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They met the daemons head-on, their celestial blades singing as they severed limbs and cut through their blackened forms.

However, for every Sullied that fell, two more took its place.

It was carnage.

A maelstrom of divine light and tainted darkness.

A Saatifa warrior, a towering deity with obsidian skin streaked in glowing gold sigils, plunged his spear through the heart of a shrieking daemon. Impaling it against the marble floor.

But before he could pull free, a second Sullied lunged at him from behind, its jaws stretching unnaturally, fangs dripping with corrupted ichor.

A heartbeat later, the god disappeared.

A deafening crack split the air, his body turning to pure energy, snuffed out.

Ki’Remi stood rigid, hands on his hips, jaw clenched so tight his molars ached.

The Saatifa warriors fought with precision, their weapons flashing with raw power.

The Sullied battled with madness, their attacks wild but relentless, as if they had nothing to lose because they didn’t. This was a suicide battle, pandemonium, for the sake of chaos.

Yet, for all their divine might, Ki’Remi noted that the celestial beings struggled.

He’d seen war, witnessed battlefields tear apart.

In the Seventh Heaven, the gods were no different. They fell, bled gold dust motes, and died.

A god with silver eyes and emerald skin crumbled beneath a dozen daemon claws, his celestial form flickering, splintering like glass, his essence sucked into the void.

Another’s head fell off, decapitated, his body vanishing before it even hit the ground.

A female warrior, sword glowing with the heat of the stars, got dragged screaming into the abyss, her light swallowed whole by the hungry dark.

Ki’Remi exhaled, his arms crossed over his broad chest, his face an unreadable mask.

‘They are not gods,’ he declared.

Issa, standing beside him, her expression hard, tilted her head.

A single silver curl tumbled across her cheek as she turned to him.

‘Sssh,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t tell them that.’

He swiveled to her with an arched brow.

She shrugged. ‘They don’t like being made aware that although they are immortal, they still fall short of utter glory.’

The Rider studied the so-called eternals as they battled for their lives, his mind shifting, recalculating, reassessing everything he now knew.

These weren’t beings of infinite wisdom and mercy. They were just creatures of immense ancient power who had the capacity to die and lose in battle just as they did to triumph.

His meta-vision took it all in, his neural node, with Mirage’s aid, assessing weak points and understanding their combat approach.

Computing, crunching, and readying himself for what was to come.

29

Fate’s Cunning