[???]
The two figures slammed into the ruined surface of the desolate planet with enough force to shake the fractured tectonics beneath, causing distant fissures to widen, shattering already broken structures into gravel and ash. Cracks spiderwebbed across the terrain beneath their feet, sending up geysers of dust. The impact thundered through the world, cliffs and shattered valleys ended up even more destroyed.
Uriel rose from the cratered area, his wings flaring wide in an explosion of feathers. A harsh scowl contorted his once-beautiful features. His chest rose and fell in barely controlled anger, his fingers coiled around the hilt of his blade with a grip that threatened to crush the hilt.
Across from him stood the other.
Dante.
The alloy of his helmet offered no expression. No human eye to narrow, no brow to furrow with anger or frustration. Just that blank, polished alloy—an emotionless, cold mask that reflected the desolate world around him. The silence was unbearable. As though his presence offended the concept of divinity.
Uriel's thoughts, the question, sharp as the sword in his grip, had plagued his mind from the moment Dante had dared to step into this conflict:
("Just who is this mortal…?")
Not just a man—no, that couldn't be it. This being knew things. He had spoken of the oaths, the ones buried beneath layers of law—truths hidden even from most angels. He had named the long-forgotten 'deal' struck between The Keepers of Order and God Himself—an accord so ancient, its language had faded from the tongues of even the Seraphim.
The Keepers… those insufferable entities who governed the eight connected realms like self-appointed arbiters. Uriel's lip curled at the memory of them. They called themselves stewards of balance, but their arrogance had brought nothing but decay.
There had once been nine realms—nine interconnected domains of existence, flowing in harmony. But The Keepers' pride, their meddling, their self-righteous authority, had led to the annihilation of the Ninth. A realm lost to folly and arrogance. Had God been given full jurisdiction over all nine, such a tragedy would never have occurred. Under his governance, there is order. Under The Keepers, only decay.
And now, this man—this mortal clothed in snow-white armor—had the audacity to speak of those oaths, to invoke words meant only for certain mouths?
Uriel sneered, his wings twitching in irritation.
("Yet this impudent wretch speaks of oaths as though he understands their weight.")
He scoffed aloud, stepping forward with disdain leaking from every pore. "Such impudence," he spat. "You prattle on about matters beyond your station, yet you hide like a worm beneath that metal mask. Tell me—what sort of coward refuses to show his face to the one he challenges? Are you so afraid of being known?"
Dante tilted his head slightly, as if considering the question. The quiet sound of wind was the only reply for a moment.
Then came his voice. Dry.
"Petty theatrics won't get you very far, Angel," Dante said, the calm in his tone grating to Uriel. "But if we're trading barbs now, I suppose I should ask—has puberty hit yet, or are you just naturally this whiny?"
It was deadpan. Void of malice, void of amusement. Simply… matter-of-fact.
Uriel's brow twitched, an almost imperceptible spasm near the eye. He took a sharp step forward, righteous indignation practically bleeding from his gaze. "You dare—impudent oaf!"
Dante's helm inclined again ever so slightly, as if nodding to an internal joke only he understood. "Ah," he mused flatly, "there it is again. The divine equivalent of a playground insult. You do realize you're eons old, don't you? Shouldn't your vocabulary have evolved past that of a tantrum-throwing toddler?"
Uriel's jaw clenched. His fingers flexed around the sword. His wings twitched. But he said nothing.
Dante's head remained tilted slightly to the side. "And still," he said, "you're holding back. Don't deny it—I can see it. Not pride, no. That's not the reason anymore. You're not afraid of me either, not yet. You simply… won't hurt me."
Uriel exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring as though the suggestion disgusted him. "Such delusion," he growled. "You believe yourself worthy of some mercy? Do not mistake my restraint for compassion. I would see you flayed upon the altar of justice if Heaven permitted it."
Dante didn't flinch. "I said nothing of mercy," he replied flatly. "I said you won't. Not can't. Not shouldn't. You won't. There's a difference."
Uriel sneered, voice colder now, desperate to silence the heresy Dante stirred. "You speak in riddles and falsehoods. I hold nothing for you but contempt."
"But she doesn't," Dante cut in sharply.
Uriel faltered.
"Alyssia," Dante continued. "Your most recent incarnation. I surmise you pretend she's separate. An anomaly. But she's not. You know she's not. She wasn't just one more vessel in a sea of lives. You feel her. You remember her. And the truth you're too proud to speak aloud—"
He took a slow step forward, sabatons crunching earth.
"—is that Alyssia is you. And you are her."
Uriel's blade trembled for a moment.
"Nonsense," he whispered, but his voice cracked, just once. Barely audible.
