Chapter 177 The Weight of the Morningstar
The sky over the Dreaming didn't just darken; it bruised, turning a sickly shade of violet and charcoal. The once-serene emerald mists, the very breath of the realm, were shredded by the friction of colliding divine wills, leaving the horizon looking like a jagged, open wound weeping shadow.
Dorcas, the Queen of Nature, didn't simply fly. She erupted. Her wings a massive, terrifying span of iridescent feathers intertwined with living, thorn-choked briars beat against the air with the rhythmic boom of a collapsing forest.
She blurred, a streak of predatory green and earthen brown, her lightning-sword whistling a high, shrill note as it cut a path toward the soft pulse of Michael’s throat. Michael caught the blow on the flat of his blade, the metal-on-metal scream sending a physical shockwave through the atmosphere. For miles, the ancient stained glass of the palace windows disintegrated into glittering dust. They spiraled upward, a chaotic knot of feathers, thorns, and steel, locked in a vertical dance of death that tore the clouds to ribbons.
Dream saw his opening. He took to the air, his own tattered wings casting a long, flickering shadow over the smoldering ruins below. He plunged his hands into the very fabric of the air, gathering the raw, unrefined essence of the realm into his palms. The light there didn't glow; it curdled, turning into a sickly, concentrated jade that hummed with the weight of a thousand nightmares. He hurled it a spear of pure, crystallized thought aimed with lethal intent at the small of Michael’s back.
Michael didn't even turn his head. He simply extended his left hand, fingers splaying wide as if catching a breeze. A jagged, blinding branch of white lightning arched from his skin, snapping Dream’s spell out of existence mid-air. The backdraft was a physical wall of heat and sound. It hit Dream like a titan’s fist, punching the air from his lungs and throwing him backward through the sky. He tumbled, a mess of tangled limbs and broken feathers, until he slammed into the marble dais with a wet thud. The sound of his ribs snapping under the impact was sickeningly clear in the sudden, ringing silence that followed. He rolled onto his side, a dark, thick crimson coughing from his lips to stain the pristine white stone beneath him.
High above, Michael ceased his ascent, hovering with a predatory grace as he turned his focus back to Dorcas. His smirk wasn't a smile; it was a jagged line of pure malice etched into his face.
"I never wanted to mar that face, sister," he growled, the sheer volume of his voice vibrating in the very oxygen she tried to breathe. "But you’ve always had a pernicious habit of standing exactly where you don't belong."
Michael gripped the hilt of his blade with both hands, his knuckles popping with the sound of dry wood snapping. A low, guttural roar started deep in his chest, vibrating through the floorboards before it even reached his throat.
It built in intensity until the very atmosphere began to scream, the air molecules tearing under the pressure. Lightning didn't just spark from his fingertips; it began to leak like liquid fire from his eyes and his mouth, seeping from the very pores of his skin until he was a silhouette of blinding, jagged white.
With a violent, convulsive thrust of his shoulders, he unleashed a kinetic pulse that rippled outward in a visible wave. The shockwave tore through Dorcas’s defenses as if they were wet paper. She was blown backward through the air, her magnificent wings now tattered, the primary feathers scorched into blackened ash. She hit the earth beside Dream with a heavy, hollow thud that echoed in the silence of the hall. The impact forced the remaining air from her lungs in a sharp, fine spray of crimson that misted against the floor.
Michael hovered in the eerie, silent eye of the storm he had birthed, his chest heaving as he looked down at his broken siblings. "Is this the best the favorites can do?" his voice boomed, dripping with a victor’s contempt.
"No," a voice drifted up from the roiling shadows. It wasn't loud, yet it carried a gravitational weight that seemed to pull the lightning right out of the sky, grounding the static. "It isn't."
Michael stiffened, his wings stalling mid-beat for a fraction of a second. He hovered motionless, his eyes darting to scan the swirling, emerald mists below. "Show yourself! I know that silver tongue, Lucifer!"
Suddenly, the wind died. The chaos didn't dissipate; it simply froze in place, as if time itself had snagged on a nail. A vortex of oily, black smoke began to coil upward from the cracks in the marble, swirling between the fallen Queen and the Dreamer. It moved with a slow, liquid grace, thick and suffocating, before hardening into the sharp silhouette of a man.
Lucifer stood amidst the jagged rubble, his dark, tailored clothes pristine as if he had just stepped out of a shadow. His expression remained as calm and unreadable as a frozen lake in midwinter. He looked down at the smears of blood on the white stone, his eyes narrowing just a fraction the only sign of the cold fury beneath the surface.
"I imagine the Old Man is currently looking for his favorite soldier," Lucifer said, his voice a smooth, dangerous melody that cut through the gloom. "It’s a shame he’ll find a disobedient child playing in the dirt instead."
Michael descended slowly, his boots coming to rest just inches above the debris, the air beneath him shimmering with heat. "Are you here to join them on the floor, Morningstar?"
Lucifer met his gaze, his eyes heavy with an ancient, dominating power that seemed to press Michael downward. "I have broken you before, Michael. I remember the sound of your pride snapping. I think this time, I won't be so quick to let you crawl away. I want to see you bleed for every dream you’ve burned."
"And how will the King of Lies manage that?" Michael mocked, though his posture betrayed him as he shifted his weight into a tight, defensive stance.
Lucifer didn't answer with words. He reached into the empty air, and the shadows curdled around his grip. They lengthened and solidified, turning from mist into matter until a heavy, obsidian staff rested in his palm. It didn't reflect the dying light of the hall; it seemed to eat it, a void of absolute blackness held in a steady hand.
The color drained from Michael’s face, leaving him a ghostly pale. The arrogance that had fueled his eyes flickered and died, replaced by a cold, sharp realization that settled in his gut.
He knew that staff. He knew it held the very essence Lucifer had torn from the heavens during his fall and he knew exactly what it would do to his soul.