Ignaras stood in the sky.
Not floating — standing.
His feet on compressed air.
He drew a deep breath — so deep that his broken ribs shifted beneath the red skin.
“Come…”
His voice was calm.
“…it’s not over yet. I am Ignaras, one of the princes of Hell.”
The fourth angel — stepped forward.
No longer that calm, inviting angel, no longer that voice of whisper and roar.
Now his voice was sharp.
Like a blade.
“Then let’s get serious.”
Ignaras tilted his head.
“Serious?”
A brief smile.
Not from humor — from truth.
“You are not on my level. Let’s be honest — both you and I are limited. Even you and I are not in our original bodies. You were forced to construct temporary bodies to enter this world. Though they won’t last much longer.”
The angels didn’t answer.
There was no need.
They attacked together — not like before, four sides, simultaneously.
This time like hunters who have wounded their prey many times and now want to finish it.
One from above, one from below, two from both sides.
But Ignaras was no mortal.
He dodged.
Not left, not right — backward.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Each step threw him tens of meters away.
The angels’ blows struck the air — the place where he had been a moment ago.
The place where he no longer was.
And the angels — at the speed of light — spread out.
Put distance between them.
To the four corners of the sky.
Like four nails meant to hold up a ceiling.
They raised their hands toward the sky.
They pulled.
As if pulling something down from above.
And the sky — answered.
There were no clouds left.
No smoke left.
Only the sky — that dark, starless sky — but now clouds were born from nothing.
From between space.
From cracks that hadn’t yet healed.
Clouds of black and white and gray, thicker than ordinary clouds — thicker than smoke, thicker than vapor.
Clouds whose weight could be felt on the shoulders.
They coiled together.
Around each other.
At the center of this coiling, an eye opened — an eye that had no light, only blackness.
But its blackness was different.
This blackness wasn’t the blackness of Ignaras, which was void and hollow.
This blackness was like thunder — before the lightning, before the sound, before you knew what had happened to you.
And thunder and lightning came.
Not from the clouds — from that very eye.
Lightning of white and violet and gold, so bright that if you had eyes, you would go blind.
The sound came later — a roar that shook the earth.
And from amidst all that light and sound and fire — from the center of that eye that had opened — four swords came.
Not like the previous swords.
Those had been made of cold golden light — these were made of star.
You could see it.
In the blade, when you looked, there was depth.
A depth full of near and distant lights, full of clouds being born, full of explosions happening millions of light-years away.
The blade was made of the same substance the night sky is made of — but compressed.
Forged.
Transformed into a thin line of mass and light and heat.
And they were fiery.
Not ordinary fire — the fire of stars.
Fire that, if it touched your skin, you wouldn’t burn — you would evaporate.
Fire that was neither hot nor cold — it simply was present.
The four angels took the swords.
Each one, one.
Their hands — in contact with the hilts of the swords.
Ignaras looked.
At the swords.
At the angels.
At the sky that was no longer a sky — it was a portal to something whose name he didn’t know.
And he breathed.
He placed his foot on the air.
But this time — the air didn’t give way.
There was something beneath his foot.
Something that bent space.
Something that had weight — weight that, up there, in the void, shouldn’t have been felt.
But Ignaras felt it.
Beneath Ignaras’s feet.
It didn’t crack — it bent.
Like a mattress with a weight sitting on it.
But Ignaras stood on that curvature, and that curvature held him.
He brought his hand forward.
To his chest.
There — beneath the red skin, beneath the cracked bones, beneath that very chain coiled around his heart — something had gathered.
Darkness.
A darkness that was once all his power.
A darkness that was now just a point.
Small.
Compressed.
But still alive.
“My supernatural power…”
His voice was calm.
Quieter than a whisper.
But every word echoed in the sky, among the thunder and lightning.
“…is depleted because of this mortal body.”
A brief pause.
An even briefer smile.
“But I still have power.”
He clenched his fist.
The darkness on his chest — that small, compressed point — stirred.
“…to destroy you.”
And the darkness grew.
Not an explosion.
Not an eruption.
Like breathing.
As if the darkness had been holding its breath until now.
It burst from Ignaras’s chest.
From beneath the red skin, from between the broken bones, from the very place where the chain still coiled.
It was black — but not ordinary blackness.
A blackness that filled everywhere.
The sky — that was.
Was no more.
The earth — that was scorched.
Was no more.
The stars — that dripped from the swords.
Were no more.
Only darkness.
You couldn’t hold your hand before your eyes — because you had no hand.
You couldn’t blink — because there were no eyelids.
Only darkness was there, and you.
And you didn’t know if you still existed or not.
