The supermassive black hole hung in the sky above Zephyria.

It was fifty miles wide. A perfect pitch-black sphere of absolute infinite density. It did not reflect the blinding golden light of the celestial fleet. It devoured it!

Lucifer hovered in the freezing stratosphere. His right arm trembled under the apocalyptic strain of maintaining the 10,000x multiplied Arcane Singularity.

Above him, the Avatar of Solaris Prime was unraveling!

The God of Light had unleashed the Wrath of the Sun God. He had dropped a hyper-dense holy meteor meant to vaporize the floating city. Instead, the Warlord had swallowed the attack whole!

The gravitational pull of the singularity did not stop. It reached higher into the stratosphere.

Millions of six-winged Seraphim shrieked in absolute unadulterated terror. They beat their wings of pure light frantically and tried to escape the pulling void. It was completely useless. The gravity dragged them backward and sucked them helplessly over the event horizon.

The massive spinning wheels of golden fire were ripped apart. The sunlight chariots shattered into fragments of light before being consumed.

[System: Massive Hostile Casualties Detected.]

[Entities Eliminated: 5,200,000+ Seraphim.]

[Experience Gain Suspended: Mortal Level Cap Reached.]

Solaris Prime stared down at Lucifer.

The God of Light was a towering fifty-foot entity of burning white plasma. But the plasma was flickering. The intense spatial gravity of the black hole was violently pulling at the Avatar’s divine core. It stretched the god’s projection toward the singularity.

"This is impossible!" Solaris Prime roared. The voice lacked its previous absolute authority. It cracked with genuine primal panic. "You are mortal! You cannot manipulate a localized void of this scale! You are breaking the laws of the firmament!"

"I am the Emperor of the Void," Lucifer stated coldly. His voice echoed through the thin atmosphere. "I write the laws."

Lucifer tightened his grip.

He did not maintain the black hole. He detonated it!

Lucifer closed his right fist.

The fifty-mile-wide singularity instantly collapsed inward! The immense trapped mass of the holy meteor and millions of angelic bodies was compressed into a microscopic point and then violently decompressed.

The resulting implosion was silent but catastrophic.

A wave of pure dark matter and shattered light blasted outward. It slammed directly into the struggling Avatar of Solaris Prime.

The God of Light shrieked!

The blinding plasma of his face was violently extinguished. The golden armor covering his colossal frame cracked, shattered, and exploded into a million pieces of glowing useless glass. The divine projection could not sustain the physical and magical feedback of the implosion!

The Avatar of Solaris Prime completely disintegrated!

[System: Avatar Manifestation Eliminated.]

[Target: Solaris Prime (God of Light)]

[Status: Divine Projection Shattered.]

The destruction of their God’s Avatar broke the Golden Fleet entirely.

The celestial beings were entities of pure order and discipline. They had never experienced a rout. They had never faced a mortal who could punch a hole in their theology!

Panic consumed the Heavens.

The surviving Seraphim broke their rigid military formations. The massive geometric shapes of solid gold and light turned away from Zephyria. The entire armada fled. They scrambled wildly toward the massive glowing golden tear in the upper stratosphere that led back to the Celestial Realm.

They were abandoning the mortal plane.

Lucifer did not pursue them. He lowered his right hand.

His Archmage core throbbed with exhaustion. The dark leather armor he wore was heavily splattered with the glowing golden blood of the millions of angels pulled into the singularity. He looked like a nightmare painted in holy ichor.

He looked down.

Zephyria hovered peacefully below him. The iridescent pearl-like planetary shield remained fully intact! It glowed with the combined power of the Void-Core Reactor and the Sanguine Grid.

"Vexia," Lucifer commanded over the comms rune. "Open the roof."

"Opening Sector Zenith, Grand Marshal," the Sanguine Princess replied instantly. Her voice was breathless with awe.

A massive circular hole dilated at the very top of the planetary shield.

Lucifer dropped. He plummeted through the freezing air and fell directly through the gap in the barrier. The moment he crossed the threshold, Vexia snapped the shield shut behind him.

He activated Zephyr’s Grace just before impact and slowed his catastrophic descent.

Lucifer landed heavily on the high black-stone balcony of the central keep. His iron boots cracked the obsidian floor.

The entire floating city was dead silent.

