Chapter 338: Chapter 337: Gabriel
From the cell.
Atlas turned. The figure inside was awake now, barely. Eyes flickered open — faintly luminescent, the color of stormlight through water.
The fallen angel looked at him. For a heartbeat, time stopped.
He had seen many faces — divine, human, monstrous — but this one carried a sadness that felt older than creation.
"You..." the voice came, hoarse, barely audible. "You are not one of them?"
Atlas approached slowly. "...No."
The angel’s lips cracked into a faint, ironic smile. "And yet... they are dead."
Atlas’s throat tightened. "Did you know them?"
"They were wardens," the fallen whispered. "Sent to keep me here. But the seals..." The voice trembled, weak and brittle. "Something broke the seals. I felt the lightning. I heard their screams. I thought the heavens were burning."
Atlas swallowed hard. He wanted to say something — I didn’t mean to, or I wasn’t myself — but the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, he stepped closer to the cage. The angel’s presence felt immense even in ruin — like standing too near a dying star.
"Who are you?" Atlas asked quietly.
For a long time, silence. Then the angel lifted his head, chains clinking like broken music.
"I was Gabriel," the angel murmured. "Commander of the Sixth Choir. Keeper of the Gates of the Dawn." A pause, a small, bitter smile. "Now... a relic. Forgotten by the ones who feared their own creation."
Atlas felt the name hit something deep — a chord that thrummed in his chest. "How did they catch you?"
"I saw too much," he said simply. "For doubting what we were told to praise."
Atlas stared, a grim recognition settling in his chest. "Then we have that in common."
The angel looked at him with sudden intensity. " The key I gave to uriel,You are the one who bears it now, aren’t you?"
Atlas hesitated. "Maybe."
A flicker of hope — faint, dangerous — sparked in those ruined eyes. "Then fate has teeth after all."
Atlas frowned. "You’re mistaken if you think I came here for fate."
"Perhaps not. But it finds you anyway."
The words hung in the air, heavy and strange. Atlas could feel it — the truth of it humming beneath the moment like the low thrum of a storm not yet seen.
He turned his gaze from the angel to the devastation around them, to the three broken gods, to the faint shimmer of gold still dripping from his own fingers.
Whatever had happened, it had rewritten something in him. And it wasn’t done yet.
{{{{{{You see now}}}}} the Guide whispered again, quieter, closer. Power is never borrowed. It only changes hands.
Atlas looked at his reflection in the fractured wall — eyes faintly glowing, veins threaded with gold.
He exhaled slowly.
’Maybe,’ he muttered. ’But I’ll be the one to decide where it goes next.’
He turned back toward the angel. "Rest. I’ll find a way to free you. But first, I need answers."
Gabriel’s voice was already fading, his head lowering again. "Then tread carefully, mortal... or whatever you’ve become. The gods do not forgive their own wounds."
"so you are... Gabriel," Atlas said quietly. "I... I’ve heard the stories."
Gabriel lifted his head slowly, voice rough and dry from the long captivity. "Stories? No. History will call them whispers, perhaps even lies. But you... you see what remains." He gestured weakly to the fallen gods sprawled in the shattered chamber. "This is what they leave behind when the almighty deems us expendable."
Atlas’s gaze followed the motion, heart tightening. "I didn’t expect... this."
"You expect?" Gabriel’s laugh was bitter, a rasp that carried centuries of frustration. "We fought to reclaim Heaven itself. Michael, Josephiel, Lucifer... we were all there. We rose when the Almighty faltered, when lesser gods thought they could seize the throne. We carved paths through His wards, shattered angelic battalions, and still... still it was not enough."
Atlas listened, feeling the weight of the history pressing into him. He remembered hearing fragments of these battles in the whispers of Aurora and Uriel, but hearing them from the mouth of a survivor, a prisoner, made them visceral.
"Tell me," Atlas said, "what happened? How did you fall?"
Gabriel’s eyes clouded with memory, a storm behind golden irises. "We were legion once. Michael, spear shining like the morning sun; Josephiel, our shield; Lucifer, pride made flesh. And me... the one who held the path open for the others. We stormed the gates. Every wall, every seal, every heavenly sentinel—broken beneath our fury. We nearly reclaimed it."
Atlas swallowed, imagining the fury, the fire of angels unchained, striking at divine fortresses. "Nearly?"
