The sky darkened.
No, it did not rely darken, but curdled.
The vibrant sky of the Earth’s protection was bled dry, replaced by a bruised, oily blackness that seed to press down on the mortal realm with the weight of a leaden shroud.
High above, Gilgash stood upon the prow of his golden ship, his brow furrowed in a rare display of genuine irritation.
He clicked his tongue, the sound sharp against the unnatural silence.
"What a persistent, unsightly thing," he muttered, his hand hovering over the ripples of his treasury. "To refuse the embrace of death when the King has decreed it... such insolence deserves a thousand cuts."
Below, the triumph of the army of Herion was cut short.
Herios narrowed his eyes, his instinct for survival screaming as the mountain-sized "corpse" of the True Outer One, which they had just dismantled with the help of the Giants, did not dissolve.
Instead, it began to twitch with a chanical, rhythmic spams.
Then, it let out a cry.
It was not a sound of the throat, but a conceptual shriek of primordial chaos, completely bypassing the air and struck the very souls of those present.
Thousands of mortal soldiers, n and won who had just been cheering for their King, suddenly collapsed, with their eyes, noses, and ears wept dark, thin blood as their brains failed to process the non-Euclidean frequency.
Even the Giants, the mighty sons of Hades and Gaia, stumbled backward, their obsidian skin cracking as they clutched their heads in agony.
Just then, the corpse began to bloat, the solid grey flesh liquefying into a quivering, silver-black blob.
It moved like rcury, flowing upward and inward, absorbing the surrounding rubble and the very light of the stars.
Seeing that, Herios instincts scread, and he knew that he shouldn’t allow this thing to complete whatever it is that its doing.
"Attack it! Do not let it finish the transition!" Herios roared, his voice a desperate command to the remaining warriors.
Humanity answered with everything they had.
Volleys of arrows, enchanted spears, and the concentrated sorcery of dea’s circle struck the pulsating mass.
But the attacks were ineffective.
The blob did not break, nor was there even a scratch, it simply accepted the energy as if they were food to be eaten.
It swallowed the fire, the steel, and the magic, using the montum of the assault to fuel its own tamorphosis.
"Damn it!" Herios cursed, "Stop!"
Humanity stopped at his command as they stared at the thing in anger and frustration.
They couldn’t even stop this!?
Just how many tis does thing transform!?
Suddenly, a wave of absolute darkness erupted from the mass, expanding outward in a silent shockwave, and as it passed, the world lost its color.
The green of the trees, the gold of the armor, and the blue of the sky were bleached into a monochromatic nightmare of grey and black.
Finally...
The blob solidified.
The mountain of a corpse was gone, and in its place stood a figure only 200cm tall.
It was humanoid, yet profoundly alien, its skin a smooth, matte obsidian. It possessed no face, only countless eyes that covered its limbs and torso, all blinking in a frantic, uncoordinated unison.
It hovered a foot above the ground, perfectly motionless, yet radiating a pressure that made the air feel like cooling concrete.
"What...is that?"
No one knew who spoke first, but that was what everyone was thinking at this mont.
Under their stunned and fearful gaze, they watched as with a casual, almost bored twitch of its finger, the entity gestured.
And almost imdiately, a gust of wind, invisible and absolute, tore through the front lines.
This was not air, but more of a displacent of reality.
In a heartbeat, thousands of Herion’s veterans were simply... gone.
They did not fall, nor did they scream. They were simply annihilated so completely that not a single drop of blood remained on the soil they had occupied.
The army of humanity froze.
Fear, cold and paralyzing fear, gripped their hearts.
This was not a monster...they couldn’t even describe what this thing is.
But it was sothing completely beyond their comprehension.
They stared at the entity, and for a mont, they couldn’t help but wonder ..
Are we going to die?
In that mont of total shadow, three streaks of blinding gold tore through the blackened sky.
Three Golden Crosses, massive and wreathed in celestial fire, shot down from the Empyrean.
They slamd into the earth around the humanoid horror, forming a triangular seal, and from the arms of the crosses, heavy golden chains erupted, lashing around the Outer One’s neck and limbs, pinning its conceptual mass to the spot.
