Chapter 333: Chapter 332: Heavens key.
The chamber was still when she came.
A whisper of air, softer than breath, preceded her. Then wings. Vast, pale, scarred from centuries of exile, they blotted the dim firelight from the balcony.
Uriel alighted like a falcon returning to a forgotten aerie, but instead of pride, she folded herself into abasement.
Atlas had seen many warriors bow, but never like this. She lowered herself until her forehead touched the cold black stone, wings flaring and then dropping open—exposing the roots of her feathers, the vulnerable junction where tendon met bone.
The gesture was no ordinary fealty. It was the gesture of the Fallen when they offered the last of their strength to a master, the gesture reserved for one who could kill them with a thought.
Her voice trembled. "Prophet. My Prophet."
For a moment Atlas almost laughed at the absurdity. Him—Atlas, who once swore to break prophets and gods alike—now seated in silence while an archangel laid her neck before him.
But the humor tasted bitter in his mouth. Because he could not forget: if he faltered here, her faith would curdle to suspicion, and suspicion in Hell spread like wildfire.
"Rise," he commanded, though the word came heavier than he meant, roughened by weariness and the gnawing memory of Loki’s warning in his dreams.
Uriel rose. Not fully—her head remained bowed, her wings partially unfurled, signaling not just respect but devotion. Her eyes glimmered as though she drank not sight, but revelation.
Atlas gestured curtly. "The task. Report."
Her lips parted, and her voice was both steel and trembling hymn. "The scripture—the Acclaim you gave us—it has already reached sixty percent of the Fallen host.
They chant it in the caverns. They etch it into the stone. Already, whispers spread that the words bear the marrow of truth. That your voice carries not mortal reason, but the Voice."
The Voice. That was what they called the speech of a prophet possessed by a god.
Atlas’s jaw tightened. He wanted—achingly—to seize this moment and ask of Heaven. To demand: What is happening in the realm above? What schemes ferment while gods eye Hell as their next conquest? But prophets did not ask. Prophets received. To show hunger for knowledge was to show doubt. And doubt was the one infection faith could not withstand.
So he smiled faintly, like a man cloaked in inevitability, and said nothing.
Instead, he reached into his cloak. A fragment of cold fire brushed his fingertips. He withdrew it slowly, the metal catching the dim torchlight.
The Key.
Not large, not ornate. A simple band of blackened gold wrought into an oval, its teeth cut in patterns that seemed to shift when stared at too long. Yet as it hung between his fingers, the chamber’s air thickened. The torches guttered as though wind pressed inward.
Uriel’s eyes widened. Her lips parted in disbelief. For an instant her wings quivered as though she might collapse. "No... no. It cannot be."
Atlas’s gaze sharpened, but he gave no reaction.
"The Heavenly Key." Her voice broke on the word. "I thought it lost. I thought—" She stumbled forward a step, then stopped herself, reverence chaining her in place. "That is no trinket. That is the gate itself. A key once given to the favored, and stolen from us in the war. A key to the Almighty’s palace."
She looked at him as if he had just pulled the sun itself into the room.
Atlas kept his silence.
Aurora’s voice echoed in his memory—the one who had first named it. She had told him this was a relic once gifted by gods to demi-gods, a sign of favor, a weapon of trust. But Uriel’s words twisted the story.
"It was ours," she whispered, stepping closer now, awe cracking into grief. "It belonged to us—the Archangels. To Michael, to Gabriel, to me. Until the lesser gods chained us, sealed us, shunned us within the Almighty’s palace. We bled for reclamation. We lost. And with our defeat, the Keys vanished into their hands."
Her hands trembled as though she wanted to touch it, but dared not.
And then something shifted in her gaze. A spark of realization, raw and unguarded. "Perhaps... that is why you summoned me. Perhaps this is the purpose.
To restore us—the Arch-Fallen, the Seraphim bound in silence. Perhaps the Prophet comes not to build merely a flock... but to rescue the angels themselves."
The idea seemed to lift her from within. She bowed again, so swiftly the motion cracked the air.
"This strategy—it is divine," she whispered fervently, her forehead pressing to the stone once more. "Not to rattle Heaven’s gates with war. Not to beg for scraps like supplicants.
But to build the foundation in secret, gather the pillars first. The Archangels, the Seraphim. Reforge the choir. Then strike as one. Such a path requires no gentle shepherd. It requires a hammer. It requires you."
Atlas stared. For once, he was bereft of words.
Because the truth was, he had not planned so far ahead. He had wanted to play prophet only enough to find Aurora, to root himself in this hostile world, to understand the storm pressing against him. He had not thought himself savior of angels. Yet here was Uriel, reading his silence as holy affirmation, praising him for strategies he had not yet conceived.
"Prophet," she breathed, wings spread again in trembling devotion. "You are the one we have prayed for, though we cursed the heavens. You are not mercy. You are not forgiveness. You are will. You are flame. You are the blood-writ scripture itself."
Her voice rose, edged in rapture. "I will follow you to death, and beyond death. If you lead into ruin, I will sing in ruin. If you lead into war, I will bleed in war. You are the Prophet we needed. You are Atlas."
The silence after her words was heavier than any battlefield stillness.
Atlas should have corrected her. Should have tempered the fire. But the words that rose to his tongue faltered. Because part of him—the hidden, aching part—wanted to believe it. Wanted to rest in the role, let it shape him as much as he shaped it.
So instead, he accepted.
His voice carried quiet thunder. "Then it shall be so. I will save them. All of them. They are my people now. God’s people. And they will stand at my side—not in chains, not in silence—but in service to my purpose."
Uriel’s breath caught. Her eyes shone like a pilgrim’s. She touched her brow to the stone one last time.
Atlas closed his hand around the Key, feeling its edges cut faintly into his palm. Its weight was wrong, as though it measured him with each heartbeat.
He smiled thinly. "And that purpose..." His voice lowered to a whisper only he could hear. "...is still mine to decide."