Chapter 63: He Still Sleeps?
The Father stepped down from the dais, each movement a psalm undone, his robes trailing like liquid starlight, his bare feet silent on the marble.
The room dimmed, the hymnstone’s glow fading as if in submission.
"He has survived the upper scars. The surface wounds. The gentle echoes," the Father said, his voice cold as ash. "Let him taste their affection. Let him build his illusions."
The Gates of Aetherion groaned open with the sound of bending starlight, a song of splintered divinity unraveling into dread, their radiant arches pulsing with celestial hymns that fractured in the air like glass.
Through the cascading veil of sacred light stumbled a lone figure, his wings half-tattered and dripping with holy blood, their pearlescent feathers scorched and frayed from the fringe storms that tore at the edge of the known realms.
The angel Nevi’el—young by celestial reckoning, but high-ranked enough to stand before the Thrones—pushed past the sentinels of radiance who flinched at his disorder, their silver spears trembling as he staggered forward.
The High Atrium lay before him: an ocean of glass-like marble, ringed by pillars of solid hymnstone, each one pulsing with locked canticles that hummed with divine power.
Here, nothing moved.
Nothing dared to move—until now.
Seraphim turned from their stillness, their silver eyes narrowing like blades at the sacrilege, their armor shimmering with righteous light.
Some shifted, fingers curling over spear-shafts etched with glowing sigils, the air shivering with judgment, a weight that pressed on the soul like a verdict.
"Brother Nevi’el," came the voice of Seraph Isareth, her tone like frost over silver bells, cutting through the atrium’s silence. "You enter unsummoned. Explain yourself, or be unmade."