The first arrows came down before Noctis had fully settled after the last exchange, their pale shafts cutting through the gray air in staggered lines that denied him the ground in front of him, the space behind him, and the shadowed edge of the stone ridge to his left. The sword angel advanced beneath the cover of that pressure with its blade held low and ready, while the spear angel shifted wider toward Noctis's right flank, its weapon angled to punish any attempt to break away from the center of the battlefield. Above the ridge, the bow angel kept its white wings extended in a controlled spread, its holy bow raised without wasted movement as it prepared the next sequence of shots.
Noctis moved through the first set of arrows with the same measured awareness he had used since the barren land closed around him. He stepped across the line of one shaft before it struck, tilted his shoulder away from another that passed close enough to brush the crimson trench coat, and raised Ruin toward the third arrow without taking his eyes off the sword angel. The blood bullet left the pistol with a sharp crack, struck the descending holy projectile in midair, and scattered it into pale fragments that dissolved before reaching the ground.
The sword angel used the moment when Noctis's left arm extended to close the distance. Its blade rose from below in a diagonal line meant to take him across the ribs before the spear angel's next thrust entered from the opposite side, but Noctis shifted inward rather than retreating. The sword's strongest cutting range passed just behind him as he stepped closer to the angel's body, and he brought Nocturne upward beneath its guard with the muzzle pointing toward the lower edge of its helmet.
The angel had seen the movement before.
Its head lifted at the exact moment Noctis fired, and the bullet passed under its jaw instead of entering it. The close miss still forced the angel into a backward rotation, its body carrying through a controlled backflip while the sword remained locked in both hands. Noctis followed the movement with two more shots, one from Nocturne and one from Ruin, but the angel opened its wings once and snapped them hard enough to shift sideways through the air, allowing both bullets to pass through the space where its chest and shoulder had been.
The spear angel reached him before he could press farther. Its weapon came from behind his right shoulder in a narrow, direct thrust that used the sword angel's retreat to hide the timing, and Noctis twisted away from the point before it reached his back. He did not turn fully toward the spear angel. Instead, he wrapped his left arm across the front of his body toward his right hip, held Ruin low behind his center of balance, and fired backward while still watching the sword angel land.
The angle forced the spear angel to react instead of completing its follow-up attack. It spun the reinforced section of its shaft across its body, catching the blood bullet in a white-red burst that pushed the weapon slightly off line, and Noctis used the delay to step away from the next sword cut. The bow angel fired again from above, placing one arrow where he had been and another where the spear angel expected him to retreat, but Noctis shifted into the narrow gap between those two paths and let both attacks cut through empty ground.
The three angels moved with discipline rather than frustration. The sword angel regained its footing and returned to the center line before Noctis could pursue its missed opening, the spear angel reset its weapon in a position that covered the rear angle, and the archer's wings settled as it formed another group of arrows beside the holy bow. None of them had become careless after the difficult shots. Every time Noctis forced one of them to defend, the other two adjusted their positioning before he could turn the temporary imbalance into a real advantage.
Noctis had already understood that the battle would not become easier simply because he found clever firing angles. The angels were too trained to panic under pressure, and their formation did not depend on each fighter winning individually. The sword angel created direct threat. The spear angel denied him space. The bow angel shaped the battlefield around whatever movement remained available after the first two had committed.
He needed to separate those jobs from one another.
The thought barely formed before Crimson Arsenal answered.
Blood rose behind Noctis in nine dense streams, each current coiling through the barren air before hardening into a weapon form. The blood did not create a single uniform set of blades. He had no reason to give all three angels the same problem when each one fought differently.
Three massive scythes formed first.
Their shafts were dark red and black, their crescent blades broad enough that the bow angel could not treat them as simple projectiles, and each weapon spun once in the air before turning toward the ridge. The scythes split apart as they crossed the battlefield, one rising above the bow angel, one cutting low beneath its line of fire, and the third moving wide around its left side.
Three blood-forged swords appeared next.
They were narrower than the scythes but no less dangerous, each one shaped for direct pressure against the sword angel's own style. Their blades hovered in a loose triangular pattern around Noctis for only an instant before shooting forward, one toward the angel's front, one toward its right side, and one curving behind it to take away the clean retreat route it had used moments earlier.
The final three weapons formed as guan daos.
Long shafts extended from streams of blood, each ending in a heavy curved blade with a hooked edge designed to pull, cut, and control space over a wider range than an ordinary sword. The weapons turned in the air toward the spear angel, their reach matching its own while their blade shapes threatened the shaft, wing joints, and open lines around its armor.