They stared in shock and confusion.
What... What was that!?
What is happening?
Just then...
"Do not lose hope! Glory is to the Lord!"
A woman descended from the clouds, bathed in a pillar of golden light that restored the color to the world wherever it touched.
Her orange hair flowed like a river of autumn leaves, and in her hand, she held a staff topped with a crystalline lily.
Herios’s eyes widened, his soul recognizing the warmth of that radiance. "That light... Why does that light feel so familiar?"
He was sure that this is the first ti he witnessed the light, but he couldn’t help but feel a sense of familiarity.
It was as if he was in a presence of a kind, and gentle parent.
"She is Mary Madeleine," Kaerion whispered, his voice hushed with reverence. "She was a woman of profound devotion, one who served in the highest courts of the Empyrean, at the very foot of Lord Hades’ throne."
Kaerion had happened to et her by chance when she followed Lord Hades when he was visiting the Underworld.
"I see," Herios nodded, feeling the spiritual weight of the newcor.
No wonder. That light surely belonged to Lord Hades, that’s why he felt it was so familiar.
Suddenly, a man with a wild, exuberant grin dropped from the sky like a falling star as he slamd into the ground directly in front of the Outer One, his bare hands grasping the golden chains and pulling them taut.
He laughed, a sound of pure, masculine defiance that challenged the Void’s silence.
"That is Jacob," Kaerion explained, his eyes bright. "The man who wrestled with the Divine and refused to let go until he was blessed. He is the embodint of humanity’s stubborn will to survive."
At that mont, from the sky, dozens, then hundreds of n and won began to descend.
They were not angels, yet they were bathed in a holy, incandescent light.
These were the Servants of the Lord, the Saint-Souls who had served Hades in his aspect as the Supre Deity.
Unlike the common dead who journeyed to the fields of the Underworld, these were the souls whose devotion to the "Holy Side" of the God of the Dead had granted them a place in the Empyrean.
To them, Hades was not just the King of the Dead, but the Father of Lights.
They stood as a golden wall between the Outer One and the terrified mortals, their presence a living testant to the promise that being in the Underworld did not an suffering, but protection.
Beside dea, a new figure manifested.
He wore luxurious, flowing robes of white and gold, his long white hair cascading over his shoulders like a frozen waterfall.
His eyes held the wisdom of a thousand lifetis, and the air around him humd with the perfect, mathematical harmony of high sorcery.
"King of Magic..." dea greeted him, bowing her head in a gesture of profound respect.
"Witch," the man replied with a calm, asured nod. It was not an insult; it was an acknowledgnt of her craft.
dea herself likes to call herself that, and she is wearing it with pride.
This was Solomon, the King to whom God had granted the wisdom to understand the foundations of the world.
He was the man who had systematized the mysteries and brought forth the Age of Magic for all of humanity.
He looked at the 200cm horror with a clinical, detached gaze, his fingers already weaving the complex geotric sigils of a counter-ritual.
Mary Madeleine stepped forward, her staff glowing with a fierce, purifying heat as she looked at the army of Herion, her orange hair shimring like a halo.
"’The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?’" (Psalm 27:1), she chanted, her voice a bell of clarity. "’The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?’"
She then raised her staff, and the golden crosses flared with renewed intensity.
"’For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways!’" (Psalm 91:11).
"God is with !" Madeleine cried, her faith becoming a physical barrier that pushed back the Outer One’s entropic pressure.
The battle for Earth had entered its final, most divine stage as the Heroes of History, the Giants of the Deep, the Soldiers of the Soil, and now the Saints of the Empyrean stood together.
The 200cm Outer One remained motionless, its countless eyes blinking as it calculated this new resistance.
Solomon began to chant, his voice resonating with the power of the Keys of Wisdom, while Jacob braced his muscles, prepared to wrestle the Void itself into submission.
Mary Madeleine stood as the beacon of the Holy Light, her prayer acting as the heartbeat for the final stand.
"Brothers!" Herios shouted, raising his sword alongside the Saints. "The Heavens have descended to help us! Let us finish this!"
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