Three angels found themselves in another space.
Not sky, not earth, not Heaven, not Hell.
The void.
They still had the star-swords in their hands — but they held no light.
The stars inside the blades had gone out.
Not that they gave no light — that there was nowhere for it to shine.
Everything was dark.
Everything was silent.
Everything was empty.
Ignaras was before them — but not like before.
No longer the red body and twisted horns and black wings.
He was a shadow.
A shadow in his own shape.
A shadow the eye couldn’t focus on because it devoured itself.
And behind him —
A mouth.
Not the mouth of a being.
Not the mouth of an animal.
Not the mouth of anything known.
The mouth of the thing itself.
So vast it filled the horizon — but there was no horizon here.
So close you could feel its breaths — but it had no breath.
So dark that its blackness was blacker than the blackness of the void.
Hundreds of billions of teeth.
Not orderly rows — a forest of teeth.
Long, short, thin, thick, sharp-tipped, broad, some broken, some still growing.
So dense you couldn’t tell where the teeth ended and the wall began.
Some came down from the ceiling, some rose up from the ground — but here there was no ceiling and ground.
And between the teeth — a tongue.
A tongue that had emerged from the back of the mouth.
Fleshy.
Burned.
The tongue moved.
Slowly.
Like a snake.
Like something scenting prey.
And the back of the mouth — nothing.
The void.
A void that watched.
A void that had eyes — but had no eyes.
A void that saw you, even if you didn’t want to be seen.
The third angel — the angel whose face the fire had burned, whose chest armor was split in two, who gripped the star-sword tightly —
And said: “This place… is connected to the other world.”
His gaze fixed on the void.
“The Void World. The place where void beings live.”
The second angel — the angel still healthier than the rest, who held his sword with both hands — turned to the first.
His voice wasn’t a question — it was uncertainty:
“How can Ignaras connect to the Void World?”
The third angel answered — still looking at the void, still looking at that vast mouth whose teeth were fading into the horizonless horizon:
“He has made a contract. Some void beings have awareness, though not much, and they have made a pact with Arad.”
Silence in the void —
Ignaras — that shapeless shadow — stepped forward.
He was no longer tired.
He was no longer breathing.
There was no need for breath here.
Here there was only will.
And his will was still intact.
“Enough.”
His voice didn’t come from a mouth — from everywhere in his shadow.
Short.
Impatient.
“I don’t have the patience for you to give foolish explanations that I already know about.”
The first angel — the tallest, whose armor bore the most vivid cracks, who held his sword like a staff, not a weapon — spoke.
His voice was calm.
Calmer than the rest.
As if he had news Ignaras didn’t want to hear.
“Ignaras… did you think you could destroy us?”
Ignaras didn’t answer.
He only watched.
With those void eyes that now, in this void, had grown fuller.
The first angel continued:
“Even if we are destroyed, we are reborn inside Heaven. With the same essence. With the same memories. With the same existence. Our non-being is impossible. If we are destroyed, we return. It doesn’t matter if our entire root is erased — we still return.”
He placed his hand on his chest — on his light armor.
Beneath the armor, something pulsed.
Not a heart — law.
A law no one could break.
“As long as our root is connected to Heaven… we do not die.”
Ignaras vanished.
In the blink of an eye — he was a shadow.
In the blink of an eye — he was not.
He didn’t flee, didn’t dissolve, didn’t go anywhere.
He simply decided not to be.
And he wasn’t.
That vast mouth — the mouth of the thing itself — drew closer.
Not that the mouth moved, not that space shrank.
It simply drew closer.
Its heaviness advanced.
Its presence advanced.
Hundreds of billions of teeth, that endless forest, were now so close the angels could see the thin lines of their cracks.
The second angel raised his sword — the stars within it dark, but his hand firm.
He turned to the first.
His voice was calm:
“Shall we fight?”
The first angel lowered his sword.
He had withdrawn from battle.
Not surrender — calculation.
“There’s no need.”
His gaze went to the mouth.
To that void that watched from the back of the mouth.
To the things living in that void.
“We must return to Heaven.”
And the mouth closed.
Not with a latch.
With the tongue.
The burned, cracked tongue, slowly — as if unhurried — coiled around the three angels.
Tight.
Did the third angel scream?
Perhaps.
But his voice was lost in the void.
Between the teeth.
At the bottom of that well with no end.
And then — nothing.
The mouth closed.
The teeth met — without sound.
Without impact.
Without a trace.
The angels were no more.
Only the void remained.
And the mouth that slowly, slowly faded — like a memory you don’t want to recall, but the more you try to forget it, the deeper it settles into your bones.
To be continued…