The barren battlefield changed in a single breath.
The bow angel had controlled distance since the moment it revealed itself, placing arrows where Noctis would move and forcing him to use every piece of terrain carefully. Now the three scythes occupied the air around it from different heights, their rotating blades crossing paths in alternating arcs that made a stable firing position impossible. One scythe swept down toward the top of its head, forcing the angel into a sharp dive; another passed through the empty space left behind and cut upward from below; the third curved around in a wider circle, waiting for the place the angel would try to use next.
The bow angel could still shoot, but it could no longer remain calm above the battlefield and dictate the rhythm from a protected line. It folded one wing, rolled through the first scythe's path, and released an arrow while falling, but the second scythe forced it to pull the bow away from a clean draw and turn its body sideways. The arrow still came toward Noctis, though it lacked the perfect timing of the earlier shots.
Noctis did not look at it.
He heard the faint fracture in the air caused by the holy shaft and shifted his head half an inch to the side while Nocturne fired at the sword angel. The arrow passed close enough to move a strand of silver-white hair, but it did not touch him. His next shot came from Ruin toward a point above the bow angel's left wing, and the projectile met the archer's flight path just as one of the scythes cut in from the opposite direction.
The bow angel pulled back sharply, abandoning the shot it had been preparing to avoid being caught between blood blade and blood bullet. The scythes continued their rotation around it, never repeating the same line twice. One rose high enough to force the angel lower. Another dropped beneath it and came back up with the hooked inner edge of its blade angled toward the abdomen. The third remained farther out, not attacking immediately but sealing the cleanest escape route whenever the angel tried to create distance.
On the ground, the sword angel met the three blood swords without hesitation.
The first sword thrust directly toward its chest, and the angel turned its own weapon sideways to parry the attack before it reached the armor. The second came from the right, forcing a short pivot and a backward cut that broke the blood blade apart into a red spray. The third attacked from behind at the same time, but the angel had already moved its wings enough to lift its body out of the line, bringing its sword back in a reverse stroke that caught the blood construct before it could reach the wing root.
Noctis watched the exchange while firing through the narrow openings created by the three swords. The angel could handle the blood weapons individually, but every block, cut, and wing-assisted adjustment occupied a fraction of its attention. That fraction was enough for Noctis to send shots into places the sword angel had not expected him to reach.
A blood bullet came at the angel's shoulder from the front, forcing its blade upward. Noctis fired a second round into the cracked stone beside the angel's left foot, and the projectile skipped across the ground before rebounding toward the exposed side of its torso. The sword angel recognized the ricochet only at the last moment. It turned its body, allowing the bullet to scrape against the outer edge of its armor instead of entering beneath the plates, but the movement forced it to give ground and lose the central position it had held since the battle began.
The spear angel had its own problem.
The three guan daos did not approach in a clean sequence that allowed it to use its weapon's reach against them. One swept low at its legs, forcing the spear angel to lift and redirect its footing. A second came across from the opposite side with the hooked blade angled toward the long shaft of its spear. The third remained above, then dropped in a heavy descending line that made the angel either block high or leave itself open to the lower two weapons.
The spear angel spun its weapon with disciplined control. The shaft caught the first guan dao and redirected it away from its legs. It turned the spear through a tight circle, allowing the metal-reinforced section near its grip to knock aside the second blade before the hook could catch the weapon. Then it stepped sideways and raised the spear enough to meet the descending guan dao, the clash of holy metal and blood-forged weapon sending a sharp pulse through the air.
It had stopped all three.
But it had stopped them by committing its full attention to them.
Noctis took advantage before the angel could reclaim its original position. He fired directly at its upper body, then immediately sent another blood bullet into a nearby stone slab. The direct shot forced the spear angel to bring its weapon across its chest. The ricochet came from a lower angle toward the open line beneath its arm, and the angel had to pull one wing inward while shifting its hips away from the shot.
The movement prevented the bullet from striking cleanly, but it also gave Noctis a line he had not had before.
He fired again.
The spear angel twisted its body, and the shot passed over the dark edge of its armor, close enough to shear several white feathers loose from one wing. The feathers drifted briefly through the barren air before dissolving into pale light. The angel did not react outwardly, but its next movement became more cautious as it re-evaluated the combination of guan dao pressure, ricochet fire, and direct shots.
