Heavenly Opposers-Chapter 339 - 338-Won’t Break.

'He pulled me in sooner than I thought.'

Azrail thought as he looked at the situation around him. All around him were several weapons. Each of them looked unique and divine as they floated all around him. Most of them screamed that they could kill Azrail with a touch, and now Azrail was floating in the centre of the weapons that seemed to spread about as far as the eye can see without any limits.

Azrail didn't question anything. He stayed there, floating between the vast emptiness of weapons, and within a second soon the weapons started to shake. It didn't even do anything. All of them were shaking, shaking as if.

'They are in fear.'

Azrail smirked at that thought. He understood where this was and why these weapons, in a sense, were acting like this. Azrail stood straight as the weapons kept shaking in fear more and more, and soon Azrail was pulled back into the same place he was thrown from: floating within that vast emptiness as those eyes woke up above him again—a vast intrigue floating within Hephaestus now.

"What are you?"

Hephaestus asked.

"What was that?"

Azrail asked back.

"That was the vast place to be chosen. The weapons themselves were supposed to react to the best intuition that belongs to your body, bloodline, fate, and sense of self. All of them on their own were divine weapons, but when they were brought in front of you, they trembled in fear—as if screaming to me not to let you hold them. But the swords were even more different. It was as if they were feeling unworthy to be held in your hand, even more fearful than the rest of the weapons."

Azrail took in those words—his mind processing them.

'So that's how they went.'

His eyes narrowed as he digested the reaction, something he didn't know how it would unfold.

'So the gift lives up to its name.'

Azrail smirked at it as he looked up at Hephaestus.

"Curious?"

His voice is teasing.

"Definitely. So tell me, what kind of species are you?"

'So he already pinpointed where the situation came from.'

To this, Azrail, floating deep within the vastness of this space, replied.

"That is information I haven't even told Hera. If you need it, will you let me in?"

To this, a moment of thought later, the words were heard.

"Sure. I can do that, but it will be only on my side. The rest of them will just smite you in an instant."

'Yes!'

Swallowing in that thought, Azrail spoke.

"Let's set in an oath."

"Sure."

Hephaestus directly replied—the God right now only brimming more with the curiosity to know what Azrail really is—as a contract appeared in front of Azrail.

"Not this. I want an internal oath taken on your name with the pantheon on the line."

As Azrail said this, the atmosphere froze for a moment—the eyes losing all their sense of curiosity and calmness as only a cold, hard stare flowed down at Azrail.

"Oh? The baby thinks it can push that much?"

As that voice sounded out, all of Azrail's limbs broke in an instant, turning to dust.

'Kurgh!'

Azrail held in the pain—floating limbless in the space: the pain riding through him, and within the next moment, a searing heat quickly connected to Azrail's joints—like tendrils of fire hotter than anything burning into his broken body.

'Argh!...'

Azrail didn't cry out as that pain started to hit all over his body.

The searing heat did not stop at the joints. It spread, deliberate and slow, as molten metal poured into veins that no longer existed, bone knitting to bone with a soundless crack that echoed only inside his skull. The heat followed the reformation, burning from the inside out, as if his marrow had been replaced with liquid suns.

Azrail floated in the centre of that vast emptiness, limbless again for only a heartbeat before the limbs returned, worse than before. He felt each nerve reattach, each muscle fibre scream as it was soldered into place. The pain was precise. It did not flood him. It targeted him. One tendon at a time. One capillary. One thought.

He did not scream.

The eye above him narrowed, the pupil contracting until it was a thin vertical slit of cold starlight.

"You demand an oath on my name. On the Pantheon itself. Just because I played around doesn't mean you get to talk that big."

The voice was quiet now. That was worse. When Hephaestus shouted, the pain came in waves. When he spoke softly, the pain became intimate.

Azrail's newly reformed skin began to split. Not in cuts. In seams. As if his body had been stitched together from mismatched hides and someone was now pulling the threads. The splits opened along the lines of his old scars, the places where he had been wounded before, as though the god was reading his history and reopening every page.

Blood welled. Not red. Black. Thick. It floated away from him in perfect spheres that hung in the void like tiny planets orbiting his ruin. Still, Azrail did not scream.

He breathed. In. Out. The motion hurt because his ribs had been cracked and reset three times already. Each breath dragged broken edges across lung tissue. He counted them anyway. One. Two. Three. He focused on the rhythm because rhythm was control, and control was the only thing left that Hephaestus had not yet taken.

The heat burrowed deeper, twisting nerves that no longer existed into knots of agony. It felt like molten metal pouring into his veins, rebuilding what was shattered, only to shatter it again in slower, more deliberate waves. Each pulse is designed to extract screams, to force submission. But Azrail bit down on nothing—his jaw clenched in a mouth that tasted only ash—and refused to give even a whimper.

The fire intensified. It clawed at his core, peeling away layers of will like bark from ancient wood. Visions flashed unbidden: memories of pain he had endured before, amplified tenfold. His mind screamed silently, but his face remained a mask—eyes open, staring up at that vast fiery gaze without flinching.

Hephaestus watched. The god's curiosity warring with irritation. Most would have shattered already—begging, breaking, spilling every secret for relief. But this one held. Silent. Unyielding.

The tendrils tightened. Heat spiked to levels that would vaporise stars. Azrail's reformed limbs convulsed once—then stilled. No shout escaped. No tear fell. Only the faintest twitch at the corner of his eye betrayed the storm inside.

Minutes stretched like centuries. The torture cycled: break, burn, rebuild, repeat. Designed to erode the soul itself. Yet Azrail endured—his thoughts fracturing but never yielding the core. He focused on the endgame, on the threads he had woven. Pain was temporary. Revelation was not.

Finally, the fire receded. The pressure eased. Azrail floated whole again—body intact, expression unchanged save for the barest sheen of sweat that evaporated instantly in the heat.

Hephaestus's eye narrowed—not in anger now, but in genuine reassessment.

"You... are no mere anomaly."

Azrail's voice emerged steady, dry as bone.

"Internal oath. Or nothing."

A long silence followed. The vast eye blinked once.

"Very well."

The atmosphere shifted. Power coalesced—not destructive this time, but binding. An internal oath, sworn on the forge-god's true name, with the pantheon as witness. Unbreakable. Eternal.

Azrail smiled thinly.

"Now... let's talk."