Gabriel shatters Heaven and Earth

And for a moment, there was a pause across the entire battlefield. Not peace or quiet, for everything around the clashing monsters remained in utter chaos—but for a moment, none of them moved. All of them seemed to remain still, focused on each other as they waited to attack. Something must have been passing between them all, or else they must have been able to see something she couldn’t, because for a moment, none of them so much as twitched—and then they acted in such perfect unison that it had to be intentional. Heaven and Earth broke, the night sky shattering like a pane of glass around the moon even as the sun seemed to burn a hole in the world like it was paper held over flame, searing a hole through which the Fires of Creation poured. Death fell from the Dragon’s jaws and poisoned everything it touched, until there was no life, no light, no color, nothing in range that wasn’t beginning to rot. The Darkness slid his key into a lock that wasn’t there and opened a path to a place that didn’t exist, such that all that was around it simply was not, leaving a bare and empty plane around him, featureless, flat, and alien. Four attacks raced for one another, each seemingly intent on breaking the world—


Interlude: Rising, Part 2