Chapter 335: Chapter 334: Heaven
The climb began with silence.
Not the silence of sleep, or even of death — but the silence of a place where sound itself had been judged unworthy.
His boots pressed against white earth, not soil, not stone, but something finer, like powdered bone or ash sifted through eternity. Each step left no trace.
Above him, clouds curled and folded like the slow breathing of some endless beast. The air was thinner here, sharp, a taste like clean iron on his tongue.
And the mana. Oh the mana was just....sublime.
Atlas reached instinctively for his wings — and felt nothing. His flight powers bearing nothing.
The tether of gravity pulled heavier than any chain. He tried once, twice, to will himself upward, but his body refused. No flight. No leap of distance. Heaven’s skin itself resisted him.
"Fine," he muttered, planting his boots. "Then I climb."
He did not look behind him. He would not give Hell’s horizon the dignity of a farewell.
The hill rose endless before him. But it was not hill. As he climbed, the fog parted in stuttering breaths, revealing slopes cut too precise, angles too sharp.
The "hill" was foundation, buried beneath cloud and time.
And then he saw it.
Far away, at the crown of the horizon, a pyramid rose. Not stone. Not crystal. Something between — vast slabs of translucent glass, edges gleaming with rainbow fire, their faces mirroring the storming sky.
It was so large his mind reeled, struggling to measure it, like trying to weigh an ocean by eye.
It glimmered faint, as though a star had been caught inside and forced into geometric prison.
His hand brushed the Key at his side. Cold. Steady. The teeth shifted again beneath his thumb, whispering against his skin.
"... forward ..."
He gritted his teeth. "I know."
He walked. Step after step, the climb growing steeper, the air thinner, his muscles screaming.
He had fought demi gods, survived war, broken bones that should never have healed — but this ascent was something different.
Every movement felt measured, weighed, recorded.
As though Heaven itself kept ledger of his trespass.
When at last he paused, chest burning, sweat stinging his eyes, he lifted his gaze again.
The pyramid no longer seemed far. Its sides towered, vanishing into cloud, its peak piercing into sky like a spear aimed at eternity.
The closer he drew, the more detail revealed itself: etched glyphs along the glass, not carved but embedded, shifting like rivers of light beneath the surface.
The pyramid was alive.
And it was watching him.
Atlas slowed. He felt it before he saw it — a resonance in the marrow of his bones, a hum vibrating his ribs. Then the sound reached him, faint but unignorable.
Singing.
Not human voices. Not angelic choirs. Something older. Like the ringing of bells the size of mountains, stretched and warped, woven into chords that shivered the air. It was beautiful, and it was unbearable. His teeth ached with it.
Atlas pressed forward. The pyramid loomed now like the side of a mountain, a wall of living glass that shimmered with trapped stars.
He reached out a hand — and felt nothing. His fingers met air, though his palm rested against solid surface.
"An illusion," he murmured. "Or... a barrier."
The Key pulsed at his side, hot now, insistent. He lifted it.
For the first time, the whispers stopped. No sound. Only stillness.
Then the teeth of the Key twisted in his grip, aligning, clicking, rearranging themselves into a new shape. He held it to the wall.
A seam flared open.
Atlas stumbled back as light spilled out, not white, not gold, but every color at once, each shade devouring the other in violent harmony. The seam stretched, widened. An entrance.
He should have felt triumph. Instead, he felt cold dread pooling in his gut.
Because the Key was not his.
It had merely chosen, for now, to let him through.
Atlas stepped forward. The barrier yielded. The glass was no longer glass but veil, parting like water around his frame.
He entered Heaven.
The world inside struck him dumb.
It was not halls of marble, nor golden streets, nor endless fields of light as mortals imagined.
It was a labyrinth of geometry — towers of glass and iron rising at impossible angles, bridges arcing through air to vanish into clouds, rivers of light that flowed not downward but upward into the sky.
The ground itself pulsed with energy, veins of luminescence threading the marble beneath his boots.
And everywhere, silence.
No angels walked here. No choirs sang.
The city of Heaven stood empty.
Atlas turned slowly, every instinct screaming wrong. He had expected watchful eyes, descending wings, judgment. But there was nothing. Not even echo of life.
His whisper cracked against the silence. "What in the fuck happened here?"
And then the Key spoke again.
"... not empty ... waiting ..."
Atlas spun, but no one stood near. Only glass and light.
"Waiting for what?" he snarled.
The Key did not answer.
But the silence of Heaven felt heavier now. Not emptiness. Anticipation.
Something was coming.
Atlas pressed himself into the cold column, chest tight, breath held shallow.
The air changed first. It grew heavier, hotter, as if the very molecules had caught fire. A vibration rippled through the marble beneath his boots, like some vast heart was beating beneath the palace itself.
Then he felt it. Mana.
Not the faint shimmer of sorcery he’d known in Hell. Not even the crushing weight of an Archangel’s aura.
This was a tide, a storm, a hurricane bound in flesh. It pressed against him like the ocean pressing against a drowning man, smothering, suffocating, relentless. His ribs ached beneath its weight. His teeth rang.
The power came from the palace. No—’through’ the palace, radiating outward in waves. Atlas barely had time to brace before the pressure sharpened.
And then it moved.
A flare, a blur—faster than lightning could strike, faster than thought. His instincts screamed, and he dropped lower behind the column, heart hammering, every nerve alight.
And just like that, the pressure vanished.
Atlas blinked, sweat rolling down his temple. He risked a glance past the column’s edge. Nothing. Empty air, shimmering heat, the distant hum of Heaven’s unnatural silence.
"Gone?" His whisper tasted like ash.
But even as he spoke, he knew. Beings like this didn’t leave. They hunted.
Atlas steadied his breath, willing his pulse down, forcing his shoulders still. If the thing hadn’t seen him, if it had simply—
The world split.
A thunderclap detonated inches from him. No, not sound—impact. Lightning. Gold, searing, bursting into form.
Atlas staggered back, hand flying instinctively to his cloak where the Key burned against his ribs.
And there he was.
Seven and a half feet of raw divinity.
His body was muscle wrought from lightning itself, each vein a channel of radiant gold that flickered and sparked with every heartbeat.
His hair was a mane of stormfire, white shot with molten light. And his eyes—Gods. His eyes were suns breaking through stormclouds, irises alive with golden lightning, burning so bright Atlas could barely meet them without feeling his skin peel.
Even standing still, he vibrated with motion, every flicker of lightning another hint of speed too great for mortal sight.
Atlas’s breath caught. ’This is a god’
Not like the ones he had fought in Hell’s memory, not the petty tyrants draped in stolen worship.
This one radiated inevitability. The certainty of storm. The weight of judgment.
Atlas tightened his jaw. He did not move. Did not speak.
For a heartbeat, he almost thought the god might pass him by. That perhaps silence could serve as shield.
But then the lightning flared. A step—no, not a step, a flash, a blink of existence itself bending—and the god was in front of him.
Close enough that Atlas could smell ozone, sharp and metallic, burning his lungs. Close enough that each spark crawling over the god’s skin made the hairs on Atlas’s arms stand rigid.
Those golden eyes narrowed, studying him like a surgeon studies a flaw in the body.
And then the voice came. Deep. Resonant. Like thunder echoing through caverns, steady and unhurried, each syllable carrying the weight of inevitability.
"You are..." A pause, a smile, thin and terrible. "...not from around here."