Below him, in the sprawling massive courtyards, the thirteen million mortal soldiers of the Zephyrian Empire stood paralyzed! The thousand golden Paladin-Mechs and the five thousand Void-Breaker Dragoons were completely still. The fifty thousand Glacial Wyrms perched on the battlements did not make a sound.

They had all watched the sky.

They had seen the Heavens open. They had seen the wrath of the Sun God fall. And they had watched their Emperor fly out of the shield and physically consume a holy meteor with a black hole!

He had defeated the Abyss below. He had defeated Heaven above.

Lucifer walked to the edge of the balcony. He looked down at his army. The golden blood of the Seraphim dripped slowly from his dark iron gauntlets and sizzled faintly as it hit the cold stone.

The scarred Templar Captain standing in the front row of the heavy infantry dropped his broadsword.

The massive silver-armored knight fell to both knees. He bowed his head until his forehead touched the black stone pavement.

The movement cascaded like a tidal wave!

Thirteen million mortal soldiers, hardened mercenaries, Star-Kissed Elves, and Phantom Rangers dropped to their knees in perfect terrifying synchronization. Even the towering Paladin-Mechs lowered their massive Star-Metal broadswords and bowed their heads in absolute programmed submission.

There was no cheering. There was no chanting.

It was pure absolute reverence. The Warlord was no longer just a commander who paid them well. He was the undisputed master of reality!

Lucifer did not smile. He absorbed the sheer overwhelming weight of their devotion. The Aegis of the God-Slayer on his left arm pulsed with a steady heavy rhythm gorged on the divine energy of the fallen fleet.

He turned away from the railing.

His inner council was waiting for him.

Elara, Lyra, Sarah, Isolde, Celeste, and Vexia stood in a semi-circle on the balcony. They were battered and covered in soot, ice, and blood, but they were victorious. They were the queens of the new world.

Lyra stepped forward. The Twilight Seraph’s six wings of holy fire and dark matter shifted softly. She looked up at the sky and watched the massive golden tear in the stratosphere slowly begin to shrink.

"They are retreating," Lyra noted softly. Her dual-toned eyes tracked the fleeing angels. "The Hegemony is pulling back. They are closing the gates to the Silver Citadel. They intend to lock us out and leave us to rot in the ashes of the mortal plane."

"Let them run," Vexia scoffed and hovered slightly off the floor. The Sanguine Princess crossed her pale arms. "We have the sky. We have infinite food and power. We survived the apocalypse. We won."

"We survived," Lucifer corrected her coldly.

He walked past the vampire with his void-swirling eyes locking onto the shrinking golden rift high above the planetary shield.

"Survival is not victory," Lucifer stated smoothly. "The Gods abandoned this world to the Abyss. When they realized we survived, they didn’t offer salvation. They demanded our execution. They tried to steal our city and delete my people."

He gripped the hilt of the Blade of Ruin.

"They think they can retreat," Lucifer said with his voice dropping to a low dangerous rumble that carried the crushing weight of the Void. "They think they can close their shiny gates and ignore the ashes they created."

Lucifer turned to face his council.

"They are wrong," Lucifer declared.

He opened his system interface and projected a massive complex holographic map of the upper atmosphere into the center of the balcony.

"Sarah," Lucifer ordered.

The Star-Touched Oracle stepped up to the hologram. She raised her Scepter of Cosmic Alignment.

"The Celestial Stairway," Lucifer commanded. "The ancient shattered bridge that connects the mortal stratosphere directly to the Silver Citadel. The Precursors built it. The Gods broke it."

Sarah closed her eyes. The violet orb on her scepter flared! The holographic map shifted and revealed a massive floating field of shattered white marble and gold drifting in the zero-gravity vacuum high above Zephyria.

"I have the coordinates, Emperor," Sarah whispered and opened her cosmic eyes.

Lucifer looked at the shattered pathway leading to Heaven.

"Elara. Lyra. Isolde," Lucifer commanded and his void eyes burned with absolute predatory focus. "Prepare the Vanguard. Thrain will push the engines to maximum output."

"We are going up?" Elara asked with a fierce bloodthirsty smile breaking across the Eclipse Valkyrie’s face.

"We are going all the way up," Lucifer confirmed. He looked back at the fading golden tear in the sky. "We are going to repair the Celestial Stairway. We are taking Zephyria directly to their doorstep." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The Warlord crossed his iron gauntlets over his dark leather breastplate.

"We are taking the war to the Heavens."