Chapter 166: Order’s Last Stand

“You dare compare me to a mere Pillar?” Azrael’s voice shook the heavens. Thunder rolled without clouds. “I am the FIRST! The GREATEST!”

Corruption exploded from her body in torrents. Black energy twisted reality around her, making the air scream. Angels below covered their ears as the sound pierced through everything.

Grace watched Azrael’s form warp. Extra wings sprouted from her back with wet tearing sounds. Her fingers elongated into foot-long claws. Her perfect face split down the middle, revealing rows upon rows of crystalline teeth.

[She’s finally losing it. All that control, all that order… Gone.]

“I’ll show you what millennia of power looks like!” Azrael raised both hands above her head.

Every bit of corruption she’d accumulated over centuries condensed between her palms. The sphere started small, then grew rapidly. Building-sized. Then larger. The orb of pure Sin energy became darker than the void between stars, pulling light into itself.

Grace’s corrupted body trembled. She couldn’t take much more. Her wings were charcoal black now, not a single white feather remaining. Purple veins pulsed under her skin like living tattoos. The whispers in her head had become screams demanding violence.

[Heh, what’s one more bit of pain after all this?]

Grace smirked and flew up to meet Azrael’s attack head-on.

“GRACE, NO!” Celestia’s voice echoed from below. She tried to fly after Grace but her broken wing sent her tumbling. “DON’T DO THIS!”

But Grace had already made her choice. This was a gamble, betting everything on one simple assumption.

The gamble that after Azrael is done, there would still be a “Grace” left to fix things.

And, in the face of such an uncertain outcome… Grace smiled.

[Bravery,] she looked down at herself, clenching her hand into a fist.

“You want to destroy me?” Grace spread her arms wide, making herself the biggest target possible. “Then do it! Give me everything you’ve got!”

Azrael’s eyes – all six of them now, arranged in a circle around her split face – widened.

“You’re insane.”

“Yeah, probably.” Grace activated every defensive skill she had. Her gauntlets glowed. Her circlet hummed. Even her broken armguard tried to reform. “But I’m also right. I will do this. For everyone. For you, too.”

[Compassion.]

“SHUT UP!”

Azrael fired.

The beam of pure corruption was wider than Grace was tall. It hit her like a mountain falling from orbit. Every bone in her body creaked from the impact. She flew backward, wings struggling against the torrent of energy.

She looked down. Many of the angels who’d been fighting stopped. Grace’s friends, Diana, Petriel, Venus, Mara, Seraph, Celestia, maybe even Alia and Zephyr if they weren’t off hiding someplace, were staring up with awe and concern.

[Love.] She understood, then. [This is what it means to be an angel.]

Then Grace did something monumentally stupid. She stopped resisting and started pulling.

[Come on. Give it to me. All of it.]

She opened herself completely, drawing the corruption into her body. It flooded every cell like liquid fire. Every thought became pain. Every breath burned. Her golden aura didn’t just vanish – it inverted, becoming a void that consumed light. Her skin turned black as midnight. Her eyes became empty pits.

Grace screamed. This wasn’t pain anymore – it was complete obliteration of self.

[More. MORE!]

She kept pulling. Azrael’s attack should have lasted seconds. It probably did. But, it felt like a minute. Two minutes. Three. Five.

“What are you doing?” Azrael’s voice cracked with strain. Her hands shook. “Stop it! STOP!”

But Grace couldn’t stop. The corruption had momentum now. It flowed from Azrael whether she wanted it or not, drawn to Grace like water to a drain.

Grace’s corrupted mind raged against her. It showed her visions of what she could become. A Primal beyond Primals. A goddess of destruction who could remake reality with a thought. She saw herself tearing apart the Dominion stone by stone. Saw Diana’s face as Grace’s claws found her throat. Saw Celestia begging for mercy, like Grace knew what that meant.

[Destroy them all. Start with Azrael. Rip her apart. Then the angels. Then the world. Then—]

The corruption pushed harder. It showed her more. Eternia on her knees, apologizing for creating Grace as a tool. The Pillars bowing before their new master. Every angel in existence serving her corrupted will.

[You could rule everything. Shape it all. Make them pay for using you.]

“… AAAAAAAH!” Grace screamed.

Finally, once it felt like Azrael had no more Sin energy left to give, Grace did it. Grace activated Aura Release.

But instead of firing at Azrael, she aimed straight up at the empty sky.

[I haven’t had to kill a Pillar yet. I won’t start now!]