For the first time since the sealed battlefield had formed around him, Noctis was able to shoot without being forced to abandon every firing line after a single trigger pull.
The sword angel still had to defend against three blood swords. The spear angel still had to keep the guan daos from taking control of its weapon range. The bow angel was still in the air, retreating and rolling between rotating scythes while attempting to fire whenever a narrow gap appeared.
Only the bow angel continued trying to target him consistently.
Noctis treated the arrows as background pressure now.
A holy shaft came down from the left, and he tilted his shoulders without turning his gaze from the sword angel. Another approached from behind, and he fired a blood bullet backward over his right shoulder, the shot catching the arrow in the air with enough accuracy to break it apart before it reached the crimson coat. A third arrow crossed low toward his knee, but Noctis lifted one foot, stepped over it, and fired directly into the flat face of a boulder near the bow angel's current flight line.
The bullet ricocheted upward.
The bow angel saw the blood shot coming from below and shifted higher, but that movement brought it closer to the scythe waiting above. The broad blade cut through the air where its wing had been a heartbeat earlier, forcing the angel to fold into a tight aerial turn before the second scythe passed beneath it. Noctis watched the archer's movement through the corner of his eye, then pulled his right arm behind his body and aimed Nocturne across his back toward the left side of the battlefield.
He fired without facing the bow angel.
The blood bullet took the angle he had calculated from the archer's earlier dodges and reached the place where it would emerge from the turn. The bow angel's wingbeat came at the last moment, shifting it just enough that the shot passed in front of its chest instead of through it. Even so, the forced movement ruined another arrow draw and pushed it into the path of the lower scythe.
The angel had to descend sharply.
Noctis let it descend.
His attention returned to the spear angel just as it tried to cut through one of the guan daos and reclaim the distance between them. He stayed facing the sword angel, which had finally destroyed two of the blood swords and was moving to eliminate the last one, while his left arm wrapped around his body toward his right hip.
Ruin fired backward from the crossed position.
The spear angel had seen the motion once already, but the timing was different now because Noctis's body looked committed to the sword angel's front line. The blood bullet came low and fast toward the gap beneath the spear angel's breastplate. It spun the shaft to deflect the shot, but the guan dao nearest it used the same moment to hook around the weapon's outer edge.
The spear angel had to release one hand from its usual grip and force the guan dao away with a wing-assisted turn. That delay cost it the follow-up thrust it had prepared against Noctis's side.
The sword angel reached him instead.
Its blade came down in a heavy diagonal cut, but Noctis stepped inward again, moving close enough that the full arc became harder to use without risking the angel's own body. Nocturne rose beneath the sword guard, and the muzzle pointed directly at the angel's chin.
The angel lifted its head.
Noctis fired anyway.
The bullet missed the jaw by a narrow margin, forcing the angel into another controlled backflip as it used the movement to open distance. Noctis tracked the rotation with two more shots. The first reached the angel's chest line and forced it to draw one wing closer. The second came toward the shoulder. The sword angel opened both wings in one powerful flap and shifted sideways through the air, allowing the bullet to pass beneath its arm before landing farther away.
The remaining blood sword attacked from behind as it landed.
The angel cut it apart before the blade reached the armor, but Noctis had already fired into the ground near its landing point. The bullet skipped once across the cracked surface, struck a jutting piece of stone, and curved back at an angle that came from behind the sword angel's left wing.
The angel turned in time.
Its sword caught the ricochet shot in a short reverse cut, crimson light scattering through the gray air, but the defense forced it to remain where it was instead of returning to the central pressure line. Noctis saw the spear angel still occupied with its final guan dao and the bow angel struggling beneath the three scythes.
The formation had not broken.
But it had been stretched.
Noctis lowered his stance as the sword angel and spear angel attempted to close it again. The bow angel, still trying to escape the rotating scythes, released a rushed arrow pattern toward him. The sword angel came from the front with a broad horizontal cut. The spear angel moved in from the flank with a thrust meant to catch him if he retreated. The arrows crossed from above and behind, sealing the lines he would normally use to move away.
All three attacked at once.
Noctis dropped lower.
The sword passed over his head, close enough that the pressure of the holy blade moved his hair. The spear cut through the space where his upper body had been a fraction earlier, and the first pair of arrows came down toward the cracked ground around his feet. From the lowered position, he extended both arms outward.
Nocturne aimed at the sword angel's abdomen.
Ruin aimed at the spear angel's abdomen.
