The camp burned behind them.
Golden light and black flame had clashed for less than a minute—yet the palisades were gone, the cages twisted into slag, the ground split with fissures that still smoked. Soldiers who had not fled lay unconscious or groaning, their armor scorched but not consumed. Inquisitors knelt in stunned silence, staring at the place where their saint had stood transformed.
Lucifer—still wearing Lucian's body like a perfectly tailored garment—had not pressed the attack.
After the initial collision of powers, he had simply folded his wings once more. The golden radiance dimmed to a soft glow around him. He looked at Elias with something almost like disappointment.
"You refuse," he said quietly. "Very well."
He turned to the kneeling inquisitors.
"Take the boy-saint back to Sanctum," he commanded through Lucian's gentle voice. "He is weary. He requires rest."
Then—without another word—he walked away through the smoke, wings vanishing entirely, leaving only a silver-haired teenager who stumbled once before steadying himself. Two surviving inquisitors rushed forward to support him, reverent and terrified.
Elias watched them go.
The black flames around him guttered out.
Elara appeared at his side, water still dripping from her clenched fists. "We let him walk away?"
"We couldn't stop him," Elias said. His voice sounded hollow even to himself. "Not without killing Lucian."
Behemoth rumbled low. "The child is the cage. Break the child, break the angel."
Liora stepped out of shadow, eyes gleaming. "Or keep the child. Use him. Turn the saint against his own god."
Elias shook his head sharply. "No."
The four of them retreated into the night, leaving the ruined camp and its stunned survivors behind.
They made camp at first light in a shallow ravine hidden by overhanging willows. No fire. No conversation for a long time.
Finally Elias spoke.
"He offered a truce. Help him destroy the heavens, and he spares the world."
Elara snorted. "And we believe the Light-Bearer why?"
"Because he's desperate," Elias answered. "Abaddon escaping wasn't part of his plan. He imprisoned the primordials to keep order. Now the order's cracking."
Behemoth sat like a boulder, arms folded. "He fears the Entity more than he fears us."
Liora tilted her head. "Or he wants us to help him reach it. Tear open the gates. Find whoever wrote the banishment. And then—what? Rule what's left?"
Elias rubbed his face. "He said the vessels would serve as keys."
Silence again.
Elara looked at him. "You're thinking about it."
"I'm thinking we're running out of choices," Elias admitted. "The purge is spreading. Villages are burning. If we keep fighting the Church head-on, we'll free some, but thousands more will die before we reach Sanctum."
Liora leaned forward, shadows curling around her fingers like curious pets. "So we take his deal? March into the golden city arm-in-arm with the false god?"
"No," Elias said. "We pretend to. We get inside. We get close. Then we turn on him."
Elara's eyes narrowed. "Dangerous."
"Everything is dangerous now."
Behemoth grunted. "Stone does not bend. But stone can wait."
Liora smiled slowly. "I like deception. It's honest work."
Elias looked at each of them—Elara's guarded caution, Behemoth's immovable resolve, Liora's eager cunning.
"We don't have to decide tonight," he said. "But we need to move. The Church will regroup. They'll send more than soldiers next time."
They broke camp at dusk.
As they walked, the fractured alliance showed its first real cracks.
Elara walked ahead, scouting, but she glanced back too often—watching Elias like she expected Abaddon to speak through him at any moment.
Behemoth said little, but when he did, his words carried weight. "The angel lies. Always has. If we walk with him, we walk into his cage."
Liora, by contrast, seemed almost excited. "Think of the theater. The saint welcoming the heretics. The crowd watching. The moment we drop the mask—"
She snapped her fingers. Shadows flared and died.
Elias listened to them all. But inside his head, Abaddon remained unnaturally quiet.
Until deep in the night, when the others slept and Elias sat watch beneath a thorn tree.
You hesitate, the demon murmured.
"I don't trust him," Elias whispered back.
Nor should you. But you do not need to trust him. You need only to reach him.
And when we do?
We end him. We end the heavens. We end everything.
Elias looked up at the stars—cold, distant, indifferent.
"And the world?"
What world? Abaddon answered softly. There is only the lie they call creation. And lies deserve to burn.
Elias closed his eyes.
He did not answer.
But the question lingered between them—unresolved, heavy, dangerous.
Behind them, in Sanctum, a silver-haired boy sat alone in a high tower room. Guards stood outside the door. Priests prayed in the corridor.
Lucian stared at his own hands—small, unscarred, trembling slightly.
He whispered one word into the dark.
"Please."
Whether he spoke to Elias, to Abaddon, to the Entity, or to himself, no one could say.
But the word hung in the air like smoke.
And somewhere far beyond the stars, an indifferent eye watched.
And waited.
End of Chapter 16