Dante didn't move. "You understand how reincarnation works better than any mortal ever could. You understand that divinity doesn't exempt you from the cycle, only complicates it. Alyssia wasn't some error in your line. She was you, stripped of grandeur, stripped of pretense, stripped of power. And she—unlike you—showed something you've long buried."
"What…?" Uriel asked quietly.
"Compassion," Dante answered. "Humility. Regret."
Silence.
Uriel's jaw tightened. His wings slowly drew in. Then, suddenly—he stepped forward and raised his blade, leveling its tip toward Dante's chest.
"I will not be questioned by a worm who dares defy Heaven," he declared, his voice shaking from more than fury. "I will kill you not because of your lies—but because of your arrogance."
Dante said nothing at first, he merely shook his head.
"Well, then," he muttered, "let's get on with it."
"I will disprove your theory!" slithered from Uriel's lips, the ground seemed to groan—cracks spiderwebbing beneath the angel's feet as he surged forward with a thunderous flap of his wings, red feathers scattering. His sword carved through the air with a shriek that split the silence, aimed directly for Dante's chest.
But Dante was already gone.
His body twisted at an impossible angle, one foot gliding across the ruined stone as he slipped beneath the blade by a hair's breadth, the white matte finish of his armor grazing the searing edge. His helm didn't flinch. His fists, still unclenched moved, he stepped into Uriel's exposed side and delivered a brutal, knuckle-driven hook into the angel's ribs.
The sound was muffled, but it echoed. Uriel's body twisted midair from the force of the strike, red feathers tearing free, spinning violently. But the archangel didn't yield—he twisted with the blow, turning it into momentum, letting his wings flare and drive him upward, then back down, sword aimed like a guillotine toward Dante's unprotected head.
And again, Dante met it without hesitation.
He stepped forward—toward the blade.
He raised a single armored forearm, catching the descending strike, the sword's tip bit only into the thick bracer rather than cleaving him in half. Sparks burst forth as Dante slid sideways from the point of impact, his other hand rising in the same motion to slam the heel of his palm into Uriel's elbow.
Another harsh jolt of pain lanced up Uriel's arm. He winced, the sword staggering.
"That's twice," Dante murmured.
Uriel snarled as he flipped back, landing with one foot and a wing digging into the earth to stabilize his form. "You jest—while your kind wallows in bloodshed and depravity. You mock me while the creatures of your realm burn it down, brick by brick, for no reason other than greed."
Dante tilted his head faintly, as though weighing Uriel's words. He began walking toward the archangel once again.
"You're not wrong," Dante said. "Greed. Sloth. Arrogance. Envy. Humanity's sins are endless, aren't they? Always have been. Always will be."
Uriel's grip tightened. "Then you admit it. That you are beyond redemption. That your species is a disease this realm cannot afford to nurture."
Dante stopped just a step away from him.
"And yet," he said, "despite knowing all that, they love. They create. They build stories from dust, and songs from sorrow. Despite the rot—you'll find beauty in the cracks. You just have to look for it."
Uriel's blade flared again. He lunged—a slash arcing for Dante's neck.
But this time, Dante spun inside the swing. His left hand gripped Uriel's wrist mid-strike, while his right fist, encased in white gauntlet, slammed straight into the angel's diaphragm. The impact made the air ripple—an invisible shockwave tearing outward in all directions. Craters formed beneath their feet.
Uriel wheezed but refused to fall. His wing whipped out, catching Dante off-guard, sending him skidding back, but still standing.
"Love?" Uriel spat, wings flaring with a burst. "Do you call that love? The kind that enslaves? That conquers weaker nations under false pretense? That poisons the sky and sea while singing lullabies to children?"
Dante raised his hand, brushing debris off his shoulder. "No," he answered plainly. "That's power misused. That's fear wearing a crown and calling itself civilization."
"Then your world is broken!"
"Of course it is," Dante said flatly, stepping back into striking range again. "But only broken things strive to mend. Perfect things—like you? You don't evolve. You stagnate. You sit in your throne of sanctimony and judge a realm you no longer understand."
Uriel struck again, this time with a flurry—eight cuts in the span of a blink, each one angled to dismember or kill. Dante's arms moved only when necessary—redirecting, parrying, slipping past.
Then came his counter.
A lightning-fast upward punch—an uppercut that caught Uriel's chin clean, lifting the angel from the ground momentarily. Dante didn't stop. He stepped in, caught Uriel mid-air by the breastplate, and slammed him violently into the ground with an earth-shattering crash that sent dust and shattered debri flying in all directions.
He leaned down slightly, speaking just loud enough for Uriel to hear as the angel coughed red ichor from the blow.
