Chapter 339: Chapter 338: Release
The first crack came like thunder muffled by glass.
A fracture spread down the side of Gabriel’s crystalline cell, shimmering like lightning caught in ice.
Atlas drove his hand deeper into the seam, fingers burning with the same golden blood that still pulsed faintly beneath his skin.
He had no strength left from his battle with the gods, yet the Guide whispered inside him — a low, serpentine rhythm threading through his mind:
{{{{{Push...Their Golden blood is key to everything...}}}}}}
The crystal screamed. Not metaphorically — it screamed, in a pitch that sounded alive, as if the palace itself resented being torn apart. Shards cascaded like liquid stars, scattering light across the ruined floor. Gabriel’s chains trembled.
And then they snapped.
The explosion of divine energy threw Atlas backward, slamming him against a pillar. His vision blurred. His chest burned. But he saw Gabriel — still crucified by habit more than need, arms falling from their restraints — inhale for the first time in centuries.
Six wings unfolded in silence. Once they might have glowed white, but now they shimmered in shades of silver and violet — purity stained by rebellion or just abandonement.
Gabriel dropped to the floor, the impact echoing like a heartbeat through the crystal hall.
He straightened slowly, his body shaking from disuse but his gaze already steady. "I had forgotten," he murmured, flexing his hands as the chains crumbled to dust, "what air unfiltered by sanctity feels like."
Atlas pushed himself upright, his breath ragged. "Then breathe deep," he said. "You’re going to need it."
Gabriel looked at him, and for the first time, the faintest trace of a smile ghosted his face. "You are reckless one, prophet...."
"Half right," Atlas muttered.
A silence stretched — charged, immense. The golden corpses of gods still burned faintly behind them, radiating slow, poisonous light. The palace trembled as if the heavens themselves had noticed the trespass.
Then the bells began.
High above, their sound rolled across the clouds — a hundred tones, all perfect, all damning. The warning chime of Heaven’s Wardens.
Gabriel’s eyes darkened. "They know."
"Then we move," Atlas said. He turned to the shattered archway leading deeper into the palace. "Can you walk?"
Gabriel laughed softly, the sound halfway between sorrow and defiance. "Walk? Prophet... I remember how to fly."
He spread his wings, each beat stirring wind through the fractured chamber. Shards lifted and spun in the air like a miniature storm. Atlas braced himself against the gust, golden blood flickering faintly across his knuckles.
For a moment — just a moment — he saw what Gabriel had once been. Commander of Heaven’s legions. Voice that carried over armies of flame and cloud.
Then the light changed.
A shape appeared in the distant corridor — tall, radiant, armored in living steel. The first of Heaven’s Wardens.
"Gabriel," Atlas said, his voice dropping low, "I don’t suppose they’ll let us talk our way out of this?"
Gabriel’s wings folded halfway. "No. But they will listen to our defiance."
The Warden raised a hand, and the air between them bent, rippling like heated glass. Power rolled through the room.
"Gabriel," the Warden’s voice boomed, resonant and hollow. "Your punishment was eternal. And yet, you breathe. Who freed you?"
Gabriel didn’t answer. Atlas stepped forward instead. "I did."
The Warden turned his gaze on him. For an instant, the world dimmed — every sound, every breath drawn away by sheer divine gravity. "A mortal." His tone held disdain, curiosity, faint amusement. "You trespass where souls dissolve. Do you seek annihilation?"
Atlas didn’t flinch. "No. I seek reclamation....bitch."
The Warden moved faster than thought — a beam of white-gold light erupting from his hand. It struck where Atlas stood — but Atlas wasn’t there.
Gabriel was.
The impact sent him crashing into the opposite wall, feathers scattering like sparks. Atlas swore and dove forward, hand finding the Key at his belt. The relic pulsed once, a shockwave radiating outward. The Warden staggered.
Gabriel rose again, fire blazing in his veins. "You think I am still your chained hound?" he roared, voice echoing across the crystal halls. "You think Heaven’s decree still binds me?"
The Warden didn’t answer — he attacked again.
Lightning and light clashed, divine fury against defiant ruin. The floor splintered. The pillars cracked. Gabriel’s wings cut through the air, each stroke trailing embers of violet flame.
Atlas stayed back, calculating, scanning the collapsing hall. The Guide’s whisper pulsed faintly in his mind:
{{{{{{He cannot hold long. His strength is memory, not flesh. Use the keyyy...its not just for entrance....}}}}}}
Atlas hesitated. The last time he had yielded control, three gods died. He could still feel the phantom tremor of it — the endless depth of power, the taste of something too vast for mortal bones.
He clenched his teeth. "...."
Gabriel stumbled, the Warden’s light spearing through one wing. Atlas moved without thinking, leaping forward, the Key blazing in his hand. He slammed it into the floor.
The palace screamed again.
This time, the sound was not pain — it was release. Cracks spiderwebbed across every surface, the crystal structure groaning under impossible strain.
The Warden froze. "What have you done?"
Atlas’s eyes glowed faintly gold. "Opened the way."
From beneath the floor, light erupted — not heavenly gold, not infernal red, but something else. Something raw. The barrier between realms trembled, and from far below, Atlas felt the echo of Uriel’s voice, faint as a prayer through stone:
Prophet... what have you awakened?
Gabriel turned to him, blood streaming from his shoulder but his smile fierce. "You’ve done it. You’ve torn the veil. The others will feel it. The Seraphim will hear."
Atlas’s heart pounded. The room felt too small for the storm rising inside him.
The Warden staggered forward, desperate now. "You do not understand what lies beyond that veil! You—"
Gabriel moved.
One final strike. His six wings flared, burning brighter than the torches of the throne hall, and he drove the remnants of his chain through the Warden’s chest. The light died instantly.
Silence fell.
Atlas exhaled, dropping to one knee. His body shook, the aftershock of power still coursing through his veins. The Key lay before him, smoking faintly, its gold now streaked with black.
Gabriel knelt beside him. "You’ve made your mark on Heaven, Prophet. They will not ignore this."
Atlas looked up at him — and beyond him, through the broken walls, at the expanse of the lower heavens. Towers of crystal, rivers of light, the endless sky now fractured by his rebellion.
"Good," Atlas said softly. "Let them come."
Gabriel studied him, then smiled grimly. "Then our war begins again."
He turned, spreading his wings wide, light cascading from them in broken brilliance. Atlas rose beside him, the Key clenched in his hand, the taste of divinity and ash on his tongue.
Far above, the bells had changed.
They were no longer warnings.
They were summons.
The gods were coming.