Chapter 36: The End
"No, never again." She Replied.
She waved her hand once, and the battlefield answered. From the sky the ones who called themselves protectors dove in formation, wings cutting through the red evening rain. Ready to Attack and destroy.
From the ground the so-called pillagers of the ages rose to meet them, not with blades first but with raw force. A barrier of black and gold light curled around the demons, sealing them together against the descending storm of angels. Ready to Defend and Protect.
Amon stood in the center of it all and said nothing. He did not raise a hand. He did not speak a word of power. He simply let them come, magic, swords, curses, divinity, all of it. None of it mattered. Nothing ever did.
All he did was just... increased his speed by a fraction.
The world slowed.
Raindrops stretched into long silver threads. Demons froze mid-step, mouths open in half-formed war cries. Only the angels kept pace. Someone above had already matched their velocity to his, or they had done it themselves. Either way, they moved with him while everything else lagged behind.
He recognized the one flying straight at him. Her aura had not changed. Uranus. Both hands locked inside shining gauntlets, aimed at his face. He let the strike land. The gauntlet met his cheek with a clean, solid sound.
Tang.
The metal shattered. Her hands shattered with it. Bone and light scattered across the rain. She stared at the stumps where her wrists had been, confusion flickering across her face before the pain arrived.
Poor girl. Who did she think she was?
It was always strange when angels forgot their place. He had helped build the six layers of Heaven. He had set the foundations, drawn the circuits, taught the first of them how to hold light without burning. Did they simply forget? Or had someone made them forget?
The thought settled. He remembered her. She did not remember him. The stories they told about the present had erased the past. He had once called himself scummy for wiping memories. Now they...
they did it in bulk and called it mercy...ha!
Another angel came in from the side. Newer. Lower rank. She carried a sword that looked like a Japanese blade at first glance, but the edge hummed with a different purpose. It was not made for flesh. It was made for whatever lived inside the body. An enchanted cutter. Finally, someone with a brain.
He offered the silent compliment and raised his speed again.
The newer angel lagged. More than fifty of the host slowed to the same sluggish pace as the demons. Only a handful still matched him. Uranus was among them. Her hands had already regrown, too fast for normal angel healing. That meant a saint was somewhere in the formation, feeding them from a distance. His first real target.
He moved through the remaining angels, weaving, looking. No saint. No archangel. Nothing. Not even a principality. Only ordinary angels, the lowest ranks Heaven could still field without risk. That tracked. They had already spent too much causality when they sent Raphael, a seraphim. Michael was conserving what remained. Afraid of running dry.
Amon was getting tired of dodging. He pushed his speed higher.
Seven angels left who could still keep up. Uranus among them. Sweat ran down their faces in thick lines. The rain no longer touched them; it hung in the air like glass.
He pointed at her.
"You."
They all stopped. Uranus blinked, breathing hard. "Me...?"
"You have potential, dear."
Something in her aura pulled at him. Compatibility, maybe. Or something older. The feeling had not been there before Michael wiped her clean. Something about her had changed, or returned.
"Come join me."
The words landed like a slap. Every angel within earshot froze harder. The golden immortal offering his blessing was rare enough. Offering it to one of their own was unheard of.
A system window flickered at the edge of his vision.
[Unlocking full AGI: 999,999+ points]
He ignored it and accelerated once more.
The sound barrier broke under his feet. Everything else stopped. Raindrops hung perfectly still, frozen mid-fall. Angels and demons became statues. Only Amon moved. The world belonged to him for as long as he held this speed.
He closed the distance to Uranus. Up close her face was clearer. The shape of the eyes. The shade of the lips. The line of the jaw. Even the way her hair fell when the wind no longer moved it.
His fingers reached out before he could stop them and touched her cheek.
"You... why do you look like her?"
The words left his mouth quieter than he intended.
"Why do you look like Nyima?"
A golden beam tore down from Heaven.
It did not aim at him. It struck her.
Liliana’s body snapped out of the freeze. Her lips moved at once.
Amon was still staring at the face that should not exist. The scent. The eyes. The heartbeat under the skin. The exact shade of the mouth. His hands began to shake.
