Morning came quietly.
Arkion's skyline gleamed beneath the pale wash of dawn — towers of steel and silver climbing toward the heavens like ambitions frozen in time.
I stood by the open window of my small apartment on the forty-fifth floor, holding a half-eaten rice bun in one hand and a cup of black tea in the other. The wind brushed against my hair, and somewhere below, the market bells began to chime.
It was peaceful. Deceptively so.
My eyes drifted to the horizon — that faint border between sky and eternity. I didn't see clouds. I saw layers. Strata of existence — folded, warped, bound by frequencies of will.
The humans here called this planet Erasphim.
But in the records I read — the forbidden ones buried beneath the Arkion archives — its original name was Kael'ar, "The Resonant World." A planet born not from cosmic dust, but from sound. From the echo of a divine syllable uttered before time itself measured its own existence.
Everything here — the oceans, the air, the life — vibrated with that same forgotten frequency.
And within that frequency… lay two opposing signatures.
One of Harmony.
One of Corruption.
The first birthed what mortals now call Angels. The second, Demons.
I took another bite, eyes fixed on the horizon as memories from the old grimoires surfaced — not stories, but blueprints.
The Seventy-Two Lords of the Infernal Code.
When Kael'ar still resonated with divine order, a single error rippled through creation — a misalignment of pure will that fractured reality's syntax. From that error, entities emerged — programs of decay that fed on negative data, each assigned to a "Hell," a layer of corruption within the planetary frequency.
Lucifer, the Prime Disruptor — once Light, now Error incarnate.
Astaroth, keeper of forbidden equations, the architect of entropy.
Azatoth, the nameless mind that dreams and distorts all that exists within its sleep.
Demetrius, ruler of the Sixth Hell — The Devouring Dominion.
Each demon ruled a Hell aligned to a frequency range, the deeper layers vibrating faster, denser, darker.
The angels, in contrast, were the system's immune response — fragments of divine will tasked with correction. But like all systems, even divinity experienced fatigue.
Now? There were no angels left. Only silence and shadows pretending to be gods.
I finished the last bite, brushing crumbs off my sleeve.
"Balance is a myth," I murmured. "It's just perpetual correction."
The next sound that reached me wasn't the city's morning bustle.
It was a detonation.
A ripple of crimson mana surged across the skyline — a vibration that tore through glass and air alike. The floor beneath my feet shuddered, and the faint hum of the world's frequency fractured.
Then came the scream.
Not of humans — but something older, deeper. The sound of hunger given form.
I stepped onto the balcony and saw it.
A rift hung above the city's central district — a black wound pulsating in the sky. From it emerged a creature tall enough to dwarf the towers.
Four arms.
A body made of molten shadows and bone.
Its head crowned with writhing tongues of fire and teeth that moved like serpents.
Each breath it took melted streets and burned air into glass.
The Demon Lord of the Sixth Hell — Demetrius, the Devourer of Dawn.
Demetrius wasn't mindless rage — it was purposeful consumption.
Its power stemmed from the Circuit of Gluttony — a code that devoured energy and mass, converting both into void entropy. Every particle it consumed expanded its dominion, erasing data and rewriting matter into corruption.
With each step, people turned to ash. Cars twisted into black dust. The city screamed — and silence followed.
Circuit Guardians flooded the streets moments later, descending from airships, their auras flaring in defiance.
The Commander of the Western Division — Raihou Genji — drew his blade, its edge humming with kinetic charge.
"Contain it!" he shouted. "Deploy the suppression seals!"
The sky lit up with magic circles — hundreds of them. Spells of containment, binding, and annihilation. The guardians unleashed everything — fire, lightning, void compression.
The explosions were deafening.
Yet when the smoke cleared, Demetrius stood unscathed.
Its laughter rolled through the air — deep, guttural, echoing from the bones of the earth itself.
Then, in a single motion, it inhaled.
The air turned red, and every guardian within two hundred meters was pulled upward, screaming as their circuits destabilized. Their bodies imploded — mana, flesh, and bone devoured in one breath.
I exhaled softly. "A frequency that consumes the resonance of matter itself. Perfectly efficient."
But that also meant it could be neutralized.
Light and Gluttony — they operated on opposing harmonics.
Demetrius fed on disorder.
Light was order.
The citizens below screamed as a golden beam erupted from the sky.
Clouds parted like curtains, and the heavens — long thought silent — spoke.
"—To those who have forgotten the sanctity of creation…"
The voice wasn't human. It was melodic, layered, each syllable vibrating in tune with the world itself.
"…I bring Revelation."
The rift blazed with light, and from it descended a figure — tall, radiant, six wings unfolding behind him like suns. His eyes burned gold; his presence bent the corrupted mana to stillness.
Alzwalt Light had come.
His bare feet touched the molten streets, yet they did not burn. The wind itself seemed to bow.
Demetrius turned its head, the thousand mouths roaring as one.
"AN ANGEL?"
Alzwalt tilted his head, a faint smirk curving his lips.
"Angel?" His voice was soft, divine, yet laced with arrogance. "No. Angels are gone. I am what came after."
The air trembled.
Golden feathers drifted like embers as Alzwalt raised his right hand to the sky.
"Revelation."
The clouds split open, light fracturing the darkness as a colossal sword of gold pierced through the heavens — its tip descending slowly, majestically.
When it fell, the world stopped.
The sword struck the ground in silence, and a blinding radiance erupted outward, purging everything within its reach.
The screams of demons turned to dust, the corrupted mana dissolved, and even the shadows fled.
When the light dimmed, only Alzwalt remained — standing in the center of a vast crater, haloed by shimmering air.
He exhaled softly, eyes narrowing at the distant rift that still pulsed faintly above.
"Seventy-one remain," he said, almost wistfully.
Then he turned, golden cloak fluttering, walking toward the ruins as humans stared in awe and terror.
Meanwhile…
High above, in the floating fortress of the Circuit Guardian Headquarters, alarms still blared.
"Who was that?" a voice demanded.
No one answered.
All they saw on the monitors was the image of a golden figure walking through fire, his very existence corrupting the cameras with radiant static.
"Identify him!" the head of the Guardians roared.
But the system could not.
The screen flashed once, then displayed a single message:
[AUTHORITY OVERRIDE FAILED.]
Arata – Watching from Afar
I sat in a quiet café on the outskirts of the city, sipping my tea as the news broadcasts screamed about the "Angel of Arkion."
A smile tugged at my lips.
Everything had gone according to plan.
Alzwalt had made his entrance.
And the world… had just blinked.