"You look at us and only see rot. But maybe it's because you've only ever looked from above."
Uriel's hand trembled. He gripped his blade tighter.
"You speak of evolution like it's virtue," Uriel hissed. "But there is virtue in order. In purity. In divine design. Chaos is your kind's nature. You burn everything you touch."
Dante stood upright, slowly.
"And yet," he said softly, "we are the only ones still trying to light candles in the dark."
And then, wordlessly, Dante raised his gauntlet-clad hand.
Uriel's body tensed instinctively. His wings flared open, yet no blow came—at least, not upon him.
With a sudden shift, Dante's fist arced downward—missing Uriel by mere inches—but impacting the desolate earth with cataclysmic force.
The sound was less like a strike and more like the wail of a dying planet.
An explosion of seismic force rippled outward from the point of impact, detonating with such intensity that the landscape fractured like glass beneath. Massive fissures tore through the ground in an ever-widening radius, swallowing pillars of stone and crags into grinding dust. Columns of dust erupted like plumes. Mountains in the far distance shuddered—some even collapsed—triggered by the shockwave of force. Shards of earth the size of towers were hurled into the air, tumbling end over end like debris.
The quake rumbled endlessly, grinding through the planet, as the world recoiled.
Uriel flinched—not from fear, but from what he saw in the intentional restraint.
Dante slowly stood upright.
"…I missed."
The statement was dry.
Uriel stood up, wings still flared as he backed away, his lips curled into a scowl, voice sharp with indignation, tinged by confusion. Even unease.
"You had me. Your blow… it would have struck me down."
Dante tilted his head, the helmet catching fractured rays of light. He spoke again.
"Yes," he replied simply. "And it would've felt good… for a moment."
Uriel narrowed his eyes.
"Then why?" he demanded, stepping forward, his sabatons cracking the scorched ground. "Why do you hesitate? Why show mercy to something you view as broken?"
There was silence. A long one. One that sat between them like the chasm Dante had carved into the earth.
When Dante spoke again, his voice was still quiet.
"Because you speak of humanity as if it is only rot. As if it is only decay and violence and filth. You hold us in contempt because of what you've seen—the wars, the betrayals, the cycles we repeat, century after century. And I won't deny any of it."
He turned his head slightly, as if looking beyond the angel, beyond the desolate world, into something distant—an idea, a memory, perhaps a future not yet lived.
"We lie. We steal. We hurt the ones we love. We kill. We burn entire civilizations in the name of pride, or Gods, or revenge. And we justify it with words dressed as honor. I've seen it. Lived it. Been broken by it."
His tone, though still dry, felt heavy.
"But…" Dante raised a hand, palm open—not in surrender, but to gesture at the idea he now spoke aloud. "Amid that rot, there are sparks. Sparks that refuse to die. The mother who raises a child she didn't birth. The soldier who throws away his blade when he sees his enemy cry. The liar who breaks down and confesses. The murderer who begs for forgiveness… and means it."
His gaze turned back to Uriel, his own face unreadable behind the helmet, but somehow cutting deeper than sight.
"Those moments are fleeting. Imperfect. But they are real. And they matter."
Uriel said nothing, his grip on the blade tightening, his jaw clenched.
"You act as if mercy is weakness," Dante said, taking a single step forward. "But the truth is, you don't hesitate because of contempt. You hesitate… because a part of you still remembers."
Uriel's eyes twitched. It was faint—but there.
Dante continued.
"You remember her voice, your voice. Alyssia. You remember the way you cried when you failed. You remember what it was to feel loss. You remember, and you can't reconcile it with the fury you've wrapped yourself in."
The silence that followed was different.
Heavier.
Uriel stood still, his blade no longer held as tightly. His wings, though flared, were no longer trembling with anger—but with something else. His gaze lowered, just slightly, and his lips parted as if to speak.
But the words did not come.
Not yet.
Not now.
For all his strength, all his holiness, all his certainty…
Uriel could not deny what he felt.
The Archangel finally spoke, his voice, though still steeped in the authority, faltered ever so slightly—tinged with something rare: uncertainty. "Tell me, mortal… do you truly believe what you say? That your kind is… salvageable?"
The question was not hollow.
"I do." The reply was simple. "I've walked through the centuries, Angel. I've seen the rise of empires and watched them rot from within, collapsing under their own hubris. I've witnessed atrocities—wars sparked by greed, cruelty passed off as tradition, betrayal carved into the bedrock of kingdoms. I've seen mothers abandon their children to starvation, kings burn their own cities just to spite a rival's name. I've watched humanity commit sins so vile even your scriptures couldn't capture them."
His gauntleted hand clenched, fingers twitching as if suppressing the urge to punch again—not in rage, but in memory.
