The Seven Heavens.
A place that was once the home of the God of the Bible.
A place that once acted as the vanguard that protected the world from the eldritch and acted as the bastion that stood between the mortals and the supernatural, guarding them against those that would seek to exploit them.
The First Heaven, the front lines, and the first line of defense. The location where the majority of the low-ranking angels reside.
The Second Heaven, a realm filled with clear black skies where many angels observe the stars and use them in many rituals. It is also the place where the angels that were involved in the Tower of Babel incident, where they attacked the humans who built the said tower, were imprisoned, as they had done so without God's permission. The only reason they were not expelled from heaven was that their crimes were too much to be given such a light punishment.
The Third Heaven, the afterlife of the mortal souls, and the place that first comes to mind when a human thinks about heaven. The home of the famed Tree of Life.
The Fourth Heaven, the Garden of Eden. Home to the Tree of Wisdom.
The Fifth Heaven, the former home of the majority of the original Fallen Angels. A place filled with research institutes and healing centers for the Angels.
The Sixth Heaven, the home of the Four Archangels and, secretly, the place where the archangels mourn those who have passed, including their father.
The Seventh Heaven, the home of God and the core of the Heavenly System.
Together, the Seven Heavens stood tall for countless eons that it has existed. Yet, after the fall of the Heavenly Father, things changed.
The First Heaven was no longer filled with legions of Angels, standing tall and proud, guarding their homes with Light in hand and faith in heart. In modern times, it was but the empty Pearly Gates that had only a handful of angels guarding them, with loss in their hearts and fear in their minds.
The Second Heaven was no longer the bustling area full of ambitious and curious angels that sought to further their crafts or rituals. It was now but an abandoned area that only served as the prison for those sinners of old who had been long forgotten.
The Third Heaven largely remained the same, thanks to its automation through the Heavenly System, yet many an unworthy soul had made it into this paradise thanks to the malfunctioning system.
The Fourth Heaven, The Garden of Eden, the testament to God's skill in creation, left completely unattended and growing wild, with no one there to control the growth of life held within it.
The Fifth Heaven, filled with even more infirmaries and research institutes where many an angel worked tirelessly to try and find a way to fix their dwindling numbers.
The Sixth Heaven, a place that once bustled with activity as many an angel came to meet with their beloved Archangels, now lay silent as hardly anyone could muster the courage to witness the saddened and despairing visages of their beloved kin.
The Seventh Heaven, the home of God, permanently left abandoned after its rightful owner perished, with only Michael occasionally visiting it, if only to check on the System Core.
It was a truly sad sight for those who remembered the ancient times of glory. A time that nobody expected to see ever again.
Yet, fate is truly fickle, and for once, it was not working against the angels.
This sad visage was no longer around, as everything had changed in the past few days.
Everything was being changed back to how things once were, as many a brother or sister who were known to have been lost walked among them once again.
The radiant holy power of the system that had not shown its brilliance for a thousand years now was regained, and even exceeded, as things changed every minute.
The Pearly Gates were once again manned by thousands of low-ranked Angels, their ranks reformed with the fallen kin who had been resurrected by their eldest brother, who had returned from the dead himself.
Thousands upon thousands of Angels moved through the Seven Heavens, carrying out their tasks, many of them once again assuming the roles that they had long since forgotten.
Scores of lesser angels descended from the heavens, invisible to most, and took to guarding those significant humans who were chosen by the Heavenly System.
The Guardian Angels, those that were supposed to watch over humans but had forgotten this duty thanks to the death of their father, had returned to their duty and now once again lived by the side of their chosen charges, invisible to everyone but those connected to the Heavenly System.
Groups of angels, each one from a different heaven and background, spread across the globe, personally setting up residences within every single Church in the world, no matter how rural it might be. The power of the Angels assigned to the churches depended on how dangerous the area was.
Three angels to a church, with two angels from the lower ranks, ranging from two-winged to four-winged, and one angel from the middle ranks. This would be the configuration of the teams, and each team would be equipped with a special item that Aetherion helped them design that would allow them to mobilize the Heavenly System in cases of emergency.
Within the Fifth Heaven, an entirely new building was created. Within the building were dozens of angels specially tasked to watch over the part of the Heavenly System responsible for the Sacred Gear. Their task is to monitor the state of every single Sacred Gear in the world, keep an eye on the Karma value of their wielder, and identify any attempts made by anyone to circumvent the Heavenly System.
In the mortal world, in the city of Vatican that was now more united than ever, a new council made of Angels was being set up where the operation of the Church would be directly overseen by this council, making sure that the corruption that had occurred previously would not happened again (which was not possible due to the karma system but Aetherion was paranoid like that, so he installed this council anyways.)
There were also two new institutes being set up in the Vatican City, where the exorcist would be taught a new kind of magic called 'Tier Magic System' along with Martial Arts training, making sure that the human forces of the church would be ready to deal with any threat that might arise in the future.
To make sure that this magic would not fall into the hands of those who were not supposed to know about it, the angels would use a special kind of geas backed by the heavenly system to lock away this knowledge within the humans' very souls and make it impossible to teach or transmit this knowledge to others.
After a thousand years, the Heavenly Faction was once again back to its peak and was now prepared to carry out the mission it was supposed to do for all these years.
Yet, not everything was sunshine and rainbows.
Many of the factions across the world did not like these actions made by the Angels and started to try and use diplomatic pressure, and sometimes, physical actions, to try and put them back into their weakened state.
Unfortunately, those factions would once again know the terror of the angel known as Arael and the power of his Gatekeepers.
Worse yet, unlike in the times of old, where he was a weakling who had the power of a ten-winged angel despite only having four wings, just like his Gatekeepers, who used to have only two wings and had the power of six-winged angels, he was now a proper Seraph with power even beyond that.
And so, the history of the world changed, as the threads of fate were completely severed by the actions of a single angel.
----------------------------------------------------
Read 5 chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/Ruijard1