The bronze doors swung open, flooding the underground palace with blinding white light. Beyond the ancient gate, things long sealed away for tens of thousands of years were revealed once more to the world.
"This is... impossible!"
"My God!"
"What have we dug up!?"
The cold-eyed officer and the gathered experts and scholars squinted against the brilliance, struggling to see beyond the gate. When their vision adjusted, every single one of them gasped in disbelief.
Faces froze in shock, eyes wide as never before, pupils contracting to needle points. Even the usually composed officer—Hydra's commander in charge of supernatural excavations and one of the supreme leader's most trusted subordinates—looked utterly horrified, his expression contorted like he'd seen a ghost.
He was no stranger to the uncanny. As a man responsible for uncovering the world's hidden mysteries, the cold-eyed officer had witnessed plenty that defied logic. Yet nothing he had ever seen could have prepared him for this. Even when Hydra's research division harnessed the Tesseract's power to craft weapons capable of disintegrating any material, he hadn't lost his composure like this.
"Blasphemy! This is blasphemy!"
The elderly professor who had studied the murals earlier had completely lost his calm. He collapsed to the ground, weeping and shouting hysterically.
The other scholars—men and women alike—were no better. None could comprehend what they were witnessing. One by one, they muttered incoherently and fell to their knees.
Everything they had uncovered before, no matter how extraordinary, could still be rationalized through theories of lost civilizations or ancient technologies. But this discovery—this was beyond reason. It shattered every scientific belief they held.
"This world... really has gods!"
A beautiful young geologist in her early thirties clutched her mouth, unable to stop the words from escaping.
"..."
The same officer who had mocked the professor moments ago, ridiculing the very idea of gods, now stood silent. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His gaze trembled uncontrollably, locked on the brilliance pouring from the bronze gate.
Behind the doors lay a vast, breathtaking hall that stretched farther than the eye could see. Its scale was so immense it was impossible to believe such a structure existed beneath the earth. The space beyond the gate wasn't simply a chamber—it was another world entirely.
No—there was no "seemed" about it. It was another dimension.
The palace beyond was immense, its ceilings towering high above, every wall, floor, and arch gleaming with a soft, jade-like radiance. It was magnificent beyond imagination.
Even a layman would instantly understand: no dynasty, no civilization in all of human history could have built such a divine palace. And yet, the splendor of the architecture wasn't what left them speechless.
The true source of the light—the warmth, the brilliance filling the air—wasn't from the palace itself. It came from the figures within it. Figures that, until this moment, had existed only in myth.
Yes—behind the bronze doors, in that endless palace of white jade, stood countless radiant beings. An army of angels, stretching endlessly into the horizon. The dazzling light illuminating the entire underground palace came from their wings, pure white and shining.
Just seeing them was enough to break the human mind.
Beings from religious stories—real, tangible, countless—manifesting right before their eyes. The sheer number of them was enough to make one's skin crawl.
The angels stood tall beyond the bronze gate, each one towering over three meters in height. Their wings shimmered brighter than snow, the flowing white light along them flickering like sacred fire. Despite their immense stature, their forms were perfectly proportioned, graceful and divine. Every angel's face was breathtakingly beautiful, immaculate in its sanctity—and upon closer inspection, all of them were female.
Of course, none of the trembling scholars noticed this detail. Their minds had all but stopped functioning, trapped between awe and terror, consumed by the impossible vision of myth crossing into reality.
A faint, unsettling dread lingered beneath the awe. The bronze doors still glowed with a curtain of blue energy—the power of the Tesseract embedded in the gate.
And on the floor beyond the gate, where each angel stood, the same energy pulsed and flowed. The vast chamber beyond was laid out like a grid formed entirely of cosmic magic, each section occupied by a silent, closed-eyed angel.
But no one in the underground palace noticed the strange light weaving beneath their feet. Every gaze remained fixed on the countless angels, bathed in blinding, holy light.
"An army! This is an army!"
The cold-eyed officer, having finally regained his senses, grew visibly ecstatic—his entire body trembling, not from fear or horror, but from a surge of uncontrollable excitement.
Unlike the terrified scholars who had just desecrated what might have been a divine resting ground, the HYDRA officer quickly forced himself to calm down.
For someone whose soul and will belonged entirely to HYDRA, to the Red Skull, even the sight of real angels—something that completely overturned his understanding of the world—could not shake his unwavering loyalty.
He remembered clearly why he had been sent to excavate these ruins: to find a power strong enough to help HYDRA dominate the world.
And now...
Staring at the endless host of angels beyond the bronze gates, he felt as though fate itself had chosen to favor him. This was nothing short of a miraculous discovery—heaven's gift to HYDRA!
A legion made of angels... Perfect. If they could be controlled and used, HYDRA would rise as the undisputed ruler of the world!
It was classic HYDRA thinking—uncompromising, absolute. To them, nothing was sacred. Anything that existed, no matter how divine, could be controlled, weaponized, and turned into a tool of conquest.
In truth, these high-ranking HYDRA officers, thoroughly brainwashed by the Red Skull, were perhaps even purer in ideology—and in fanaticism—than the Red Skull himself. Such was the terrifying power of indoctrination.
The faith of HYDRA's current members differed completely from that of the organization's future incarnations. They were, in their own eyes, warriors fighting for belief—for the ideals of HYDRA and for the Red Skull, who had become their living symbol of faith.
Faith... only those who truly understand it can grasp its full power. It is the most terrifying force of unity that exists.
The officer's thoughts were not wrong. The essence of human civilization had always remained the same.
Whoever controls faith—controls humanity.