"There was a time—long ago—when I despised them for it. All of them. I was arrogant. Convinced that nothing but ruin came from mankind's will. I held them in contempt. I thought they were a sickness—untameable and undeserving."
He paused, letting the silence stretch.
"But time… time is the cruelest teacher, Uriel." His tone softened. "It doesn't forgive, but it reveals. Slowly and without mercy."
He hummed.
"I've seen moments—small, quiet moments—that shattered those beliefs. A dying soldier giving away his only ration to a starving child. A criminal laying down his life to save someone he wronged. People choosing hope in a world designed to break them. Redemption clawed out of the deepest pits of despair. And that... that is not meaningless."
Uriel remained still, though his expression had shifted. Gone was the scowl. His brows furrowed now—not in disdain, but contemplation. A fracture forming in the armor of his ideology.
"They are flawed, yes," Dante continued. "Selfish. Petty. Prone to fear and hatred. But those flaws are not the end of them. They are also capable of compassion so pure it defies logic. Of love that transcends Death. Of faith that persists even when every reason to believe has been stripped away."
He stopped directly across from Uriel now, only a few paces apart.
"And more importantly, they can change."
Uriel's lips parted slightly, his voice quieter this time. "Change… or deceive?"
Dante's head tilted ever so slightly, and his reply was immediate.
"Both. That's what makes them human."
The Archangel's grip tightened on his blade, not in preparation—but in conflict. Something in his chest stirred. A thousand memories—Alyssia's memories—rippled beneath the surface, scratching behind his eyes.
"You speak as though you know their hearts."
"I know their pain," Dante replied. "And if you're honest with yourself… so do you."
For a flicker, for the briefest moment, Uriel faltered—his stance ever so slightly easing, a single feather detaching from his wing and falling to the cracked earth below. He did not refute. He could not.
He refused to show it, he stared at Dante. Not with hatred. Not with judgment.
But with… conflict.
"…Then was I wrong?"
The words left the Archangel's lips—heavy and irreversible. The air grew still. Even the dust that floated through the sky ceased its descent for a moment.
Dante did not gloat. He didn't even move. He remained perfectly still, as if he had expected the words—but knew their weight all too well.
Uriel's gaze drifted down, his expression unreadable. Then he slowly sank to one knee, driving the tip of his blade into the shattered ground. The sword quivered from the force but held, the ground beneath it giving way in a line of cracks.
"I fought to uphold laws written before the stars themselves were born," Uriel murmured, voice low but steady, "And now, in the wake of your words… I find myself doubting what was etched into my soul."
Dante's helmet tilted slightly.
"I do not ask for your forgiveness, mortal. Nor your pity."
"You'll get neither," Dante replied dryly. "But I'll offer you truth."
Uriel's eyes closed briefly. His wings slowly folded.
"Then let there be one final truth," Uriel said softly. "If… if Alyssia is still within me… if she is not merely a phantom of a past life, not a shattered echo—if she is truly real, then she deserves to live. Entirely. Wholly. Even if it means I… do not."
He looked up, the pale light behind his irises dimming as he made the declaration.
"I will give her my soul."
The words did not tremble.
"I will strip away my divinity. I will be unmade. For her."
Dante stared in silence. Not even his breath could be heard within the hollow echo of his helm.
"But," Uriel added, voice tightening with that final sliver of pride, "If I do this… if I vanish so she may rise again… then you—who wear the sins of men like a mantle—had better be right."
A silence lingered once more.
Then Uriel stepped forward, blade still buried in the earth behind him. His eyes glimmered—not with wrath, but with something else.
"There is one request I would make before I am no more."
Dante nodded once. "Speak it."
"I wish… to see your face."
The request did not come with arrogance. Nor mockery, nor distrust. It came with reverence—something an archangel would never offer lightly to any mortal. To see the truth of the one who had broken the chains of his certainty.
Dante said nothing. But his right hand slowly lifted—gauntlet clicking, gears hissing as the white alloy of his helm unlocked with a soft thk-thk-thk, sections unlatching in a rhythmic sound. He gripped the edge and pulled, the motion fluid. The plating hissed free.
And in that instant—
—long, silvery-white locks spilled out, falling down past his shoulders and back. Uriel's eyes widened—not in horror—but in profound, quiet awe. His breath caught, his wings twitched once behind him, as if the sight had rippled through even his core.
The face he sought remained unseen. Yet that glimpse… that one thread of humanity, unmasked… was enough.
Uriel's voice came again, quieter this time.
"…You truly were never who I expected."
Dante's reply was dull and sharp as ever—but beneath it was the faintest shadow of something else.
"No one ever does."