Seven swords manifested in a corona around me.
Hunger. Truth. Mercy. Wrath. Joy. Sorrow. Nothing.
Black, silver, blue, red, purple, grey, void—each blade six feet of manifested sin, each one orbiting me in perfect synchronization. The weight hit immediately. Not physical weight. Spiritual. The burden of seven sins compressed into fifteen seconds of impossible power.
[WARNING: ESSENCE OVERLOAD]
[MAXIMUM MANIFESTATION: 15 SECONDS]
[CORRUPTION TEMPORARY SPIKE: 85%]
The Angel's sword descended.
I didn't block. Didn't dodge.
All seven swords moved as one.
The clash was apocalyptic.
The impact point became a sphere of annihilation. Reality fractured in concentric rings expanding outward from where seven sins met divine judgment. The bone-ground didn't crack—it shattered, fragments suspended in air as gravity forgot how to function.
The shockwave was visible. A wall of distorted space that expanded at supersonic speed, obliterating everything in its path. Stone hands within a hundred-meter radius simply ceased to exist. Erased. Removed from reality.
I felt the seven sins activating simultaneously:
Hunger consumed part of the Ecliptic Sword's essence, weakening the attack.
Truth revealed the blade's actual path through twelve dimensions simultaneously.
Mercy severed the connection between Angel and sword for a microsecond.
Wrath multiplied my defensive power with each nanosecond of contact.
Joy made the Angel's killing intent falter, confused by pleasure.
Sorrow drained the Angel's motivation to strike.
Nothing cut through space itself, creating gaps the sword fell through.
Seven sins. Seven effects. Seven weapons working in perfect, terrible harmony.
The Ecliptic Sword was deflected.
The Angel's eyes—what passed for eyes beneath that hood—widened slightly.
"Impossible."
"Fourteen seconds," I said. My voice was layered now. Not quite the three-consciousness of one hundred percent, but close. The sins were bleeding into my speech. "Let's make them count."
I moved.
Eighty-five percent corruption made me something beyond human. I crossed the distance in a blink, all seven swords striking simultaneously from seven different angles.
The Angel blocked three strikes with the Ecliptic Sword.
The other four connected.
Hunger bit into the Angel's left shoulder. The black blade consumed divine essence, and I felt it flowing into me—power and sin and grief compressed into pure fuel. The Angel's armor cracked. Light bled through.
Wrath struck the torso. First hit. The crimson blade carved a line of destruction across the black armor. Not deep. But the next strike would be deeper. And the one after that deeper still.
Joy caught the Angel's right arm. The purple blade didn't wound—it infected. The Angel's thousands of reaching hands suddenly wavered, confused, experiencing something they hadn't felt in eons. Pleasure. Wrong, twisted pleasure.
Nothing swept across the Angel's midsection. The void-black blade didn't cut flesh. It cut existence. A line of absolute absence appeared where the blade passed. Not a wound. A gap. A place where the Angel simply wasn't anymore.
The Angel screamed.
Not with voice. With essence. The sound was layered—thousands of voices crying out simultaneously. The Choir in the Cathedral responded, their distant hymn transforming into a wail of sympathetic agony.
"YOU DARE—"
The thousands of arms on the Angel's back lashed out. Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands. A forest of pale hands moving faster than thought, each one capable of erasing pain by erasing existence.
I spun. Seven swords became a sphere of cutting death around me. Truth showed me the gaps. Mercy severed connections. Sorrow slowed the assault. Hunger consumed anything that got too close.
But there were too many. Even with seven swords, even at eighty-five percent corruption, even with sins granting impossible power—
Three hands got through.
One touched my chest. One grazed my leg. One brushed my face.
Three points of contact. Three moments of erasure.
The corruption at those points vanished. Simply ceased to exist. My essence structure developed holes—not damaged, just absent. Parts of my power were removed from reality.
[ESSENCE DRAIN: 15%]
[CORRUPTION REGRESSING: 85% → 80%]
[WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]
"Ten seconds," I gasped.
The Angel pressed its advantage. The Ecliptic Sword swept in a horizontal arc that split the air itself. Not cutting. Dividing. Reality on one side. Absence on the other.
I brought all seven swords together. A shield of sins. The white blade struck.
The impact cratered the ground beneath my feet. Drove me to one knee. My arms screamed. The swords trembled.
