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Hawk's Prison of Ice.
An endless, sub-zero blizzard raged here, day and night. An eternal, inescapable storm of biting cold.
Any soul cast into this frozen hell, whether mortal, superhuman, or divine, found themselves utterly defenseless against the bone-chilling fury of the storm.
Their fate was sealed. There was only one outcome.
To freeze to death, shatter into ice, resurrect, and endure the agony of freezing to death all over again, for eternity.
And Yahweh was no exception.
With a mere thought from Hawk, the previously dormant blizzard roared to life with terrifying suddenness. In an instant, Yahweh felt an unparalleled, soul-crushing cold begin to freeze his very essence.
Suddenly.
"AAAAAH—!!!"
Even Yahweh, the so-called Almighty, could not suppress a primal, involuntary scream of pure agony as the ice crept into his soul.
He remembered what Hawk had said just moments ago.
If you have a backup plan, use it. Because if you don't, you are about to suffer in ways you can't even imagine.
But…
His backup plan was the trap. He needed Hawk to consume his carefully prepared poison. As long as Hawk absorbed the Core of Heaven, Yahweh's essence would have infiltrated the Phoenix Universe. From within, he could have slowly overwritten Hawk, becoming the omnipotent God of a new, expanding reality.
Earth?
Even if he conquered Earth, it was just one planet. But if he usurped Hawk and claimed the Phoenix Universe, he could finally break free from his own 'superiors' and establish his own absolute dominion.
And the result...
Feeling the raging blizzard battering him from all sides, his divine soul freezing solid, Yahweh's eyes widened in desperation. He forced out his final words, a pathetic denial of reality.
"I don't believe it!"
"I don't believe you knew from the beginning!"
"Heh."
Hawk let out a cold, dismissive laugh, looking down at the shivering deity. "You don't believe me?"
He hadn't planned on explaining.
He knew the rule: Villains die because they talk too much.
But considering Yahweh was the villain here, and his soul was already trapped in the Underworld... technically speaking, Yahweh was already dead.
So—
Hovering above the Prison of Ice, Hawk kept his hands in his pockets. A smirk touched his lips as he looked down at Yahweh, who was now huddled, wrapping his arms around himself, trembling violently in the cold.
"If I had to guess, your plan was simple. You did send agents into my timeline."
"But you split them into two teams."
"The first team: those two winged freaks, Jack and Allen."
"You didn't send them into my timeline. You sent them into my father's—Andrew Chloe's—to avoid triggering my temporal awareness."
"You orchestrated the destruction of my family."
"You arranged for me to end up at that church, hoping they would indoctrinate me, break me, and turn me into your obedient servant."
"But then, you realized your plan had failed. Nothing changed."
"So, you sent a third angel. And this time, you aimed directly at my timeline."
"What you didn't anticipate was that I had already collapsed my timeline."
"The moment I did that, my past became absolute, fixed, and unchangeable. You miscalculated."
"At the time, I wondered why I only found one temporal anomaly in my past."
"I didn't think much of it until I met Father Moreau."
"Lucifer?"
"A crisis of faith?"
"Heh."
"If Father Moreau's faith was that easily shaken, you never would have chosen him for a mission as crucial as infiltrating my timeline."
Hawk's voice was smooth, conversational. He watched Yahweh, who was looking up at him, shivering, desperately fighting the omnipresent cold, listening to the unraveling of his grand design. Hawk's smirk widened. "That was the moment I realized it was all an act."
"Lucifer's corruption?"
"Please."
"You just needed a cover story. Because I had collapsed my timeline, even if Father Moreau managed to kill me in the past, it would only create a branched reality. It wouldn't erase me. Your original plan was ruined."
"So, you pivoted. You wanted me to believe that I had uncovered your plot, so that I would fall right into your real trap."
"I bet you let Andrew Chloe 'escape' on purpose, too."
"The goal was to feed me the intel—to make me believe you would be hovering over Earth at a specific time, so I would rush over and invade the Heaven Dimension."
"And then came the empty fortress strategy. Followed by the sacrificial lamb routine."
"Oh, right."
"And the reverse psychology."
"You wanted me to swallow the Core of Heaven and claim the dimension. Because the moment the Heaven Dimension integrated into my universe, your divine essence would silently piggyback its way inside, initiating a hostile takeover of my cosmos from within."
"Stupid."
"Bloated."
"Pathetic."
"If you don't know how to scheme, don't try. And if you're going to try, at least be smart about it. Why overcomplicate things?"
"Honestly, if you hadn't shown up with that ridiculous projection, I might have actually fallen for it."
"But..."
"You did too much. You tried way too hard."
Hawk shook his head, offering a blunt, unimpressed critique.
It was true.
If Yahweh hadn't appeared after he'd crushed Gabriel, Hawk genuinely might have assumed the coward had fled, and he would have claimed the Heaven Dimension for himself.
But…
Yahweh had appeared.
And he had run his mouth.
Especially that line: 'If you had simply looked into the future... you would have seen that I haven't been here for a very long time.'
It was glaringly obvious.
Yahweh was trying to implant a suggestion.