He fired both pistols at once.
The sword angel twisted backward, lifting with a small wing-assisted shift that carried its body above the bullet's direct line. The spear angel moved sideways behind the rotating shaft of its weapon, using the reinforced grip to alter the blood bullet's trajectory before it reached the armor. Neither shot landed, but both angels had to abandon the pressure that had forced Noctis down.
The bow angel tried to capitalize.
A second volley appeared before Noctis could stand, several arrows descending at once from different angles. He did not rise into them. Instead, he drove one leg through the dust, twisted his body into the ground movement, and let his shoulders, back, hips, and legs carry him into a fast windmill rotation across the cracked earth.
The first arrow passed over him.
The second came lower, and his rotating leg struck it aside before it could pin him to the ground. The holy shaft exploded into pale fragments against the force of the kick, its light scattering across the dust. A third arrow descended toward his torso, but his body rolled beneath it as the windmill carried him through another rotation.
The movement did not give him time to relax. The sword angel had already begun advancing again, and the spear angel was moving to intercept the line where he would need to rise. Noctis used the final turn of the windmill to plant an elbow and forearm against the ground. The support gave him enough leverage to push upward, and before he had fully rebalanced, he brought Nocturne toward the bow angel.
He fired.
The shot came at the archer from below while the scythes continued circling around it. The bow angel had to interrupt another draw and pull sideways through the narrow space between two rotating blades. Noctis fired again from Ruin, this time into the stone ridge beneath the angel. The blood bullet struck the rock, climbed its fractured surface, and ricocheted into the archer's path from an angle that forced it to fold one wing close and drop sharply toward the ground.
One scythe followed the descent.
The blade passed close enough to tear through the outer feathers of the bow angel's wing, and pale fragments scattered behind it as the angel rolled across the dusty ground instead of taking flight immediately. The other two scythes changed their positions at once, one cutting down toward the bow and one moving low enough to threaten the legs if it tried to run.
The bow angel was no longer controlling the field.
It was surviving it.
Noctis saw the shift and felt the excitement in his blood sharpen further. His heart beat faster beneath the black armor, and the crimson aura near the edges of the trench coat thickened as he moved through the next exchange. The angels had remained disciplined. They had adapted to the ricochets, defended impossible shots, and covered one another's mistakes before those mistakes became fatal.
Yet they had been forced into defense.
The sword angel had destroyed the third blood sword and was moving back toward Noctis, but it had lost the smooth control of the central line. The spear angel had finally broken the last guan dao into a stream of blood, though it had spent enough time doing so that its range pressure had weakened. The bow angel remained alive, but the scythes made every attempt to reclaim altitude dangerous.
Noctis raised both pistols.
For a brief moment, the battlefield belonged to him.
Then a voice came from above.
It was not loud in the normal sense. It did not travel through the barren air and reach his ears from a distance. It arrived inside the sealed space itself, rolling through the cracked ground, the broken ridges, the pale sky, and the blood pools left by the destroyed weapons until every part of the battlefield seemed to carry the same command.
"Holy Smite."
Noctis looked upward.
He did not have time to move.
A ray of pure white light came down from the empty sky with a speed that made the previous arrows seem slow. It struck directly where he stood before Phantom Dash, Wraith Step, a pistol shot, or even an instinctive dodge could answer. The white light swallowed him and the ground beneath him in the same instant.
The explosion tore through the battlefield.
Cracked earth burst upward in a wide ring. Stone ridges fractured along their lower edges and sent pale debris into the air. Dust, white light, and compressed force expanded outward until the barren land became a wall of smoke and shattered ground.
Every Bloodfang Reaper lost cohesion.
The scythes around the bow angel disintegrated first, their blades and shafts collapsing into streams of blood that fell through the air in thick dark ribbons. The swords near the sword angel broke apart next, followed by the guan daos around the spear angel. The blood struck the ground in heavy pools, spreading across the cracked stone in irregular red-black shapes before becoming still.
The three Tier 6 angels withdrew immediately.
The sword angel lowered its weapon and stepped backward from the edge of the blast zone. The spear angel turned its body toward the sky rather than the crater, its posture shifting from direct combat readiness into alert restraint. The bow angel rose from the ground with torn feathers still drifting around one wing, but it did not fire another arrow.
Whatever had spoken above them had changed the battlefield.
