I felt the moment Ellas broke;
Not his body. That had been breaking slowly since the first time he called on the medallion.
I felt the moment his spark broke.
The battle in the Below raged like a wound in the universe. Arephon and Scourge clashed in the sky, light and shadow tearing rifts through molten stone.
Demons and angels crashed together in frantic, furious waves. Each blow faintly and the echoes crawled upward through the layers of creation.
But through all that noise, I felt something smaller.
Quieter.
More final.
A golden ember inside a mortal chest… flinching.
Ellas stood on a broken ridge, one hand clutching his ribs, the other still flickering with faint shadowfire. His breathing was rough, unsteady. Each inhale felt like sand scraping his throat. The medallion aret his neck burned as though it wanted to sink deeper, to fuse with bone.
He watched Scourge and Arephon collide again.
The general, empowered by the Elder's whisper, moved like a second star. His spear cut through shadowfire, leaving trails of pure white-gold, the kind of light that decides what lives and what burns.
Scourge matched him only by giving more rage, more force, more of himself in every blow. Shadowfire stormed around him, but even he could feel it: the balance had shifted.
They were near equal.
Too equal.
The longer the fight lasted, the heavier it weighed on Scourge. Shadowfire was not endless. Not in a realm he'd already twisted to his will. Arephon's power was being fed from elsewhere. Scourge's was self-burning.
Ellas saw it.
He saw the slight slowing of Scourge's blocks, the extra fraction of a second it took to counter, the depth of the cc on his skin. He saw the faint satisfaction in Arephon's eyes as his borrowed power were
And Ellas felt something he had not planned on feeling:
Fear.
Not for himself.
For losing.
For seeing Scourge fall and heaven rise again over everything.
His hand found the medallion.
It throbbed with an ugly, hungry heat.
You will die faster, the memory of the demon's words whispered. Every use burns your life.
Ellas closed his eyes. Deep inside him, his last ether spark flickered faintly. That piece of what he once was the golden ether, that ember still existed. Barely.
He could protect it.
He could retreat, save it, try to find another path. Some distant, slow, frightened path toward power.
He opened his eyes instead and looked at the sky.
At Scourge, forced to give more than he should.At Arephon, strengthened by the Elder's trust.At heaven's host, reeling but still present. The demons are restless, waiting for something more.
Ellas bared his teeth.
"I refuse to be small."
He lifted the medallion.
This time he didn't channel it slowly.
He forced it open completely.
The golden spark in his chest screamed if silent energy could scream. The last sliver of what he had been surged upward, colliding with the demonic power in the medallion. For a single instant, Ellas felt both energies rip through him ether and hellfire, purity and corruption, origin and end.
The spark did not dim.
It detonated.
Shadowfire erupted around him in a cyclone. Golden light erupted from beneath it, laced through with black veins. The ridge he stood on disintegrated under the pressure. Angels and demons alike flinched, covering their faces as blinding, broken brilliance exploded outward.
Scourge and Arephon both jerked a mid-strike, glancing toward the source.
Ellas rose from the collapsing stone.
No longer mortal-fragile, no longer half-attached, no longer the broken thing between what he was and what he wanted to be.
He hovered above the battlefield, wrapped in a cloak of twisted light and flame. Horns, curved and sharp, pushed through his hair. His eyes burned with molten gold ringed in black. The medallion was no longer separate; it had sunk into his chest, fused to whatever he had left.
His wings, when they spread, were not angelic.
They were shadows threaded with golden fire, lined in jagged, demonic edges.
The last ether spark had not empowered Scourge.
It had transformed Ellas.
Angels gasped in horror.
Demons stared in awe.
"What… is he?" one angel whispered.
"A duke no more," a demon breathed. "He is beyond us."
Ellas lifted his hands.
Power flooded him not borrowed, not echoing through a tool, but his. His own twisted, hybrid power. Strong enough that, for the first time, the realm itself recognised him as something new, something wrong and undeniable.
"Scourge," he called, voice reverberating across the battlefield. "Move."
Scourge laughed and broke away from Arephon, wings flaring as he pulled back.
Arephon started to pursue
and Ellas hit him.
He didn't swing a weapon. He didn't throw a spear.
He collided with the general in a wave of gold-black force, slamming him down into the ground with such force that the molten stone caved inward, forming a crater big enough to swallow an army.
Arephon roared in pain, his celestial aura struggling to hold.
Ellas hovered over the crater, arms still tense from the impact.
The golden spark inside him was gone now.
He could feel the absence like a hollow bone.
No trace. No echo. No road back.
He was a demon now.
Fully.
Irrevocably.
In my castle of ether, far beyond their sight, another absence unfolded.
The long mist-table stood where it always had ringed with chairs shaped for those who had been born from the ether's breath. The silver ether's chair was already gone, taken when she died. The others remained each reflecting their occupant's nature.
One shone with a golden glow, though its owner had not sat in it since I cast him into mortality.
It flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then, without sound, without ceremony, it vanished.
The space where it had sat rippled, then settled.
I stood there watching it fade, feeling the severing of the last thread tying Ellas to what he had been.
He was no longer ether.
Not by spark. Not by right. Not by nature.
Footsteps approached behind me.
The remaining ether beings stepped into the chamber, silver-faction faces drawn with worry, golden-faction faces sharp with restless ambition; they dared not speak aloud.
