CHAPTER 354: CHAPTER 343: THE STORM OF THE FOURTEEN

Some Moments before

The meteors came screaming from the torn sky — each one a burning omen, each one a vessel. The heavens bled fire as the fragments fell, tearing through cloud and frost and light, until they struck the frozen plains beyond the fallen city. The shockwave rippled through the bones of the world.

When the smoke thinned, they stood there — fourteen silhouettes born of ruin and divinity.

Demigods.

Half of them gleamed with the holy sheen of Heaven’s forge. The rest bore the markings of ancient beasts, scaled or horned or winged in abomination. Their eyes glowed with celestial fire — cold, unfeeling, merciless.

At their head stood one unlike the others — a towering figure with a dragon’s visage, horns spiraling backward like blades of obsidian, his golden skin cracked with ember veins. Upon his back rested a trident of godsteel, its tips humming with such condensed mana that the air warped around it.

He said nothing. His breath alone carried judgment.

The others moved first.

The demigods charged — swift, radiant, inevitable. Spears of light, blades of flame, wings that cut through wind and reason. The sky itself seemed to kneel before their arrival.

The Fallens met them. Broken angels, scarred and trembling, raised shields that gleamed with fading prayer. Their chants were hoarse and desperate.

"We remember the light we lost! In the name of the Acclaim, in the name of the forsaken dawn—stand!"

And the ground answered them with light.

The barrier, cracked but alive, blazed once more — a dome of desperate radiance holding back a tide of celestial wrath.

Lara’s spear sang as it met a demigod’s blade. Sparks burst like miniature suns between them. The impact sent her sliding backward across the frost, her breath ragged, her hands burning.

"Hold the line!" she shouted, voice cutting through the storm.

Beside her, Claire darted upward, wings of dark luminescence spreading behind her as she collided midair with a demigod wielding chains of fire. Their clash painted the frozen sky with crimson arcs.

"Lara....this all better be worth it." Claire complained.

Below, Eli’s hands pressed against the earth, her veins pulsing with emerald light — the echo of the Yggdrasil fruit burning within her. Roots burst forth again, coiling, striking, wrapping around celestial legs. For every demigod that broke free, two more roots rose to bind them.

"I trust her, she is special, special like her brother, like my husband." Eli muttered, again, pissing Claire off.

Merlin stood further back, his staff brimming with the remnants of Michael’s invocation. His spell was spent, but not his mind — it raced like lightning through old pathways of possibility.

They can’t win by strength.

They need precision. They need hope.

The demigods fought like nature itself — inevitable, cruelly efficient. Their blows carried the weight of mountains, their every breath an aura of annihilation.

One of them — a woman with crystalline skin — raised her hand, and shards of frozen light flew like arrows through the air, piercing the wings of Fallens midflight. Another demigod laughed as he burned them with solar flame, calling them filth, calling them mistakes.

"You are impurities," one sneered, voice echoing across the battlefield. "The leftover ash of creation. Die as you were meant to."

The Fallens screamed in answer, not in defiance but in fury — the fury of beings who had once touched Heaven and been cast down by its own hand.

Lara’s pulse thundered. She could taste blood in her mouth. She spun her spear, her runes flashing azure. "If Heaven won’t have you," she spat, "then Hell will remember you!"

She lunged — seven afterimages splitting from her, each one a streak of blue flame. Her strike caught the demigod square across the chest, staggering him.

Then the sky bent.

A shadow fell over everything. The sound of something enormous shifting its weight cut through the chaos. Lara turned — and her heart froze.

The dragon-faced demigod was moving.

He didn’t rush forward like the others. He simply walked, each step cracking the ice beneath him. The trident upon his back thrummed, singing to the air.

All the demigods turned, their charge faltering as he passed. Even they gave way before his presence.

He was not Heaven’s soldier. He was its executioner.

The dragon-headed demigod looked across the field, gaze passing over the carnage, the screaming, the blood. His eyes stopped on the cat.

The small, golden-eyed creature sat upon a ruined pillar, licking its paw with perfect indifference.

And beside it — the space where one of his own had been. The thunder demigod. Gone. No corpse. No remains. Only absence.

The dragon’s pupils contracted. The world seemed to still.

He reached back and drew his trident. The air howled around the weapon as if trying to flee.

When he spoke, his voice was the sound of worlds ending.

"A cat devoured my kin..?"

The words made the wind shiver.

The cat looked up mid-lick, blinked once, and yawned. Its belly swelled slightly, the faint outline of lightning still flickering beneath its fur.

A ripple of horrified realization spread through both armies.

Then the dragon-headed demigod moved.

He surged forward, trident whistling through the air like a scythe through silk. Its path tore the very sky open, leaving trails of molten air. The ground quaked. The cat remained exactly where it sat, stretching lazily.

The strike came — and met resistance.

A wall of light and flesh and will.

Lara, Claire, and Eli stood together before it, their bodies braced, their combined magic screaming against the trident’s force.

The impact shook the city’s bones.

Lara’s knees buckled, her palms bleeding where she gripped her spear. Claire’s wings cracked under pressure, black fire bleeding from them. Eli’s light flared, her body trembling from the strain.

For a moment, they held.

Then the dragon-headed demigod laughed. It was a sound like a thousand storms tearing mountains apart.

"Three mortals...?"

He twisted his trident, and the force sent them flying — crashing through the snow, sliding across stone and blood.

Claire coughed crimson, wings struggling to reform. Lara rolled onto her side, gasping, fingers digging into the frost. Eli groaned, her hands trembling as she tried to rise.

Then the demigod stopped. His golden gaze fixed on Eli.

Something flickered in his expression — confusion, curiosity, disdain.

He stepped forward, his aura dimming slightly. "You..." His voice rumbled, less a question, more a revelation. "You carry an unborn."

Eli froze. The air around her pulsed faintly, green and gold.

The demigod tilted his head. "A woman with child, fighting in Hell?" His smile was slow, cruel. "Tell me... which god sired what grows inside you?"

The question cut through everything.

Lara’s breath caught. Claire’s eyes widened. Even the Fallens stilled, their chants fading into silence.

Eli said nothing. Her hand drifted instinctively to her stomach, and the faint pulse of life beneath her palm glowed brighter — not with fear, but with defiance.

The demigod’s grin sharpened. "Woman, I advise you to leave...I will only pardon you so..."

He lifted his trident once more, the tips glowing with liquid sunlight.

The air fractured.

From the clouds, more light began to descend — columns of radiance streaking toward the battlefield like falling suns.

Merlin’s voice cracked across the mind-link, desperate and fierce.

"Fall back! NOW! The first of creation, he.... is now free..."

But none of them moved.

Lara raised her spear, trembling but unyielding. Claire’s halo flared again, her wings rising in defiance. Eli straightened, green fire flickering behind her eyes.

The cat opened one golden eye, sighed — then yawned again, as if the chaos itself were a lullaby.

And above them all, six winged angel, Michael beamed back to existence.