Noctis lay at the center of the crater beneath smoke and broken stone, the white radiance of the Holy Smite fading in slow pulses around the impact point. The holy energy itself had not entered him. Tier 6 sacred power could not burn him, could not poison his blood, and could not suppress the authority that lived beneath his skin. But the compressed impact had still struck with enough force to blast him backward, fracture the ground beneath him, and send a violent ringing through his skull.
Before the smoke could thin completely, a figure descended through the remaining white light.
At first glance, he looked human.
He wore heavy battle armor that resembled a fusion of Roman command equipment and an older celestial style, with broad shoulder plates, layered metal around the chest and arms, and deep gold lines running through pale silver surfaces. A flaming sword rested in one hand, its fire controlled rather than wild, and his face was stern, human, and unreadable beneath dark hair. He had no wings. No halo appeared above him. Nothing physically monstrous marked him as anything other than an exceptionally imposing warrior in armor.
Yet the barren battlefield seemed to become heavier around him when his boots touched the ground.
Noctis could not see an army, but he felt one.
The armored stranger's presence carried the pressure of an immense host standing beyond ordinary sight, ranks of disciplined soldiers moving in silent order, shields aligned, weapons lowered, and countless unseen eyes turned toward the same point. It was not an illusion projected into the land. It was a spiritual weight attached to the man himself, broad enough to make the three Tier 6 angels seem suddenly smaller despite their weapons, wings, and holy authority.
The armored stranger stood at the edge of the smoking crater and looked down.
A second person arrived several steps away.
He also looked human.
He wore pale layered clothing that moved lightly against the dry air, and his dark hair framed a composed face that showed neither surprise nor aggression. A lily rested in one of his hands, its pale petals untouched by the dust and smoke rolling through the battlefield. Like the armored man, he had no wings. There was no visible halo around him, no outward light spilling from his skin, and no obvious sign that he was anything other than a calm traveler who had somehow stepped into the wrong place.
He turned his gaze toward the crater without speaking.
The third figure did not descend from the sky.
He walked.
Farther across the barren land, beyond a broken ridge that had been partially shattered by the Holy Smite's impact, an ordinary-looking traveler moved toward the other two with a staff in one hand. His clothes were plain enough to belong to someone walking between villages, his pace was measured, and his face carried no visible power, judgment, or threat.
He looked ordinary.
That was what made him unsettling.
The armored man held a flaming sword. The lily-bearer carried the quiet presence of someone who had arrived for a reason. The traveler looked like he should not belong on a battlefield at all, and yet the three Tier 6 angels remained withdrawn as though the simple man with the walking staff carried authority equal to the other two.
The strangers stood together and watched the crater.
For several seconds, none of them moved.
Then the armored man's grip tightened faintly around the flaming sword. The lily-bearer's fingers closed around the stem of the flower, not crushing it, but acknowledging something the others had felt. The traveler stopped beside them, his posture unchanged, but his eyes remained fixed on the smoke with a quiet attention that had nothing ordinary in it.
They had expected the strike to do more.
A figure moved inside the crater.
Noctis emerged through the smoke with dust clinging to the hem of his crimson trench coat and small fragments of stone sliding from one shoulder. His black armor remained intact. No blood ran from his body. No wound had opened beneath the blast. He looked annoyed rather than injured, one hand rubbing against the side of his head as he stepped over a fractured section of earth.
"The ringing isn't stopping," he muttered.
The three strangers remained silent.
Noctis lowered his hand and looked at them properly.
Something in the way they stood made the cold excitement in his blood ease into caution. The armored man had not moved after the Holy Smite. The lily-bearer had not drawn a weapon. The traveler had not changed expression. Yet the Tier 6 angels had stepped back without needing to be ordered, and the battlefield itself seemed to have gone quieter in their presence.
Noctis activated Omni Eyes.
He examined the armored man first.
The human appearance remained visible for only a moment before Omni Eyes reached beyond the surface of the armor. The battlefield around the stranger opened into a spiritual image so immense that Noctis's breath caught. Behind the single armored figure stood the impression of a heavenly host extending farther than the barren horizon, countless ranks of soldiers held in disciplined formation beneath banners of light, their spears, shields, and blades aligned under one command.
A translucent display formed within his vision.
Michael — Archangel
Tier 9
Authority: Heavenly Host Command / Holy Warfare / Judgment
Noctis went still.
His gaze moved toward the man holding the lily.