She compressed every bit of corruption she’d absorbed. Thousands of years of Sin energy, all of Azrael’s hatred and abandonment and need for control, condensed into a single point between her palms. The orb that formed wasn’t black anymore. It had gone beyond color, beyond light. It simply consumed everything around it, warping space itself.

“What are you—” Azrael stared, her monstrous form beginning to shrink.

Grace fired.

The beam of corruption shot into the sky like an inverse lightning bolt. It punched through clouds that evaporated instantly. Through the atmosphere. Into the void beyond. The explosion that followed lit up half of Linaria in purple-black light. For a moment, night became day again.

Grace collapsed. Every muscle felt like water. Her body felt hollow, completely drained. The corruption was gone – all of it. Not a trace remained.

She looked up at Azrael through blurry vision. The Veil leader had fallen too, crashing into a floating piece of rubble. Her monstrous form was reverting to her original shape. Extra wings dissolved. Claws shortened back to fingers. Her face sealed itself, becoming beautiful again. Silver hair spread around her like spilled mercury. Her black eyes lightened to their original ice-blue.

“No…” Azrael tried to stand. Her legs gave out immediately. “My power… it’s all gone…”

Grace almost smiled.

But, it wasn’t over. She had one more card to play.

Grace stumbled forward. Each step felt like climbing a mountain. Her legs were jelly. She raised a hand, noticing that it was covered in black like she was wearing metal gauntlets. Azrael had tears coming out of her eyes as she saw Grace approach.

“Don’t touch me.” Azrael tried to crawl away, hands scrabbling on stone. “Stay back!”

Grace caught her shoulder.

“Too…” Grace’s voice had an echo now. “Bad.”

Grace placed a hand on Azrael’s shoulder.

She activated Aura Cleanse, pouring what little divine energy she had left into the skill. But this time, instead of pulling corruption out, she looked deeper. Into the very core of what made Azrael who she was.

[Show me everything.]

The visions hit like a tidal wave, each one crystal clear.

—

Azrael’s creation. She opened her eyes for the first time, staring up at Eternia’s smiling face. The goddess looked exactly like her, but golden where she was silver.

“Hello, beautiful.” Eternia touched her cheek with fingers that sparked divinity. “My my~ I think I’ve outdone myself. I’m going to call you Azrael. You’re going to help me keep everything in order.”

—

The early days rushed by. Azrael organizing the newly created angels into hierarchies. Establishing systems for prayer collection. Creating the rotation schedules for who watched which part of Linaria. Everything had its place. Everything made sense.

“You’re amazing.” Eternia kissed her under starlight that Azrael had arranged into perfect constellations. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

—

Centuries of passion and shared creation. Azrael managed the world while Eternia played in it. They were perfect together – chaos and order in harmony.

Then the changes started. Eternia growing distant. Spending days away without explanation. Creating the Pillars in secret, hiding them from Azrael.

—

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Azrael stood in their shared chambers, tears streaming down perfect cheeks. “I could have helped!”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Eternia turned away, unable to meet her eyes. “You’re too… rigid.”

—

The discovery of demons came next. Azrael found the connection between the Pillars and corruption through careful research. Her desperate attempts to find a solution.

“We can use this!” Azrael showed Eternia her findings, scrolls covered in calculations. “Turn their own power against them! Sin energy to fight Sin energy!”

“No.” Eternia’s face went cold. “That’s not our way.”

“Then what is our way? Letting them multiply? Letting them destroy everything we built?”

—

Centuries of loneliness followed. Using Sin energy just to feel something other than abandonment. Watching corruption spread while she grew stronger and more bitter.

“I’ll show her.” Azrael whispered to herself in the dark spaces between realms. “I’ll fix everything. Create perfect order. Then, I’ll come back. She’ll forgive me. And, everything will be as it should be.”

But, there was no Eternia to come back to.

—

When the last vision faded, Grace’s eyes opened and she looked around.

She wasn’t in the Dominion anymore. No, instead, she was in that same place from her dreams. With a white table and a white-haired, golden-eyed lady sitting there with a little smirk on her face. Just like it all started.

“Well,” Eternia said, gesturing for Grace to come closer. “You’ve done it. And, look at you, not even a scratch!”

Grace looked down at herself. Her arms were black. Her wings were still black. Her aura was still corrupted.

She looked back at Eternia and laughed. More like a giggle, actually.

“Yeah,” she collapsed to her knees, exhausted. “Not a scratch.”

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