The wind outside the ruined temple turned bitter.
Not cold — but sharp, like knives being whispered into the ears of gods. The stars above flickered unnaturally, constellations blinking out for the first time in ten thousand years. Somewhere between night and nightmare, something had crossed over.
Kaelari felt it first.
She staggered as her pupils dilated unnaturally. "Something just stepped into our world… through a breach in the sky."
Indra didn't speak. He was already staring westward — beyond the peaks, beyond the dunes, toward the dying light of dusk. Something was coming. Something sent.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
UNRECOGNIZED ENTITY DETECTED
Codename: Eli-Azael — The Severed Seraph
Classification: Celestial-Class Aberrant
Status: Hunting Target [Indra]
Warning: This being operates outside conventional time-flow. Limited prediction available.
Indra's breath was steady. "They've sent a hunter."
Kaelari's jaw clenched. "From the West?"
He nodded. "A message. Not of diplomacy. Of dominion."
In the Western Skies
The clouds over the Ivory Sanctums of the Twelve Noble Clans parted like silk torn by fate. From the highest altar — one carved into a floating mountain of obsidian and crystal — a cloaked figure watched with golden, sightless eyes.
Lord Vareth of House Maltherion spoke, his voice layered in echo:
"Let the Severed One fly. If the seventh seal breaks, we strike. Let Indra taste the mercy of what we cast out."
Across the council chamber, the heads of the Twelve Clans nodded. For the first time in a thousand years, the West moved as one.
Somewhere in the Cradle of Ruins
The wind stopped.
Kaelari grabbed Indra's hand. "He's here."
A single feather drifted down — black as midnight, edges laced in silvery flame. It hissed against the ground.
Then it began to rain in reverse — droplets flying upward into the sky as if time itself recoiled from what approached.
From the fractured dusk, he walked.
Tall. Barefoot. Wings severed at the shoulders, but with the air of a fallen god. His skin was marked with runes that bled light. His eyes were hollow. His voice, when it came, was beautiful and broken:
"Indra. The name you stole from myth. be unmade."
Indra stepped forward. "I stole nothing. I remembered it."
Eli-Azael tilted his head. "Then you remember what you did… before this life."
Indra felt the flash — a vision of flames, betrayal, and a storm that drowned a continent.
The hunter raised his hand — and the air warped. Kaelari screamed as space bent into a spiral and the earth itself lifted. Lightning forked downward — not from the heavens, but from the cracks in reality.
[SYSTEM UPDATE]
Celestial Threat: ENGAGED
Activate: Aindra-Jñāna
Tactical Timeflow Access: Enabled
Weakness Detected: Fragmented Memory Core in Target
Indra closed his eyes. He saw futures — hundreds of outcomes. Death. Escape. Victory. Madness.
He chose now.
With a shout, he summoned Vajra Sutra — the ancient thunderbolt laced in Rig Vedic light. The blast collided with Eli-Azael midair, sending ripples of thunder across the land. Trees were flattened. The mountain's edge crumbled.
And yet…
The Seraph stepped from the dust — wounded, yes. But smiling.
"Ah. That storm… yes. I remember it now.
So it was you."
Kaelari launched two spears of leyfire into his chest. They evaporated before touching him.
Indra whispered, "Kaelari. Go."
"I'm not leaving you—"
"You're not. You're just running until I call you back."
She hesitated — then vanished in a blink, activated by a glyph Indra inscribed into her shoulder days ago. A last resort.
Alone, Indra turned back to his pursuer.
"Let's see if your West can erase a storm it never understood."
Far above, in a plane beyond sight
A council of Celestials watched.
"She will find him," one whispered.
"Or he will awaken all 99 seals," another hissed.
And a third, ancient and hooded, simply said:
"Either way, the war resumes."