At first, the stranger's outer form remained exactly as it had appeared: pale clothing, calm face, dark hair, a simple flower held in one hand. Omni Eyes pushed deeper, and the human surface opened beneath the skill's perception. A spiritual body like topaz shone beneath the visible skin. His face glowed like lightning, his eyes burned with the brightness of flaming torches, and his arms and legs carried the hard gleam of burnished bronze.
The lily did not lose its gentleness beneath that vision.
It became more unsettling.
The flower held a holy authority that felt like revelation delivered without warning, a quiet object capable of carrying both divine announcement and the force of a decree no one could ignore.
Another display appeared.
Gabriel — Archangel
Tier 9
Authority: Divine Messenger / Revelation / Sacred Decree
Noctis's fingers tightened once at his side.
Then he looked at the traveler.
For a moment, Omni Eyes showed him nothing unusual. The man remained an ordinary traveler in plain clothing, resting lightly on a staff as though he had come from a road outside the battlefield rather than the sky. His expression stayed calm. His form stayed human. His presence held no obvious blaze of war or divine proclamation.
Noctis pushed Omni Eyes deeper.
The ordinary appearance opened into something vast and gentle enough to make his skin prickle. It carried healing authority, guidance, restoration, and life returned after destruction. It felt like wounds closing, poison leaving blood, broken bodies finding strength again, and damaged spirits being led back from places where they should not have survived.
The final display appeared.
Raphael — Archangel
Tier 9
Authority: Divine Healing / Guidance / Restoration
Noctis stared at them.
Michael.
Gabriel.
Raphael.
The ringing in his head continued, but it no longer felt like the main problem.
"Holy shit," he said under his breath.
The words came out quieter than he intended.
He had just fought three Tier 6 angels at once. They had forced him to use Nocturne and Ruin, ricochet fire, Phantom Dash, Crimson Arsenal armor, and Bloodfang Reapers merely to disrupt their formation. He had not been losing, but he had not been able to end the fight quickly either.
The three people standing in front of him were not stronger versions of those angels.
They were something else entirely.
They were Tier 9.
Noctis felt cold sweat gather along his temples beneath his silver-white hair. His grip shifted around the pistols on instinct, then he caught himself. Keeping Nocturne and Ruin in his hands suddenly felt less like confidence and more like an invitation to be erased. Crimson Arsenal pulled the weapons back in thin streams of blood, drawing them across his palms and wrists until they returned to the small gun charms resting against his skin.
The armored archangel did not lower the flaming sword.
Gabriel continued holding the lily.
Raphael remained beside them with the staff in one hand, looking so ordinary that Noctis almost wished he had never used Omni Eyes on him.
His mind began sorting through the situation faster than he wanted it to.
The battlefield was suppressing him to Tier 6. That limitation had already made the three white-winged angels serious opponents. The Holy Smite had been cast inside the same suppression, and that was the only reason he had walked out of the crater with a headache and ringing ears instead of a destroyed body. Its holy force had remained at Tier 6 output, where his immunity could keep the sacred energy from entering and harming him directly.
Had that strike been allowed to reach Tier 7, he might not have survived.
Tier 8 would have been worse.
Tier 9, from someone like Michael, was not something he wanted to imagine.
And there were three of them.
Noctis could not beat three Tier 9 archangels while he remained restricted to Tier 6. He could not use Genesis Step to escape because the ability was still locked. He could not identify a route out of the sealed battlefield before they acted again. He could not even pretend that overwhelming them with a larger spell would solve anything when the first serious Holy Smite had erased every Bloodfang Reaper on the field in a single impact.
For the first time since arriving in the barren land, he did not have a reasonable combat answer.
His throat felt dry.
He rubbed the side of his head again, trying to look more casual than he felt, but the sweat at the back of his neck and the slight tension in his shoulders gave him away. His eyes flicked from Michael's flaming sword to Gabriel's lily, then toward Raphael's plain wooden staff, and he took a small step backward before catching himself.
"Okay," Noctis said.
The word came out less steady than he wanted.
The three archangels did not answer.
Noctis cleared his throat and lifted both empty hands slowly, keeping them where they could see that he was not reaching for the gun charms. "Um… I think we can talk things through," he said, forcing an uneasy smile that did not reach his eyes. "Not fight. Right? No fighting. Let's all just talk normally."
Michael continued watching him from the edge of the crater.
Gabriel's expression did not change.
Raphael rested both hands lightly around his staff and waited.
Noctis kept his hands raised, trying not to glance too obviously at the pools of blood where his destroyed constructs had fallen, and waited for one of the archangels to answer.