[???]
"Let the sins of this realm be burned away. Let your bones remember the weight of heaven's decree."
The sky answered.
A sharp silence overtook the space between them. The air trembled—not from any wind, but from the pressure that now prepared itself. A hum erupted in the upper atmosphere, and then—without warning—the sky fractured.
Golden pillars of light plummeted from the heavens, the clouds unraveling violently as if repelled by the force of the attack. Dozens—no, hundreds—of beams poured down in a destructive wave. Each beacon of light that fell shattered the ground, vaporized dust, and reduced stone to a melted, scorched mess. Entire sections of the land was transfigured, casting immense shadows across distant mountains.
But Dante did not move in panic, he leapt forward, spiraling—his right sabaton narrowly missing an erupting fissure. His left arm twisted behind his back, body tilted just slightly, allowing a sweeping blast to graze his pauldrons, sending sparks outward.
And then, he reached the eye of the storm.
Uriel hovered above, his wings outstretched.
"You dance well, mortal," Uriel said, voice heavy with disdain. "But even you will falter when faced with judgment."
"You speak of judgment," Dante replied, "but I see only the tantrums of a creature clinging to its sanctity. Tell me, Uriel—how far must a blade fall before it forgets the hand that once wielded it with honor?"
Uriel's eyes narrowed. "You dare?"
"I do."
Enraged, Uriel descended like a meteor, his blade drawn high, trailing a comet-tail of white. The ground shook, and as he struck, the shockwave thundered outward.
CLANG
Dante blocked the strike with his armored forearm.
Sparks erupted as the blade kissed his armor. The impact cracked the surrounding dull landscape in a mile-wide circle, sending an avalanche of dirt roaring down from the distant cliffside.
Uriel reeled back—but Dante was already moving. With a surge of strength, he threw his full weight forward, shoulder-checking the archangel so hard that Uriel crashed into a stone spire and shattered it on impact.
Dante followed up, he sprinted, followed by a leapt as he threw a right hook.
Uriel deflected with the flat of his blade, but even that redirection forced him back through the air. Dante pressed on, delivering a left jab to the ribs, right cross to the temple, low sweep aimed at Uriel's shin, and a rising knee into the archangel's abdomen.
Uriel twisted midair to dodge, his wings snapping open. He retaliated with a downward slash, but Dante leaned back at an angle so sharp it seemed inhuman, the blade whistling just above his faceplate.
"You… fight like no mortal I've ever seen," Uriel murmured between attacks.
"I am but mere mortal," Dante muttered as he deflected another strike, "but not for the reason you suspect."
He ducked under a diagonal cut and drove a fist squarely into Uriel's sternum, denting the armor. Uriel coughed and staggered back.
"You feel pain," Dante noted quietly. "Good. It means your arrogance hasn't shielded you from consequence."
Uriel's face contorted into annoyance. "Impudent cur."
"Still calling me names, when it is you who wields righteousness like a spoiled child throws tantrums," Dante interrupted. "Tell me, Uriel… when did you last see beauty in mortals? When did you last speak to them without preaching down from your pedestal?"
Uriel flapped his wings, throwing up a storm of feathers and dust. "They are lost. They slaughter, deceive and desecrate. And yet you stand before me to defend them as if they are sacred." He scoffed.
Dante's gauntlets clenched.
"I defend them because they are sacred. Not because they are flawless. But because they strive. Because they bleed and cry and try anyway." He took a slow step forward. "You, however, have forgotten the power of struggle. And in doing so, you've become the very tyrant your God sought to protect creation from."
Uriel lunged—an overhead slash—but Dante sidestepped.
"No more sermons," Dante said. "You hold back because of meaningless pride, give it your all, Angel. Or you may lay defeated.
Uriel frowned. "I will not be defeated by you, this I swear, you've proven yourself no ordinary mortal."
In that moment there was a shift.
Uriel's blade scraped against the ruined earth as he took a slow step backwards, his red wings flaring outward, feathers rigid. The air shuddered, space bent around him. And then, without word or gesture, he raised his left hand.
An eerie silence fell.
It lasted less than a heartbeat.
Then there was a detonation.
With a crack that shattered the silence, an invisible force roared downward from above, the ground beneath Dante—solid but fractured stone and ash—ruptured beneath the pressure, exploding into a cyclonic upheaval of terrain and debri. Great monoliths of stone, easily the size of towers, heaved skyward, spinning in a storm of debris and friction.
BOOM.
Dante was sent hurtling, his armored form thrown like a projectile, his trajectory tearing a visible gash in the air. He didn't flinch. Not a sound escaped him. His limbs remained loose as his armor glinted violently in the roiling light.
