide?

She closed her eyes, forcing her breath steady. "Aiden," she whispered into the dark. His name still felt like prayer. "What have we done?"

The air shifted. A faint shimmer answered — not voice, not presence, but something that brushed the edge of her thoughts.

The Prophet’s essence. Distant. Fading. As if already standing too close to the Gate.

Aurora opened her eyes and saw the southern horizon burning with slow lightning.

The Heir’s citadel waited somewhere beneath it, fragile as a heartbeat. That child was the key, Asmodeus had said — the balance written into the end. The bait.

If that was true, the Prophet was walking straight into damnation, and the Heir was the knife meant to greet him.

Aurora’s wings folded tight. The Gate’s pulse trembled through the air, faint but insistent — the rhythm of inevitability.

She could still feel elder’s shard at her side, its faint gold glow bleeding through the cloth. The Fang of the First. A weapon meant for gods.

But weapons meant nothing if she no longer knew who the enemy was.

She landed on a jagged outcrop overlooking the molten plains. The heat rolled around her, thick and suffocating.

Ash drifted from the clouds like snow. In the distance, the towers of the southern frontier shimmered faintly — a promise, a warning, a home she no longer recognized.

She sank to one knee, pressing her palm against the stone. Beneath it, Hell’s heart beat — slow, immense, waiting. "If prophecy is a chain," she murmured, "then I will break it. No, we will break it."

The words steadied her. They did not erase the fear, but gave it shape.

When she rose again, the storm had moved closer. Lightning carved the horizon in white veins.

Somewhere beyond it, Asmodeus watched, and perhaps even smiled.

Aurora spread used her flight magic once more, her eyes hardening like forged iron. "This is enough for now, ," she whispered. "... enough information..."

She took flight toward the frontier, carrying with her the last ember of knowledge — knowledge of what was to come.