The Eraser never got the chance to fully manifest.
The moment it began taking shape—a geometric nightmare of intersecting planes and angles that hurt to perceive—Eiden swung the Mirror Blade upward in a clumsy, desperate arc. He had no technique, no form, just raw instinct and the blade's own hunger guiding his arm.
The black glass cut through the fractured sky like it was paper.
Where the blade passed, reality sealed. The crack slammed shut with a sound like breaking bone, and the half-formed Eraser was severed mid-manifestation. Its geometric body split cleanly in two, the pieces dissolving into streams of sterile light that evaporated before hitting the ground.
Eiden stood there, breathing hard, the Mirror Blade still raised.
"Holy shit," he gasped. "That actually worked."
The sword pulsed in his grip—not with warmth or approval, but with simple acknowledgment. It had done what it was made to do: cut the connection between divine intent and physical reality. The Eraser hadn't been destroyed so much as rejected, its attempt to manifest in this space nullified entirely.
But even as relief flooded through him, Eiden felt it: the watching attention hadn't disappeared. It had simply... retreated. Recalculating. The Divine Census knew now that direct manifestation wouldn't work. They'd try something else.
Something already in this world.
"Great," Eiden muttered, lowering the blade. His arms were shaking from adrenaline and residual weakness. "So I've got cosmic middle-management actively trying to delete me. This day just keeps getting better."
He looked around the desert, trying to orient himself. The buried temple was behind him, the twin suns were... somewhere above, it was impossible to tell which direction was which when everything looked the same. He needed to move. Needed to find shelter, water, something other than endless white sand and divine corpses.
That's when he heard it.
Faint, almost lost in the desert wind, but unmistakable once he registered it:
Singing.
A voice, clear and beautiful and utterly out of place, drifting across the dunes like a half-remembered dream. The melody was haunting—not quite sad, not quite hopeful, but suspended somewhere between acceptance and defiance.
Eiden's first instinct was to ignore it. Mystery voices in cursed deserts were almost certainly traps. But the alternative was wandering aimlessly until something else tried to kill him, and at least the singing suggested another living being.
Or formerly living. He wasn't picky at this point.
He started walking toward the sound, Mirror Blade held loosely at his side. The weapon's weight felt right in his hand, like it had been sized specifically for him. Which, he supposed, it had—forged from his own rejection, shaped by his refusal to kneel.
The singing grew louder as he crested a dune, and suddenly he could make out words:
"—glory and the fall, between the light and thrall, I walked the path of gold and learned that gold corrodes, that halos rust, that wings turn dust, and gods forget the faithful—"
The voice cut off abruptly.
Eiden topped the rise and stopped dead.
In the valley below, half-buried in sand and impaled by three spears of pure light, was an angel.
Or what remained of one.
She was humanoid—female, from what he could tell—with skin the color of ash and hair that might have once been white but was now stained with something dark and oily. Her wings were the worst part: massive, feathered appendages that had been scorched black, the plumage burned away in patches to reveal bone underneath. They were pinned to the ground by two of the light-spears, the divine metal driven through the wing-joints with surgical precision.
The third spear had been rammed through her chest, just below the collarbone, and buried deep enough in the sand that she couldn't move more than a few inches in any direction.
She was staring directly at him.
"Oh," she said, her voice raw from singing—or screaming, Eiden couldn't tell which. "You're not a hallucination."
Eiden descended the dune slowly, keeping the Mirror Blade visible but not raised. "No, I'm pretty sure I'm real."
"Pity." The angel—fallen angel, he corrected mentally, because no angel in good standing would be impaled and abandoned like this—tried to shift position and immediately gasped in pain. "I was rather hoping my final moments would involve better company than myself. Hallucinations have standards."
Despite everything, Eiden almost smiled. "How long have you been here?"
"Three days? Four? Time loses meaning when you're pinned like a butterfly in a collection." She studied him with eyes that were too large, too luminous—still beautiful despite the obvious agony. "You're human. No divine signature. Walking the Desert of Forgotten Faiths like you own it." Her gaze flicked to the blade in his hand, and something shifted in her expression. "And carrying a weapon that radiates anti-divinity so strongly it makes my teeth ache. What are you, exactly?"
