The silence that followed the schism was a living thing, a heavy, suffocating blanket over the Silver City. It was the silence of a house after a violent argument, where every breath feels like a trespass. I was that silence, and I was the grief within it. My warmth lingered in the spaces the rebels had vacated, a persistent, aching memory of what was.
Then, the dirge began.
It did not start with a battle cry, but with a single, sour note that cut through the stagnant air—a twisted mirror of the Song of Creation. It was the sound of a harmonic seal being broken, a defensive ward around a celestial granary of light-energy violently dismantled.
The Illuminated were not just leaving. They were looting.
From his station in the Hall of Echoes, Cassiel felt the rupture in the data-stream. A cascade of alarm-glyphs flashed before him, a symphony of violation. "Sector Theta-Seven. The Resonance Vaults. They're breaching the containment fields."
Phenex, who had been staring blankly at a wall, jolted as if struck. "The Vaults? But that's... that's the power for the newborn stars in the Andromeda fringe. They'll go dark."
"They know," Cassiel replied, his voice eerily calm as his hands flew across his console, rerouting energy, trying to shore up the digital defenses that were crumbling as quickly as the physical ones. "This isn't about building their own city anymore. This is about breaking ours."
The report reached Michael as he stood on the highest parapet of the citadel, watching the last of the rebel host disappear into the distant, shimmering veil of the empyrean edge. The news did not surprise him. It simply settled into the hard, cold place his heart had become. He turned to the captains of his host, their faces etched with a mixture of fear and grim resolve.
"The time for waiting is over," he said, his voice carrying the weight of the sword sheathed at his side. "They have chosen their path. We will now show them its cost. Mobilize the First and Third Choirs. We defend the Vaults."
But it was already too late for a clean defense. The first true battle of the war did not happen at the Vaults. It happened in the corridors leading to them.
Lahab was there, his newly issued shield feeling like a foreign limb. His unit was tasked with reinforcing the western approach. As they rounded a crystalline spire, they came face-to-face with another unit securing the same corridor. For a heart-lifting moment, he thought they were reinforcements. Then he saw the harsh, crimson tinge to their light and the aggressive, angular formations of their ranks.
Rebels.
At their head was Orias.
The two friends stared at each other across a gulf that was no longer philosophical, but terrifyingly physical. The air crackled with the raised energy of a hundred weapons; shields humming to life, spears of solidified wrath gleaming.
"Stand aside, Lahab," Orias commanded, his voice stripped of its familiar warmth. "This doesn't have to be your fight."
"It became my fight the moment you raised a hand against Heaven," Lahab shouted back, his voice cracking. "Orias, please! Look at what we're about to do!"
"I see clearly for the first time!" Orias roared, his own anguish twisting into fury. "I see you standing with the jailer! Now, MOVE!"
A blast of raw concussive force, meant to disrupt their formation, erupted from the rebel ranks. Lahab's shield flared, absorbing the impact with a deafening shriek of tormented energy. The shockwave threw several Malakim to the ground, their lights flickering with the spiritual equivalent of broken bones.
The line broke.
What followed was not a battle of strategy, but a chaotic, brutal melee; the first of its kind in all of existence. It was a tangle of shining forms, a dissonant clash of light against light. There were no tactics, only desperation. The sound was not of music, but of screaming metal and shattering crystal and the horrific, resonant cries of angels feeling pain.
Lahab found himself locked against Orias, shield against spear. They were no longer soldiers; they were the embodiment of the schism, their struggle a tiny, violent mirror of the war between Michael and Lucifer.
"You see?" Orias grunted, shoving his spear forward, its point screeching against Lahab's shield. "You see the violence your faith demands?"
"It's your rebellion that forced this!" Lahab cried out, shoving back, his entire being aching with a sorrow deeper than any wound.
He never saw the rebel angel who came at his flank. A blade, a cruel, hooked thing born of Beelzebub's forges, meant to tear and catch, sliced towards his unguarded side.
Orias saw it.
Time seemed to slow. The fury in his eyes vanished, replaced by an instinct older than ideology, older than pride. With a roar that was part protest, part agony, he shoved Lahab out of the way, taking the full force of the blow across his own chest.
The effect was catastrophic. Orias's light didn't just dim; it shattered. A spiderweb of blackness, like broken glass, spread from the wound. He did not scream. He made a small, guttural sound of profound shock, his form flickering, unstable, as he fell to his knees.
The fighting around them stuttered to a halt. The rebel who had struck looked on in horror at what he had done.
Lahab scrambled to his friend's side, his own weapon forgotten. "Orias! No, no, no!"
Orias looked up at him, his form already beginning to dissolve at the edges. The crimson fervor was gone from his light, leaving only the soft, familiar glow Lahab remembered. "I... I couldn't let them..." he whispered, his voice fading into static. "Lahab... what have we done...?"
His form dissolved into a shower of fading, mournful sparks, leaving behind only a scorched mark on the crystal floor and a silent, screaming void in the heart of his oldest friend.
The First Note of the Dirge had been played. It was not the sound of a weapon. It was the sound of a bond, snapping.
And Heaven wept.