Gabriel’s lips tightened. "Nearly isn’t enough. They had prepared. The lesser gods, they called upon forces we could not break. Michael fell first, dragged into the void by chains of pure light.
Josephiel tried to shield him, but the sky itself turned against him. Lucifer... pride does not save you from betrayal, nor from the weight of Heaven’s gaze. And I..." His voice faltered, the words caught in the memory like jagged glass. "I am the one they left to suffer. Hung here, to remind all who rise what failure tastes like."
Atlas clenched his fists, fury and guilt twisting inside him. "And now they are dead?"
Gabriel shook his head slowly. "No. Because of what was allowed to be unleashed. I don’t know if I should curse the almighty or thank him that he sent you here, now.
But... you are the chosen now... You can rebuild. You can free us. But understand—those who fall in Heaven’s wars, their deaths echo for centuries."
Atlas’s eyes drifted toward the three gods sprawled across the shattered floor again. Lightning, fire, divinity—they were all gone. And yet he could feel the hum of divine presence lingering, as if the essence of godhood itself resented him for what had been done.
"You fought to save Heaven," Atlas said softly, "and yet you ended up imprisoned. What did the Almighty fear?"
Gabriel’s voice dropped to a whisper, almost reverent. "Fear... fear that we would see Him for what He truly was.
Fear that we would remember the first law: that free will is a gift, and no throne can claim it. We were the champions of choice, Atlas. We tried to reclaim a heaven where angels were not slaves to light alone. We tried to fight for balance. And for that... we fell."
Atlas’s jaw tightened. He looked around again at the crystalline palace, at the shattered light, at the golden blood that still coated his palms. "And now?"
"Now," Gabriel said, voice stronger, carrying an echo of authority despite the chains, "you are here. You are the harbinger of a change none of us could accomplish. I can see that as you oh so easily killed those gods, and you also bear the key, you must be who we were waiting for, no...you are, And I...I will follow. If you decide to strike, if you decide to save what is left of the fallen, I will fight by your side."
Atlas stared at him. For centuries, he had lived by strength and strategy, by cunning and raw force. But standing here, hearing Gabriel’s history, seeing the ruin that ambition and divine politics had wrought... he realized the cost of power.
"You speak of balance, of choice," Atlas said. "And yet, what I hold now... it is not balance. It is vengeance. It is destruction. I do not know if I can be what you hope for."
Gabriel smiled faintly, a shadow of the radiance he once carried. "No. You will not be. You will be more. You are the force Heaven never counted on. And sometimes... sometimes, that is what is needed."
Atlas exhaled, his golden-blooded hands still trembling. The Guide whispered, patient, patient... urging control, caution, focus. Atlas closed his eyes briefly. Every strategy, every moment of survival, every prophecy he had twisted and wielded — it all led here.
"Tell me about the others," Atlas said finally. "Michael, Josephiel, Lucifer... what remains?"
Gabriel’s eyes shimmered like fractured suns. "Somewhere, scattered. We were broken as a unit, but pieces survive. Some among the higher choirs, some hidden, waiting for a day they might rise again. But few remember our faces. Fewer still remember what we fought for."
Atlas nodded slowly. He understood the magnitude now. The Key in his hand was not just a relic; it was a bridge between worlds, a lever that could shift the very foundation of Heaven and Hell alike. And the fallen angel before him, Gabriel, was both witness and participant, proof of the failure and a seed of potential.
"And if I fail?" Atlas asked.
Gabriel’s eyes burned, golden and sorrowful. "Then history will remember another set of corpses, another set of wings shattered, another voice silenced. But you... you will not fail. I feel it. The same force that let you destroy three gods will let you carry us forward. Even if Heaven itself wishes to crush you."
Atlas’s fingers tightened around the Key. A spark of golden blood flared, coating his palm like molten light. "Then we start now," he said, voice low but resolute. "And we make sure the fallen rise again. Not as pawns. Not as whispers. But as the force Heaven should have never feared to see."
Gabriel’s chains clinked softly, a symphony of faint hope in the hollow ruin. "Then let us begin, Prophet."
And as Atlas stepped back, preparing to pry the crystal cell open, a faint tremor passed through the palace — subtle, but enough to remind him: Heaven had noticed.
And Heaven would respond.