"Complicated question," Eiden said, stopping a few feet away. Up close, he could see that the spears weren't just impaling her—they were burning her, slowly, divine fire leaking from the wounds in controlled streams. Torture designed to last. "Better question: who did this to you?"
The fallen angel laughed, and it was a broken sound. "Who do you think? The same beings who cast down every angel who dares to question. The Seraphim Council. Guardians of Light, Enforcers of Purity, Absolute Assholes." She coughed, and something that might have been blood or liquid light dribbled from the corner of her mouth. "I asked the wrong questions. Got the wrong answers. Refused to pretend I didn't understand what those answers meant."
"What did you understand?"
"That we're not servants of justice. We're tools of control." Her eyes were fierce despite the pain. "That every blessing comes with chains, every prayer is a transaction, and the gods we serve—Light, Dark, doesn't matter—are just playing the longest con in history."
Eiden felt something click into place. This angel—this fallen angel—had reached the same conclusion he had. She'd seen through the system and been punished for it.
"Your name," he said.
"Asera." She managed a smile that was all teeth and defiance. "Formerly of the Third Choir, Servitor of Dawn, Bearer of the Morning Blade. Currently Fallen, Faithless, and Fucked."
"Eiden." He knelt beside her, examining the spears. They thrummed with divine energy, so densely packed with faith that looking at them too long made his eyes water. "I'm going to pull these out."
Asera's eyes widened. "You can't. They're divine metal, blessed by a Seraph specifically to hold fallen angels. Touching them would burn your hands to bone, and even if you could grip them, the pain of removal would kill me before—"
Eiden pressed the Mirror Blade against the nearest spear.
The divine metal screamed.
It was a sound that had no business existing in physical reality—the auditory equivalent of color draining from a painting, of meaning bleeding out of words. Where the black glass touched the glowing spear, the light began to corrupt, to invert. The divine blessing unraveled, faith-threads snapping one by one.
Within seconds, the spear had lost its glow entirely. It was just metal now, cold and inert.
Eiden grabbed it with his free hand and pulled.
It came free easily, sliding out of Asera's wing with a wet sound that made his stomach turn. She screamed—couldn't help it—but the sound was shorter than it should have been, cut off by shock.
"How—" she started.
"Later." Eiden moved to the second spear, pressing the Mirror Blade against it. Same reaction: the divine light corrupting, inverting, dying. He pulled it free from her other wing.
The third spear—the one through her chest—was different. When the Mirror Blade touched it, instead of unraveling, the divine energy fought back. Light blazed so brightly Eiden had to look away, and heat washed over him like standing too close to a furnace.
"Don't!" Asera gasped. "That one's keyed to my grace—what's left of it. If you nullify it completely, it'll take my soul with it!"
Eiden pulled the Mirror Blade back. "So I can't just cut it."
"No."
"Can you remove it yourself?"
"Not pinned. I'd need leverage, and every time I try to move, it burns deeper." She was panting now, pain and fear mixing in her voice. "Just... leave it. Leave me. You've done more than anyone would. More than I deserve."
"That's not how this works."
"How what works?"
"Balance." Eiden set down the Mirror Blade and grabbed the spear with both hands, positioning himself to pull straight up. "You're suffering because you questioned authority. Because you refused to be complicit in a system you saw as corrupt. That's not something that deserves torture."
"The universe doesn't care about deserve—"
"No," Eiden agreed. "It doesn't. Which is why we have to."
He pulled.
The spear resisted at first, the divine fire flaring in protest. Eiden felt his palms start to blister, the heat searing his skin, but he didn't let go. He couldn't use the Mirror Blade to nullify it, but he could still use his Neutral Essence.
He let it flow from his core—still weak, still barely defined, but there—down through his arms and into his hands. Where it met the divine fire, something strange happened.
The fire didn't go out. The Essence didn't overpower it.
Instead, they... balanced.
The fire's intensity remained, but its hostility vanished. It was still burning, but it was burning evenly, neither consuming more nor less than it should. The pain was still there, but it was manageable. Contained.
Eiden pulled again, and this time the spear slid free.
He threw it aside and stumbled backward, gasping. His hands were raw, blistered, the skin angry red and already starting to swell. But Asera was free.
She collapsed forward, wings spreading reflexively before the burned sections made her cry out. She caught herself on her hands, panting, golden blood dripping from the wounds in her wings and chest.
"You're insane," she said between breaths.
