"For eour struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world…"
— Ephesians 6:12
⸻
The Old God began to descend.
It didn't fall from the sky. It bled through the seams of reality like ink through silk — its form shifting, undulating, faceless and infinite. Limbs formed and dissolved in every corner of the chamber, each shadow it cast brimming with ancient madness. Voices whispered behind the walls. The floor buckled.
Luciel didn't move.
Not yet.
He stood between the dais and the others — coat fluttering in an unseen wind, guns empty, ritual blade drawn. His eyes tracked the being with surgical calm, but every part of him screamed one truth:
This was not a demon.
Not a spirit.
This was a name before language.
This wasn't something he could kill.
Not like this.
Not with relics. Not with faith alone.
The Old God's gaze — if it had one — turned toward him or perhaps through him. Pressure filled the air like the deep ocean pressing into his chest. Luciel's body buckled, blood trickling from his nose. His soul throbbed, something ancient recognizing him… and hating him.
But he smiled.
A slow, crooked thing.
"Bit early in the season for forgotten gods," he muttered, voice hoarse. "I thought your kind were sleeping in the void."
The god twisted its shape — a mouth of bone opening across its chest. "False child," it hissed. "Half-thing. Nephesh-warped meat."
Luciel's smile didn't fade. "You talk a lot for something that's barely here.
Luciel raised his blade afar the being.
He charged.
Gunmetal boots clanged against stone. He leapt, slashing upward — runes across the butcher's knife flaring golden as it connected with the god's shoulder.
It passed through.
No wound. No recoil.
The blade sizzled like it had kissed liquid void.
The Old God laughed — not in sound, but sensation. A feeling that crawled into the back of Luciel's teeth and settled behind his eyes. It moved, faster than thought, and with a sweep of its arm made of shadow and bone, hurled him across the library.
Luciel slammed into a shelf. Wood splintered. Books exploded into dust.
He rose again, coughing, blood dripping from his lip.
Caleb shouted his name. Jazz shrieked something unintelligible.
But Luciel was already pushing off the wall.
The shadows struck the ground where he'd stood — cratering marble, shattering furniture. But Luciel was already behind it, coat fluttering, eyes glowing dim.
With a flick of his fingers, he scattered three talismans — drawn from inside his coat — onto the floor. They ignited instantly, carving a trio of interlocked sigils into the stone.
He dropped a talisman beneath its base form. "Divine Cycle: Seal, Sever—"
A black tentacle snapped around his wrist — broke bone. It yanked him forward.
The god surged up — a mouth opening behind its ribcage, brimming with teeth that hummed in reverse.
Luciel didn't flinch. He let it pull him.
Just before it closed, he whispered:
"Scatter."
The talisman exploded beneath them — not in flame, but in sound. A harmonic rupture tore the god's limb from its body. Luciel landed behind it, bones breaking midair with sickening cracks.
He activated another talisman
"Seal of Solomon: Seal, Sever, Scatter!"
A storm of radiant chains erupted from the symbols and wrapped around one of the god's forming limbs — pinning it to the floor.
The Old God didn't flinch. It let that limb rot away and grew another. Tenfold.
Luciel was moving before the backlash hit. Ducking low, sliding beneath a sweep of shadow, he tossed a vial of sanctified oil into the god's core. It exploded mid-air in a burst of blue-white flame — and for the first time, the god shuddered.
"A crack…" Luciel breathed. "You can bleed…"
But then it turned on him.
All at once, its presence expanded — not outward, but inward. Into his mind. Into the silence between his thoughts.
You are born of lies, it whispered. False heir. Broken son. Traitor of both Thrones.
Luciel staggered. Images of his past — the monastery, the Father, his blade dripping in a church — surged to the surface. The truth of his sin echoed louder than any weapon.
He dropped to one knee.
The god raised its claw.
And Luciel screamed.
But it wasn't pain that followed — it was fire.
A low hum, deep within his ribcage, like a second heartbeat, awakened.
And something ancient — something profane — stirred inside him.
Luciel looked up.
The air warped.
His coat burned away in a wave of unholy radiance. Not fire. Not shadow. Something between — the color of judgment.
From his left brow, a single black horn erupted — spiraling upward before curving like a crown across his forehead, its tip resting above the right brow. Burning runes flared across its length, alive with seething scripture no man could write.
From his back, a single raven-black wing tore free — unfurled and vast, each feather etched in glowing script. It shimmered not for flight, but for destruction. Each rune on its span was a wound against causality, a rejection of divine design.
Luciel rose.
His eyes glowed like burning mercury.
In that moment, Luciel Virell ceased to be merely human.
He became The Herald of False Truth.
He turned slowly, eyes half-lidded, wing unfurled, horn aglow.
The Old God screamed.
He reached into the air and drew a circle — not of chalk or ash, but one made of pure rejection. A symbol spun with denial of ordained fate, inscribed with his personal sigil — neither angelic nor demonic, but something estranged.
A thread spun in midair — his sigil burning black and gold.
"FALSE WEAVE."
Reality hissed.
The room changed. Not physically — conceptually. The ground no longer mattered. Time stuttered. Light bent. The threads of causality erupted from the god like veins — luminous, tangled, broken things.
The Old God paused.
Because this was not Fate Weave.
This was a perversion of fate itself — a miracle born not from divinity, but defiance. A hybrid spell laced with bloodline power — and it burned with clarity.
Luciel lifted his hand.
Threads ignited around the god — fate lines that should not have been visible. Lies. Weaknesses. Loopholes.
Luciel walked through them, calm as a reaper.
"Let's start small," he said, almost lazily. "What if I cut the one that lets you see me?"
He sliced.
The god recoiled, suddenly blind. It screamed in confusion, whirling its limbs uselessly.
What if I cut your mouth?"
Another thread snapped. The god's voice broke — sound reducing to garbled clicks.
Luciel moved like a shadow through silk.
"What if I cut your purpose?"
One by one, he snipped its lines.
Luciel cut them.
Not with speed.
With precision.
Every cut stripped it further from existence — not killing it, but robbing it. Its reason, its memory, its bindings to this realm.
The god shrieked in a voice no longer its own.
Luciel finally looked it in the eye — or what passed for one.
"You were worshipped once," he said coldly. "By men who feared you. But I've met your kind. You're not gods. You're leftovers."
He let the blade rest against one final thread.
"This one's new," he whispered. "Ties you to her."
He looked toward Thalia's still form.
"Did you think I'd let you keep it?"
The god's remaining limbs twitched, trying to retreat.
Too late.
Luciel cut it.
The last thread exploded into radiant dust.
The Old God howled, folding in on itself, collapsing like a star going cold.
Luciel watched, unblinking.
"Back to the silence," he said.
And with a snap of his fingers, it was gone.
The room fell into absolute stillness.
Luciel stood amidst the wreckage, black wing drooping slightly, runes fading across his curved horn. The burning light drained from his veins like mist. His face, beneath it all, looked exhausted. Barely human.
He turned to Caleb and Jazz, who were still frozen in place — eyes wide, breath caught, like statues made of awe and horror.
Luciel offered no explanation.
Just a soft, rasped whisper:
"Watch my body."
Then he collapsed.