Below, the ground cratered into a vast basin where he once stood—a scorched, steaming pit that looked like the planet had been wounded, its surface pulverized into a churning scar of fissures and dust. Rubble rained from the sky like a meteor shower.
"You dare match the fury of Heaven, mortal?" Uriel's voice echoed. "This realm is but a grain of ash in the breath of eternity. You speak of oaths, of sacred restraint... as if we are still beholden to the chains of a dying order."
He slammed the blade into the ground once more, and golden light cracked through the veins of the earth.
High above, Dante rotated in midair, twisting through the falling debri. A mountain-sized slab of rock spun toward him, angular. But before it could crush him—
CRACK!
His gauntlet-clad fist collided with the mass—shattering it inwards, splintering the stone into a storm of pebbles and shards. His posture didn't falter. One leg snapped out, twisting his body mid-spin; his hand braced against a tumbling boulder, vaulting off of it.
From above, he spoke.
"You speak as if divinity grants you the right to judge. But you've long since become unworthy of the reverence that word once held, Angel." He soared higher. "You've forgotten why the oaths were made in the first place."
He paused in midair, still rising—until his ascent slowed, stopped, and gravity reclaimed him. He let it. Dante plummeted, a streak of white.
Uriel lifted his blade in both hands, bracing himself, wings unfurled.
"Then fall, false knight," the Angel declared. "Fall with your ideals and be forgotten."
Dante's armored figure twisted midair, a single sabaton planted against a massive, floating chunk of earth; he launched himself sideways, flipping with momentum that seemed more akin to a bird than a man in full plate. The next platform—a slab of stone—hurtled downward. He caught its edge with one hand, swung around, and used the motion to springboard further down, his momentum building.
"Let the heavens grieve for what you've become, mortal," Uriel intoned. "Let the stars weep as I correct the flaw of your existence."
And the skies answered him.
Lightning—golden, ripped through the heavens. Pillars of radiant force crashed downward, devastation that chased Dante. Each bolt struck with fury: vaporizing stone, atomizing falling debris, splitting massive boulders into dust. One bolt lanced where Dante had stood a moment ago, obliterating the spire he'd just leapt from—another cracked the air behind his back, narrowly missing as he flipped forward, momentum bursting from his legs.
His sabatons landed on broken platforms for the briefest moment before he launched off, his body already in motion. Rubble shattered behind him in sprays, the aftershocks of destruction a heartbeat behind.
As Uriel shot into the sky, growing closer, his eyes narrowed behind the glow of his destruction. "You do not fear judgment?" he noted, voice cold. "You evade it like a thief."
Dante landed atop a tilted wall spiraling downward through the collection of falling debri. His figure grounded, his helm tilted upward toward the ascending seraph. Though his face was hidden, his voice cut through the storm.
"I do not fear judgment," he said. "Because I do not seek to escape it—I seek to define it. What you call divine retribution is nothing more than the tantrum of a blinded prophet."
"Blasphemer." Uriel's wings snapped wide again, streaking faster now as he drew closer, sword pointed towards Dante's chest. "You speak of Gods with the tongue of insects."
Dante leapt again—just as lightning shattered the last platform. In midair, he twisted, letting debris whirl around him. Uriel surged closer, and the gap between them disappeared in a breath.
Then came the impact.
Dante's armored fist clashed with Uriel's blade.
The collision unleashed a nova of kinetic force that split the air, cracking invisible tectonic plates beneath them. Sparks flew as his fist met the blade, halting Uriel's strike dead in its path. A shockwave expanded outward, tearing the nearest debris into dust, distorting light around their forms.
Uriel roared—his wings burst with force, propelling him backward in a spiral before he shot forward again, blade now wreathed in golden fire. He slashed, but Dante met the blow with fist. He ducked one swipe, the blade passing overhead with a trail of fire, then struck upward with a savage uppercut into Uriel's ribs—armor cracked, and the angel grunted.
They spun through the falling ruin like comets colliding.
Uriel's blade hummed as it swung, but Dante weaved between the strikes—sliding low across a platform's edge, vaulting off a spinning structure, twisting upside down as he parried with nothing but the alloy of his fists.
Uriel slashed—a downward thrust.
Dante caught it again—but this time, he twisted the blade aside, pushing the edge to scrape across his gauntlet harmlessly. He surged forward and slammed his elbow into Uriel's forehead—then followed with a knee to the angel's midsection, launching Uriel upward from the force.
"You speak of heaven's laws, yet you break them at your whim. Who, then, is the heretic?" Dante questioned.
Uriel frowned, recovering in the air with a beat of his wings. "I am the purifier. I am flame and light. I am the final mercy for a realm that no longer knows grace."
"And I am the reminder," Dante said, raising his fists again as the debri spun behind him. "That even flame can be extinguished—and that not all mercy is divine."