The world had gone quiet—not completely.
Fires still burned in the distance. Structures groaned as they collapsed under their own weight. The wind carried ash through the air like falling snow.
But compared to the chaos before… it felt wrong. Too still.
Kael stood at the edge of the crater, his body trembling—not from exhaustion, but from something deeper.
Shock.
Disbelief.
Guilt.
His eyes remained fixed on the destruction below—the subway entrance… the people… the child…
Gone.
All of it.
Erased in an instant.
His fingers curled into fists, nails digging into his palms as if the pain could anchor him to reality.
Then he ran with everything he had, tears welling in his eyes, his face twisted with rage.
As he ran, he looked up—and saw something different.
Not every crack in the sky was pouring down beams of light, from one of them… something was emerging.
A figure clad in golden armor, with six radiant wings, forcing its way through the fracture as if breaking into the world itself.
But before the angel could fully emerge from the crack, missiles struck it mid-descent.
BOOM!
Explosions thundered across the sky, smoke bursting outward as the impact engulfed the golden figure.
As he ran, Kael felt the shockwave from the explosion above, when he looked up more carefully, he saw the truth.
The angel had fully emerged—and it was completely unharmed, not a single injury, as if the missiles had meant nothing.
Then the angel raised its hand, a divine sword formed within its grasp, a blade of pure light taking shape out of nothing.
Then the angel swung its divine sword, releasing a massive wave of divine energy—like reality itself being cut apart.
From afar, the incoming missiles detonated mid-air, shattered before they could even reach their target.
BOOM! BOOM!~
Even the fighter jet that launched them exploded moments later, consumed by the expanding force as it vanished from the sky.
The shockwave rippled outward, and the land itself trembled, shaking as if it could not withstand the force unleashed above.
Kael could barely stand amid the shaking ground. His face was filled with terror—worse than anything he had ever known, as if he had seen something beyond the worst he could imagine.
And yet, he still ran toward his home.
When he reached his home, Kael found everything around him in ruins. Houses were destroyed, debris scattered everywhere, and the entire area had fallen into complete chaos.
Some people had broken down completely, kneeling on the ground in madness.
"This is judgment from the Gods! No one can escape judgment!" they screamed.
He ran toward his house, searching desperately for his mother. As he got closer, he saw her at the doorway—barely standing.
Her head was bleeding, and half of the house behind her had been destroyed.
"M-Mother! Mother!"
At the sound of Kael's voice, she turned to look at him—and smiled, kael reached out his hand toward her.
Then—
BOOM!
A burst of light from above struck his house directly where his mother stood.
The impact unleashed a shockwave, throwing Kael far back through the air, his outstretched hand never reached her.
He lost his arm's, the moment he reached toward his mother, the light hit—erasing everything in an instant.
Kael lay prone on the ground. Slowly, he lifted his head, what he saw shattered his hope.
"M-MOTHER! Mother!"
Tears welled in his eyes as he kept calling out for her—but there was no answer.
The silence was absolute.
Only burning ruins answered him.
"Mother~"
Kael's voice broke as he called again, weaker this time—then stopped, staring at the empty space where his home once stood.
His breathing grew uneven and ragged, as if his lungs had forgotten how to work.
The world around him blurred—burning houses, collapsing walls, distant screams—but none of it reached him anymore.
Only emptiness remained.
Kael slowly clenched his trembling hands into the dirt.
And for the first time… he didn't move.
He looked up—and saw angels raining destruction across the world, countless figures pouring out from the fractures in the sky like an endless divine invasion.
Kael's eyes burned with hatred—raw, suffocating rage and grief twisting together until they became something heavier than emotion itself.
Then his green eyes began to glow.
Not softly.
Not faintly.
But like something inside him had finally awakened.
"I will kill you all…" his voice broke through the ruins, trembling with fury. "Even if you hide… I will hunt you beyond death itself."
Kael's voice cracked through the ruins, but he didn't stop.
His breathing was uneven, his body shaking—but his hatred only grew stronger.
"You call yourselves gods…?" he spat, staring at the destruction above. "You call yourselves divine?"
His glowing eyes burned brighter.
"–I KILL YOU!"
The air around him felt heavier, as if even the world was listening.
"I kill every one of you—angels, gods, whatever you are!"
His fists clenched so tightly blood seeped from his palms, his eye's burning with angry that any moment exploded.
"I will drag you down from your heavens… and make you feel what it means to lose everything!"
Hours passed.
Everything grew silent.
Only the burning world remained—land cracking apart, lava pouring up from the depths of the earth like the world itself was bleeding.
Kael lay on the ground, barely alive.
His vision blurred, fading in and out. His breathing grew weaker with each passing second, blood slowly pooling beneath him from his severed arm.
He stared up at the crimson sky. "…T-this is my end…?" he whispered to himself, his voice barely more than a breath.
"I don't want to die like this… I need to kill those bastard gods before I die…"
His eyes slowly began to close, the world fading—sound, pain, even the burning sky above him.
Darkness crept in, and just before everything disappeared…
Something spoke.
The world around him turned black and white—the same world, yet completely still, as if time itself had stopped.
"…Not yet."
Kael no longer felt any pain in his body—or in what remained of his arm, yet he couldn't move.
A suffocating presence held him in place, something vast and incomprehensible pressing down on his very existence.
He couldn't even see it clearly, only… feel it.
The silence stretched endlessly—no wind, no fire, no sound from the collapsing world.
Only that presence remained, pressing against Kael's mind—heavy, absolute, and suffocating, as if reality itself had narrowed down to a single point watching him.
The presence shifted closer, though there was no shape to see.
"…Even now, at the edge of death… you refuse to break."
A faint pressure tightened around his consciousness, as if something was examining him from within.
"And yet… you are still not enough."
The space distorted, as reality itself warped and split open in front of Kael.
"…Tell me, mortal."
A man wearing a black shirt stepped out from the fractured space, his presence calm yet unnaturally heavy. His eyes were blurred—unclear, as if they did not belong to this world.
The air around him felt still, as though even destruction itself paused in his presence.
"Do you still desire revenge?"
Kael's vision trembled, but he forced what little strength remained in him to focus on the man.
Revenge.
That word burned through his fading consciousness.
His lips moved, barely forming a sound.
"…Yes…"
The man did not react immediately. He simply watched—quiet, unmoving, as if weighing something far beyond Kael's understanding.
Then, softly.
"Even if it costs everything you are?"
The world around them seemed to grow even quieter, as though waiting for Kael's answer to decide something irreversible.
"YES!" he screamed. "Even if I have to sell my soul."
The mysterious man smiled faintly—so subtle it was almost impossible to notice.
"Hoo~ then don't disappoint me," he said softly. "We will meet again in the future… if you're still alive."
Then he casually waved his hand.
In an instant, Kael felt his consciousness fall away, as if the world itself had been pulled from beneath him.
The last thing he saw was the mysterious man—standing silently in the fading, broken world.