But they held.
"You cannot win, Lost One. You wield my abandoned sins as weapons. But I am the original sinner. The first to fall. The one who carried these burdens for millennia. What makes you think fourteen days of corruption compares to fourteen centuries of guilt?"
The Angel's free hand rose. The eclipse pulsed. And the red sky bled.
Literally bled. Crimson liquid began raining from the eternal twilight. Not water. Not blood. Pure condensed judgment made liquid. Each drop sizzled when it hit the ground, erasing bone-dust on contact.
"Crimson Requiem: Drowning Light."
The rain intensified. A deluge of liquid judgment falling across the entire wasteland.
"Seven seconds."
I dismissed three swords. Mercy. Joy. Sorrow. Kept the combat trinity plus Nothing. Four blades. Four purposes.
Hunger to consume the rain's essence before it touched me.
Truth to see the true path between droplets.
Wrath building power with each raindrop destroyed.
Nothing to cut through the rain itself, creating gaps of absence.
I moved through the deluge like a dancer through fire. Four swords in constant motion. Deflecting. Consuming. Cutting. Building momentum.
The Angel watched. Calculated. Adjusted.
Then it did something I didn't expect.
It charged.
Not walked. Not appeared. Charged. The massive form closing distance with pure overwhelming force. The thousands of arms spread wide like wings of grasping salvation. The Ecliptic Sword held in both hands, ready to split me from existence.
"Four seconds."
I planted my feet. Dismissed Truth and Nothing. Manifested Wrath and Hunger in both hands. Black and red. Consumption and escalating violence.
The Angel was ten meters away. Five. Two—
I swung.
Both swords moving in perfect unison. A cross-slash that put every drop of my eighty percent corruption into the strike. Hunger consuming. Wrath on its seventh consecutive strike—damage multiplied by sixty-four times baseline.
The swords met the Angel's charge.
The collision broke reality.
Not metaphorically. The fabric of space itself tore. A jagged line of wrongness split the air between us—neither light nor darkness, just pure absence of existence. Through the tear, I caught glimpses of other places. Other worlds. Other Mirror Worlds collapsing and dying.
The Angel was thrown back. Actually thrown. Its massive form sailed through the air, crashed into three stone hands, obliterated them on impact, finally stopped fifty meters away.
I collapsed to both knees. All swords dissipated. The fifteen seconds were up.
[ESSENCE OVERLOAD ENDED]
[CORRUPTION REVERTING: 80% → 70%]
[CRITICAL ESSENCE DEPLETION: 45% REMAINING]
Blood poured from my nose. My ears. The corners of my eyes. Using all seven swords for fifteen seconds at seventy percent base corruption had nearly killed me.
But I'd done it. I'd wounded the Angel. Thrown it back. Proven that—
The Angel stood.
Slowly. Deliberately. The crack in its armor glowed with inner light. The wound from Nothing was closing—not healing, but filling with divine essence. The arms on its back multiplied. Thousands becoming tens of thousands.
"Impressive. You have wounded me. Something no one has accomplished in fourteen centuries. You have proven your conviction. Your strength. Your willingness to sacrifice everything."
The Angel raised the Ecliptic Sword. The blade split into seven copies, each one burning with white fire.
"But conviction is not enough. Strength is not enough. Sacrifice is not enough."
The eclipse pulsed faster. The red sky darkened. The rain stopped.
And in the silence that followed, I heard it.
Singing. But not the Choir. This was different. Older. Deeper. The Angel itself was singing. A hymn in a language that predated language. Words that reality itself remembered but humans had forgotten.
The bone-ground began to glow. Golden light bleeding up from beneath, creating patterns. Ritual circles. Divine geometry.
"To defeat me, you need what I needed to save the dying sun. What I lacked. What no one possesses."
The seven copies of the Ecliptic Sword began orbiting the Angel like my swords had orbited me.
"Grace."
Lucy's voice cut through the moment. Desperate. Terrified.
"Sidd! Put on the mask! You can't fight this at seventy percent!"
I looked at her. At the demon mask in her hands. At one hundred percent waiting to consume me.
Then I looked at the Angel. At seven divine swords. At power that had tried to save a dying sun and failed.
The eclipse overhead pulsed. Once. Twice. Three times.
Judgment was coming.
And I had to decide.
Monster in control? Or human who dies?