"Because it is her," Liliana said. "Cast Darkness, Infinite Edition."
Her system unfolded in the air, visible to anyone still conscious enough to see.
[Skill: Infinite Darkness, Skill S-tier > SSS-tier]
[Medium: Lucifer and Michael]
[Activation Complete]
[Target: Amon, the Golden Immortal]
He understood in the same instant. Heaven had been rationing its power for a reason. They had found the right vessel. The Mother of Witches herself. Liliana. All the divinity they had held back was now flowing through her.
"Get fucked," she said.
The darkness hit.
For one impossible millisecond she was faster than him. The black tide closed over his body before he could step outside it. Real darkness. The kind that existed before light had a name. Combined power of Heaven and Hell poured into the spell until the edges of the world started to fray.
Warning windows stacked in front of his eyes.
[Warning!]
[Warning!]
[Warning!]
[The darkness before creation itself has been detected]
He still had an exit. He always did. Creator’s skill. Let There Be Light. SSSSS-tier. One activation and reality around him would reset. Everything nearby would come apart, people, ground, sky, whatever held the world together in this place. Liliana. Judas. Claude. And the woman whose face he could no longer look away from.
The skill prompt waited.
[Skill advised: Creator’s skill — Let There Be Light, SSSSS-tier]
[Warning: all reality might reset around you.]
[Would you like to activate?]
[Yes] or [No]
He already knew the answer.
Reality would shatter. Everyone here would die, or worse. He did not even know what "worse" looked like when that skill finished its work. And the woman standing in front of him, Liliana had called her wife once, dead wife, still wore Nyima’s face. The soul felt the same but the body was different, but the want inside his chest beat the same way it had beaten for Nyima years ago.
"No."
The skill cancelled.
Darkness finished closing. He lost sight of her. Lost sight of everything. Infinite black pressed in from every direction, backed by the full weight of two realms. For a moment there was nothing left to fight.
Then—
Doom.
Amon opened his eyes.
He stood in the same place he had started. Rain fell at normal speed again. Angels and demons lay scattered across the ground, some still breathing, most not. The barrier was gone. The sky was empty of wings.
Liliana was on the ground nearest to him. He walked over, crouched, and checked her pulse. Still alive. He pushed a measured amount of his own essence into her body, just enough to keep the damage from killing her outright.
"You dumbass," he said. "Thought you could channel that much divinity through one body."
Claude limped up, one hand hanging at a bad angle. "Amon! Is it over?"
The rain slowed, then stopped. The red evening sun broke through the clouds and painted everything the color of old blood.
"Yes, numbstick. I think it’s over."
Claude’s eyes moved past him. "Then what about her?"
Amon turned.
The angel who had been Uranus still stood. Her hair darkened in real time, the gold bleeding out of it. Her eyes shifted from the bright angelic shade to something human and familiar. The last of the borrowed light left her face until only Nyima remained.
"Huh. Nyima?"
She looked at him the same way she used to, half-confused, half-sure.
"...Amon?"
He closed the distance in three steps. "You... are you really Nyima?"
She pressed a hand to her temple. "Yeah. My memories... they’re coming back. What happe—"
He did not wait for the rest of the sentence. His arms went around her and held on. The scent was right. The shape of her shoulders under his hands was right. The voice that had started to speak his name was the same one he had heard the last time he saw her alive.
"I thought I died," she said against his chest. "Then I was reborn, I think... but..."
"You must have been reincarnated in Heaven," he said. "Time works differently there. Even I’m still sorting it out."
Claude hovered a few steps away, nervous. "Amon, are you sure we’re okay?"
Amon did not look away from her. "Yeah. The best thing that’s ever happened to me."
***
In the real World.
"Is it done?"
Liliana’s voice came out strained. Her body smoked in places. One eye drooped as if the socket itself had started to melt. The saint angel who held her upright looked ready to collapse with her.
"Yes," she answered. A thin smile still managed to form. "It’s a success."
She watched the sealed sphere of darkness floating in the center of the chamber. Inside it the golden immortal sat motionless, eyes closed, sealed away from the world he had almost broken.
The trap had worked, after all.