Chapter 174: Dreadful Villain

Commander Raziel had served the Order for three hundred and twelve years.

He’d fought in the Reclamation of the Ashen Coast. Led the siege against the Hollow Spire. Watched younger Angels Ascend under his command, trained them, buried the ones who didn’t survive their first real campaign.

He was not a man given to fear.

Centuries of war had worn that particular emotion down to something manageable, something he could set aside and pick back up later, after the fighting was done.

He stood now at the command deck of the Herald’s Wing, their flagship among the nine vessels approaching Devil’s Maw’s upper atmosphere, watching the clouds part below them through the viewport.

Routine, mostly.

A show of force against a single man who’d overstepped his bounds, who’d killed an Angel of the Southern Cross and declared himself untouchable in the process.

The Order didn’t tolerate that kind of arrogance for long.

Raziel had been briefed on the target.

A Sultan.

Ranking first on the intergalactic bounty board.

Weakened, according to the reports, his body aged beyond his years from some unknown strain.

This should have been simple.

"Commander."

A young signals officer approached from the communication array, her expression carrying the particular stiffness of someone delivering news she didn’t fully understand yet.

"Barakiel’s ship has gone quiet."

Raziel turned.

"Quiet?"

"His signal cut out four minutes ago; there was no distress call beforehand. The array just... stopped receiving anything from his vessel."

Raziel frowned, walking towards the array himself, studying the readout.

A blank space where Barakiel’s marker should have been, the telemetry simply absent, like the ship had never existed in the first place.

"It could be equipment failure. Run a diagnostic and try reestablishing contact."

The officer nodded and got to work.

Raziel returned to the viewport.

Below, the clouds had begun curling away from something, parting in a pattern that didn’t match any weather system he’d studied in three centuries of flight.

At the center of that parting, barely visible from this distance, a single figure floated in open air.

Dark robes.

A sword catching faint light.

Raziel’s stomach tightened.

"Status on Barakiel."

He quickly called back.

"Still nothing, Angel Sir. I’m trying the backup frequency now."

He watched the figure below raise its sword.

Something about the gesture felt... theatrical, almost.

Raziel had seen plenty of posturing in his centuries of service.

This didn’t quite read the same way.

Wind began to gather around the blade.

"Sir, I’m getting something from Zaphkiel’s ship."

Raziel crossed the deck quickly.

"Patch it through."

Static crackled over the array, and then a strained voice, cutting in and out:

"—can’t— something’s wrong, the hull’s reading— wait, what’s that light—"

The transmission cut off.

There was no static this time.

Immediate silence; it came from a connection ending.

"Zaphkiel?"

Raziel said into the array, his voice tighter now than he wanted it to be.

"Zaphkiel, report."

"..."

"..."

"..."

Nothing.

The signals officer’s hands had started trembling slightly over her console, though she kept working, trying every backup channel available to her.

"Sir, Barakiel’s marker just... I don’t understand, it’s not reappearing, and now Zaphkiel’s signal is gone too, both at the same—"

"Run the diagnostic again."

Raziel repeated.

"I already did, twice, everything on our end reads normal, it’s their ships that—"

Below, the sky went white.

It was a fire, but not fire in any conventional sense Raziel’s experience could categorize.

It was white, total and absolute, spreading outward from the floating figure in every direction at once, swallowing cloud and open air with equal indifference.

The viewport’s automatic dimming filters engaged a half-second too late, and Raziel conjured a massive shield against the glare anyway, squinting through at a brightness that seemed to have nothing his mind could properly process as a single coherent attack.

He felt a most incredible pressure crash against his shield; it was trying to devour the ship, yet thanks to Raziel’s timely interference, the ship’s own shields had enough time to activate, saving everyone inside from whatever that light was.

But well, others weren’t so lucky.

"Camael’s signal just dropped!"

The officer’s voice cracked at the edges.

"Uriel’s too, I don’t—Sir, I’m reading four markers gone in the last thirty seconds; this isn’t equipment failure, this can’t be—"

Raziel stared at the array.

Four markers. Four ships. Barakiel, Zaphkiel, Camael, Uriel, each one simply absent now, their telemetry blank, their life signals flatlined without any corresponding record of what had actually killed them.

Angel or not, Raziel couldn’t face this figure alone.

"Pull back."

Even now, his words came out steady, no doubt thanks to years of command discipline.

"Pull back now, full retreat, all remaining vessels—"

"Sir, Michael and Sariel just went dark too. They tried to retreat and were gone in an instant!"

Raziel’s hand closed hard around the edge of the console.

Six.

Six Angels gone, in under two minutes, against a single man who was supposedly weakened, diminished, and nothing more than an aging ruler clinging to past glory.

Through the viewport, the white light began to fade, retreating back into the cracks it had first emerged from, and Raziel caught sight of the figure again, still floating there, sword lowered now, utterly untouched by whatever devastation had just unfolded around him.

’What are you?’

The question surfaced unbidden, and Raziel found he had no answer ready, nothing from three hundred years of experience that adequately explained what he’d just witnessed.

Two markers remained on the array beside his own.

Raziel’s ship was the last to hold formation.

"Angel Sir, what do we do?"

The signals officer’s voice had steadied somewhat, though her hands still trembled over the console.

Raziel appreciated the effort. Discipline under pressure counted for something, even now, with six of their comrades reduced to empty space on a readout.

He looked through the viewport.

The Sultan hovered exactly where he’d been, patient in a way that unsettled Raziel more than aggression would have.

Men who rushed into battle, who screamed and postured and overextended themselves, those men could be predicted. Countered. Killed, eventually, given enough time and enough bodies thrown at the problem.

This man simply waited.

Like the outcome had already been decided, and he was only being polite about letting everyone else catch up to that fact.

"Hail the remaining vessels... coordinate a joint strike. We hit him together, full Rukh output, everything we have."

"Sir, if six Angels working independently couldn’t—"

"They weren’t working together."

Raziel snapped.

"They scattered; we won’t make that mistake."

The officer nodded and relayed the order.

Through the array, Raziel heard the other two commanders acknowledge, their voices carrying the same strained control he was fighting to maintain in his own.

"On my mark. Three. Two—"

The world went white again.

It was only then Raziel knew who this man was.

A most dreadful villain.