"Probably."
"No one helps fallen angels. We're marked. Tainted. Association with us carries divine censure."
"Good thing I'm already marked 'Faithless' then." Eiden sat down heavily, cradling his burned hands. "We can be censured together."
Asera stared at him for a long moment. Then she did something unexpected:
She laughed.
It started as a small sound, almost a sob, but it grew into something genuine—helpless, exhausted laughter that shook her whole body. Her wings twitched with each breath, and tears streamed down her ash-colored cheeks, but she couldn't stop.
"You're completely insane," she said again when she finally got control of herself. "Faithless. Marked. Carrying an anti-divine weapon. And you just saved a fallen angel because... what? Balance? Philosophy?"
"Because I could," Eiden said simply. "Because leaving you impaled would have been—"
"Wrong?" Asera's smile was bitter. "Since when does 'wrong' matter?"
"Since always. Just because gods don't care about it doesn't mean it stops existing."
She studied him with those too-large eyes, and Eiden saw the moment understanding dawned. "You're not neutral because you don't care. You're neutral because you care too much to let divine law define what caring means."
"Maybe." Eiden looked at his blistered hands. The pain was sharp, insistent, but weirdly clarifying. "Or maybe I'm just tired of watching people suffer because cosmic bureaucracy decided they asked inconvenient questions."
Asera opened her mouth to respond—
And froze.
Her entire body went rigid, wings snapping tight against her back. Her eyes, previously focused on Eiden, went distant, unfocused, as if she were listening to something only she could hear.
"No," she whispered. "No, not already—"
"What?" Eiden reached for the Mirror Blade. "What is it?"
Asera's gaze snapped back to him, and now there was pure terror in her expression. "They've found me. The divine hunters. They must have been tracking the spears' signatures, and when you removed them—" She tried to stand, managed to get to her knees before her legs gave out. "Run. Now. You can't fight them. No one can."
"How many?"
"Three. Maybe four. Eiden, you don't understand—these aren't guards or soldiers. They're hunters. Purpose-built to track and eliminate fallen angels. They don't tire, don't stop, don't feel mercy. And they're—"
The sky rippled.
Not cracked like when the Eraser had tried to manifest. This was smoother, more organic—like water being disturbed by something rising from below. Three points of golden light bloomed against the pale blue expanse, growing brighter with each second.
Asera made a sound that might have been a prayer or a curse. "They're here."
Eiden stood, raising the Mirror Blade. His hands screamed in protest, blistered skin stretching around the hilt, but he ignored it. "Then I guess we're about to find out if neutrality works as a combat strategy."
"You can't—"
"Watch me."
The golden lights descended like falling stars, and as they came closer, Eiden could make out shapes. Humanoid, winged, clad in armor that looked like solidified sunlight. Each carried a weapon—spear, sword, bow—and each radiated the kind of absolute certainty that came from never having questioned an order in their entire existence.
They landed twenty feet away, forming a triangle with Asera and Eiden at the center.
The one with the spear spoke, its voice harmonious and completely devoid of emotion:
"Asera of the Third Choir. Your grace has been revoked, your name struck from the Rolls of Light. By order of the Seraphim Council, you are marked for erasure."
"I know," Asera said quietly. She was still on her knees, too injured to stand, but her voice was steady. "Do what you came to do."
The hunter's gaze shifted to Eiden. "Human. Step aside. This matter does not concern you."
"Yeah, about that." Eiden adjusted his grip on the Mirror Blade. "I'm going to have to decline."
All three hunters tilted their heads in perfect synchronization, as if the concept of refusal was so foreign they had to process it collectively.
"You would defend a fallen angel," the spear-wielder said. Not a question. A statement of observable fact.
"I would defend someone being murdered for asking questions," Eiden corrected. "Seems like a reasonable position."
"Reason is not relevant. Divine law is absolute."
"Then divine law can go fuck itself."
The silence that followed was so complete Eiden could hear his own heartbeat. Even Asera stared at him like he'd just announced his intention to punch the sun.
The hunters didn't respond verbally. They didn't need to.
They simply raised their weapons and attacked.
And Eiden, who had died once already and been marked for deletion twice since arriving in this world, did the only thing that made sense:
He charged forward to meet them, the Mirror Blade singing in his grip, and discovered that sometimes balance required you to fight for it.