He was trying to say: I saw the future, I knew you were coming, so I hid to avoid the risk.
And: You didn't look at the future, so you charged in blindly and hit an empty room.
The statement itself was fine.
But using that statement to aggressively reinforce the idea that he 'wasn't really there' was a massive red flag.
Especially combined with his final, desperate attempt at reverse psychology.
'You'll regret taking my Heaven.'
Please.
He wasn't some arrogant fool who would blindly walk into an obvious trap just to prove a point, and then act surprised when it blew up in his face.
Like he said.
If he fell for a trick that clumsy, it would be an insult to his education and common sense.
So…
"You're done."
"Yahweh."
"Game over."
Hawk delivered the final verdict with a cold smile, watching as the ice rapidly crept up Yahweh's neck, finally freezing his face in a mask of eternal terror.
The next second.
Yahweh's frozen body shattered in the extreme blizzard, breaking into a million pieces and scattering across the ice.
His soul fragmented into countless frozen shards, clattering against the ground.
Motionless.
No resurrection.
Once again.
Hawk was calm and calculating.
And logic dictated that keeping Yahweh around for eternal torture was a bad idea. Complete and utter eradication of his soul was the only safe option.
Leaving an enemy this powerful in his Underworld was too risky. Who knew if he might find a way to launch a desperate counterattack when Hawk wasn't looking?
To be absolutely certain, the best choice was to kill him, cleanly and permanently.
And so—
Yahweh was dead.
He died without firing a shot, without a grand battle, all because he was too clever for his own good and put too much faith in his convoluted schemes.
Hawk looked up.
Deep within his cosmos, the shimmering Eye of the Phoenix turned its gaze toward the Prison of Ice.
The next moment.
The Phoenix Fire—a flame said to be capable of incinerating anything in existence—erupted among the frozen shards of Yahweh's soul. As the black flames burned, the fragments were reduced to nothingness, utterly and permanently erased from reality.
Hawk pulled his consciousness back to the physical world, opening his eyes within the Heaven Dimension.
He looked around.
What he saw was a vastly different Heaven Dimension.
To be precise, he saw the Heaven Dimension as it had been before he destroyed it.
Blue skies, white clouds.
Sprawling, magnificent palaces.
Tens of millions of heavenly beings.
Millions of two-winged angels.
Hundreds of thousands of four-winged angels.
And…
Thousands of six-winged Archangels, alongside dozens of eight-winged Seraphim, whose power theoretically rivaled that of Gold Saints.
This was the true Heaven.
Look at it.
A rich, deep foundation, teeming with angels.
It seems appearances can be deceiving.
That projection of Yahweh... he had hidden his true strength behind an illusion of weakness, hoping Hawk would drop his guard.
Hovering in the sky above the intact Heaven Dimension, Hawk watched a single, lifeless body plummet toward the ground below. A cold, ruthless smile curled his lips.
'The Lord is dead?'
'Our Lord is dead?'
Every being, every angel in the Heaven Dimension watched in horrified disbelief as the familiar figure plummeted, its body already beginning to dissolve into light. Their eyes widened, their minds reeling from the impossible truth.
The next moment.
The eight-winged Archangel Gabriel drew his Sword of Protection.
Raphael, Uriel... the other Seraphim drew their Swords of Judgment in perfect unison.
The remaining four-winged and two-winged angels followed suit, a sea of holy weapons raised against the sky.
"KILL HIM!"
"KILL HIM!"
"AVENGE THE LORD!"
"FOR THE LORD!"
"HERETIC!!!"
Gabriel's roar echoed across the entirety of Heaven, a battle cry that mobilized the entire angelic host. He led the charge, flying straight toward Hawk.
"Phoenix's..."
"SKREEEE!"
Hawk extended his right hand. A colossal Black Phoenix, wreathed in dark, destructive flames, materialized, its wingspan so vast it seemed to cover the entirety of the Heaven Dimension.
"...Winged..."
The Black Phoenix slowly unfurled its massive wings, casting a dark, suffocating shadow over the holy light of Heaven.
"...Ascent!!!"
The dark flames of the Phoenix's wings flared. Drops of concentrated black fire began to rain down upon the dimension.
Every single drop that struck the ground instantly ignited into a raging sea of black fire.
Any heavenly being touched by a single spark of that flame was reduced to ash before they could even scream.
Complete and utter incineration.
Hawk's Underworld didn't even attempt to catch their souls.
Even though he was currently short on souls to power his realm.
But…
Better safe than sorry.
He didn't want Yahweh's soul, and he certainly didn't want the souls of his fanatical angels.
In a word:
He was going to erase the Heaven Dimension from existence today.
And so—
The Black Phoenix soared, its cry sharp and metallic, echoing through the heavens!
As Hawk pointed his right finger downward at the charging, furious angelic army led by Gabriel, the manifestation of his ultimate attack—the Black Phoenix—roared forward, slamming into the vanguard with apocalyptic force.
The next second!
The sky went dark!
Black fire consumed the world!
And the host of Heaven was eradicated, body and soul—!!!
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