One of them, eyes wide, whispered, "His chair"
"Is gone," another finished, voice shaking.
They all turned to me.
"What happened?" one violet ether demanded. "First, what did you do?"
I shook my head slowly.
"This was not my hand."
A hush fell. The ether itself seemed to lean closer.
"You all felt his fall," I said. "You all felt when he was cast into mortality. But a spark remained. A thread. A chance if not for redemption, then for returning to what he was."
I turned to look at the empty space where the golden chair had stood.
"He chose to burn it."
Murmurs erupted.
"Choose?"Why would he?"What does that mean?"
"He took the last fragment of himself," I continued, "the only piece still tethered to this realm and tare raded it for power in the Below. He is a demon now. Completely."
One of the silver-faction's ethers covered her mouth, eyes full of grief.
"He was one of us," she whispered.
"He was," I said. "And now he is not."
The golden-faction beings looked unsettled some disturbed, some intrigued, some quietly envious of a choice they would never make.
"You told us we co,uld never enter the universeare again," one said carefully. "But he… has found a way to step beyond both realms."
"No," I said. "He has found a way to belong fully to one that was never meant for you."
They shifted uneasily.
"Is he stronger now?" another dared ask.
I thought of the power Ellas now held. The twisted wonder of a being born of ether, broken into mortality, reforged i,n demonfire, no,w burning at a level that allowed him to strike a general of Elder's host.
"Yes," I said. "Stronger. And further from us than he has ever been."
The hall fell silent.
A golden ether clenched his fists.
"Could he destroy us?"
I met his gaze.
"No," I said. "You are barred from his realm. And he is barred from yours."
They relaxed.
For a moment.
"But he can help destroy what you were meant to protect," I added softly.
That quieted even the ambitious ones.
I stepped back from the table.
"Do not fear his shadow here," I told them. "Fear what he will leave behind in the universe you were never meant to rule."
And in that moment, though I would not intervene, I shared with them the truth as I saw it, not in images, not in prophecy, but in simple words:
"Your fallen brother has chosen his side," I said. "The war below will shake the realms above. If creation survives this, it will not be by your will."
They watched me in stunned silence.
And I returned to watching the war.
In the universe, far from My halls and far from the Below, something enormous uncoiled.
The serpent.
Guardian of the boundary.Coiled around creation like a living ring.Eyes like twin suns of white fire.
It shifted as the vibrations of the battle grew more violent. Each collision between Scourge, Arephon, and now Ellas sent ripples outward, shaking the skin of the universe itself. Stars quivered. Worlds shivered. them them Dimensions strained.
The serpent's coils tightened.
It turned its head toward the Elder's realm.
And for the first time since I commissioned it, the serpent sought an audience.
It lowered its vast head toward that luminous plane.
The skies of Elder's realm darkened as the serpent's shadow passed over it like an eclipse. Rivers halted. Trees stilled. Angels on watch walls them trembled them as the guarthem dian's presence washed over them.
The Elder a stepped oa ut from their hall to meet it.
They looked small before the serpent's gaze.
The serpent spoke not with a roar, not with violence, but with a calm as vast as the void between stars.
"Elder."
Their voice was neither male nor female, neither soft nor harsh. It simply was. A sound older than language, presented kindly.
Elder raised their eyes. "Guardian."
"There is war a in tha e Below," the serpena t said. "War between your host and the Fallen."
"I know," Elder answered. Their voice wavered only slightly. "I strengthened Arephon. I could not abandon him."
"I do not speak of abandonment," the serpent replied. "I speak of consequence."
Elder's hands clenched at their sides. "The angels had to respond. Scourge is a threat to all realms. He will not stop."
"It is not My place to judge your choices," the serpent said. "I exist to guard what you fight within."
They tilted their colossal head.
"The universe."
Elder went still.
"The blows of your war shake its bones," the serpent continued. "Each clash risks tearing the skin of reality. If this continues at its current scale… it will not matter who wins."
Elder swallowed.
"The universe will suffer," the serpent said quietly. "Worlds will die that never chose to join this conflict."
Elder turned their gaze away, to where distant stars shivered like frightened eyes.
"What would you have me do?" they whispered.
"I have no will to give you," the serpent replied. "I have a task. A boundary."
They leaned closer, eyes burning like focused suns.
"If this war grows past what creation can bear," they said, "I will have to intervene."
Elder's jaw tightened. "Intervene how?"
The serpent's coils tightened around the universe, just a little. Enough to remind that their grip existed.
"I will squeeze," they said. "I will silence both armies. I will crush whatever must be crushed to keep the universe from tearing itself apart."
Elder stared at them, horrified.
"You would strike heaven?" they whispered. "Strike my host?"
"I would strike anything that threatens the whole," the serpent said. "This was my command. This is my nature."
They drew back slightly, but their gaze did not soften.
"I came here as warning," they said. "You are not beyond consequence, Elder. If you keep feeding this war… I will end it. And I will not choose sides when I do."
Elder closed their eyes.
Below, in the infernal dark, Arephon and Scourge clashed again with Ellas now rising to their level, golden spark gone, demon forever.
The universe shook.
The serpent waited.
And I, at the edge of everything, did what I had chosen:
I watched.
Without hand.Without voice.Without turning aside.
Creation stood at the brink.
And all its children, fallen and faithful alike, were the ones pushing it there.