Chapter 288: Chapter 287: A genius’s delima
"Azezal..."
Atlas’s voice was low, carrying a weariness that seemed to shake the stones beneath him.
The demon stilled. He had been entertaining thoughts unfit even for Hell’s ears, wicked schemes threading through his mind like serpents. But when his master called, all of that scattered like ash in the wind. He folded his vast wings back, their span cracking against the ruined arches above, and emptied his thoughts. There was no room for hesitation. Not when the one he had waited centuries for — no, lifetimes — had spoken.
{Yes, my guide, my lord...} His voice reverberated without sound, like iron dragged across the bones of the air. He bowed even as he floated, red bat like wings shedding sparks of crimson, bending before the man seated upon the last standing pillar of a palace long since broken.
Atlas did not look like a savior. His clothes hung torn, soaked in soot and blood. His skin bore the grime of cities burned and kingdoms undone. Yet he sat upright, balanced on ruin as though it were a throne, and in his stillness there was an authority Azezal could not deny.
"...You call me prophet, you call me demon king, you call me harbinger of chaos." Atlas’s words were slow, carved with bitterness. His gaze did not leave the horizon, where the ashes of Titus still smoldered. "In most times, I would disregard your endless naming. But the last one... perhaps I cannot reject that one."
Azezal’s lips curled, revealing teeth too sharp to belong to any angelic form. His eyes followed Atlas’s gaze. The kingdom below was nothing but smoke and rubble. Collapsed towers clawed upward like broken ribs. Streets once filled with laughter lay drowned in silence. And through it all, chaos reigned — the true hymn of their coming age.
{If you call me here to make me soothe your guilt, my lord, then forgive me. I am the wrong tongue for comfort.} His grin widened, wings flexing as embers scattered down into the abyss. {For me... this chaos, this ruin, this screaming silence — it is proof. Proof that your prophet has arrived, proof that the chosen stands at last among mortals. The world will remember this fire not as grief, but as revelation.}
Atlas’s jaw clenched. He wanted to be angry at the words, but something inside him quivered instead — a strange recognition.
"...Still yapping about your prophet," he muttered, rubbing soot from his brow. "The Guide, the avatar of the one-below-all, the shadow, the chosen — so many names. Fix on one, will you? Even the gods will get confused at this rate."
{Names are faces, my lord. Masks the truth wears so mortals may endure to look upon it. Whether Guide, Avatar, Prophet, or Harbinger, it is all the same flame. And you —} Azezal’s wings snapped outward, blotting what remained of the sky, {—are its bearer.}
Atlas tilted his head, eyes narrowing. He wanted to laugh, but instead, a sharp ache twisted in his chest. "You see the ruin of Titus and call it proof. Here I sit, suffocating in guilt, wondering how many children burned because of my hand, and you tell me this is nothing but a dust storm before the true hurricane."
{It is so.}
"...Then tell me." Atlas’s voice broke slightly, like stone fissuring under too much weight. "What is this ’Guide’ of yours, when all he ever does is destroy? What kind of savior is a butcher?"
Azezal’s smile gleamed. {Ahh... you skip too quickly to endings, my lord. Destruction is never the last note. It is the silence before the song. The prophecy tells of you — reincarnating, rising, each time bearing chaos, until—}
"Until what?"
The voice that cut in was sharp, feminine, laced with both mockery and care.
"Until you restart the world, tear apart its laws, and free the damned from the torture called life," Aurora said. She drifted closer, her white robes singed at the hems, her book of the damned clutched in her hand. She tossed it at him with a casual flick, the pages hissing like serpents as it struck his lap. "Don’t you read your own scriptures? And stop..."
Atlas turned, one brow raised. "Stop what?"
She frowned, lips tightening in that familiar way. "Ignoring me."
A long pause. Atlas studied her — the faint glow at her temples, the stubborn crease at her brow, the way she never asked directly for what she wanted.
"...For reasons that, I think, are well founded," he said at last.
Aurora huffed, about to speak again, then stopped. She often did that. Words clogged her throat until silence choked her. Atlas knew this pattern, had seen it too many times. It wasn’t pride alone. It was the flaw of all geniuses. They never learned how to ask. Always solving, always climbing, until they struck a ceiling too high to shatter. And when they finally needed help, they found themselves paralyzed, unable to speak the words aloud.
He knew. Because once, he had been the same.
His eyes shifted back to the city — smoke curling from streets where laughter once lived. Azezal was still murmuring praises to the damned book, each line spoken like prayer, as though chaos itself were liturgy. And beside him, Aurora pouted, hoping he would guess what she wanted without her saying it.
Atlas exhaled slowly.
"Aurora."
Her head lifted, third eye blinking faintly. "Hmm?"
"Don’t think like you are at the top. Think for a moment as if you are at the bottom."
She blinked, baffled. "...But I am always at the top." She said it flatly, as if it were as obvious as breathing.
"That." He pointed at her, the corner of his mouth twitching. "That’s your problem right now."
Her lips pursed. She tilted her head, recalling something faint. "...I think Master said the same thing once."
"And what did you do then?"
"...Ignored it and went to Hell," she admitted.
Atlas groaned, burying his face in his hands. "For a woman centuries old, wisdom rarely comes to you, does it?"
Tong!
Her staff tapped his skull. "I don’t need wisdom, Atlas. I need power. Enough power to shield you, to shield those who cling to the bottom — where you always insist on staying."
"...I give up." He stood, brushing dust from his shoulders. "You know what, I’m going to the meeting."
Aurora’s lips curved into a sly smile. "Yes. Let’s go."
He squinted at her. "What changed your mind all of a sudden?"
"Hahaha..." She laughed, wicked and amused. "Because somebody took my bait."
"...Bait?"
"Galiath," she said, voice humming with triumph. "Now he will be in my hands."
Atlas frowned. "You make less sense with every passing day."
Aurora’s eyes shimmered, her half-formed spell unraveling. The telepathic tether she had been sustaining dissolved like mist. "A century ago, I offered him an essence. A lure. Galiath has always been hungry for hosts. I warned him never to use it... but weakness breeds desperation. Seeing me falter, he consumed it."
Atlas shook his head. "You’re speaking in riddles."
Her lips curved sharper, her third eye splitting open fully, a vertical wound of light on her forehead. "Soon you will understand."
Atlas stared into that eye and felt a chill sink into him.