Hearing Amenadiel speak of the gate and the war, Angela understood immediately what he meant.
The Border Gate of Hell.
The ancient front line.
Hell was the natural, eternal enemy of the Angelic Host.
Whether it was the Silver City or the Ten Realms, from the moment angels and demons first became aware of one another, they had existed as fire and water, mutually incompatible.
The war had never truly begun.
It had simply always been.
In that sense, it was not so different from Asgard's ancient enmity with the Frost Giants or the Dark Elves.
Angela felt a dull ache form in her chest.
After the Ten Realms were exiled, life had grown harsher. Without the nourishment and balance provided by the World Tree, survival became a matter of careful rationing.
Daily life could be maintained, but critical resources diminished year by year. What had once been abundant became precious.
What had once been renewable became finite.
Eventually, the Angel Race had no choice but to seek aid from their own kind, turning to the Silver City.
Disagreements between kin could be tolerated. Political friction was survivable. But extinction was not.
Yet aid was not something that fell from the heavens freely.
Resources had a cost.
The treasures the Queen of Angels once obtained from Odin could not sustain an entire race for thousands of years.
When material wealth was exhausted, only one currency remained.
Lives.
Wherever angelic forces were dispatched, it was inevitably to the border gates, those places where Hell pressed most fiercely against reality.
War was cruel.
The Angel Race had never been numerous, and compared to the boundless hordes of Hell, their numbers were tragically small.
And yet, no race survived such a war without reason.
Angels were beings of light-aspected energy. Their physical forms were manifestations of condensed power, and individually, they far surpassed the demonic foot soldiers of Hell.
When angels gathered in great numbers, their resonance amplified.
By expending their own strength, they could draw upon the pure light of the universe itself.
It was a devastating force.
If ordinary soldiers fought one by one, then angels fought as living conduits, capable of unleashing overwhelming, wide-area destruction with a single coordinated strike.
More importantly, angels did not fear injury.
As long as they could return home and immerse themselves in the sacred spring waters, most damage could be undone.
But after the Queen of Angels was exiled from the Ten Realms, even those springs were affected.
The rare materials required to sustain them became increasingly scarce.
What angels truly feared was not physical harm… but soul corrosion.
Dark energy did not merely wound the body. It clung to the essence. If an angel became entangled in it for too long, unable to purify themselves or return home, the corruption would take root.
That was how angels truly fell.
Hell was not filled with fallen angels solely because of Lucifer's rebellion. He was simply the brightest and most conspicuous among them… the star that drew all attention.
Earth, too, was no coincidence.
It was called the Atrium for a reason.
In ancient times, Earth's population was small. Human thought was simple. Even when demons tempted mortals, the damage was limited, localized.
Nothing truly catastrophic followed.
But as Earth's population exploded, along with culture, desire, belief, and contradiction, the number of fallen souls increased dramatically.
Hell's influence on Earth grew stronger with each passing age.
Now, that influence was beginning to surge. Especially at the Border Gate of Hell.
The assaults were becoming more frequent.
Amenadiel was reaching his limit. He could no longer shoulder this burden alone.
And so, communication with the Ten Realms had become inevitable.
There was no massive transmission device like the Bifrost connecting the Ten Realms to Amenadiel's domain.
If a large-scale war were to break out, Amenadiel would be unable to withstand it.
Because of this, Amenadiel reached an agreement with the Ten Realms.
He would send fewer than one soldier, an existence powerful enough to overcome thousands of years of resource scarcity and survive the harsh, desolate backcountry.
This being's task was to endure the miserable conditions, restore stability, and eventually return life to a normal state.
Meanwhile, the Ten Realms themselves were forcibly drawn back and merged into one.
Angela played a crucial role in completing this fusion, for only Odin possessed the power to pull the Ten Realms together.
Without Angela, the merger could not have been achieved.
Amenadiel revealed everything he knew to Angela, laying bare the truth of the agreement and the fate of the realms.
When he finished, he fell silent, waiting to see how Angela would respond.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream