The Archangel Loriel felt her heart break... Every pulse of Alexander’s aura, which she perceived through their lovers’ bond, was nothing more than a cry of agony and pure hatred. She could not resolve to let him die like this, betrayed by his own and condemned by his own. Ignoring Michael’s orders, she deployed her silver wings and cleaved through the ash-saturated air, heading toward the epicenter of the chaos.

When she touched the vitrified ground, the vision that presented itself to her was apocalyptic... Alexander Sulyvhan was no longer the man she loved; he had become an unleashed force of nature, a singularity of darkness and liquid silver. The Eclipse tattoo on his back burned with such intense glow that it seemed to consume his own skin, marking his status as a being cursed by the angels and banished from hell. His eyes, once a protective steel gray, were now wells of black void.

"Alexander! Stop!" she cried, her voice struggling to pierce the hiss of the aura.

Sulyvhan turned toward her. In his gaze, Loriel saw no recognition, only the reflection of her own betrayal. For him, she was no longer the woman who had held him in her arms under the command tent, but the final instrument of his fall.

"Still you..." growled Sulyvhan, his voice a resonance of several millennia of pain. "Have you come to see your work completed? Have you come to savor the blood of the man you sold?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pivoted, his chains of divine iron clashing against his tattered arms. He crossed his two twin blades.

< Art : Sundering Eclipse >

< First Movement : Crescent Moon >.

A blade of white aura, of molecular thinness, split the space with a speed that defied archangelic perception. Loriel had only time to raise her sword of light to parry the blow. The impact was devastating... The shock sent her crashing into a rocky wall, her wings breaking in a crunch of crushed crystal. The golden blood of the heavens flowed over her silver armor as she collapsed, the breath knocked out of her by the violence of the attack.

Meanwhile, the seven generals Draken, Stavenger, Pendragon and the others regrouped, their arcanic auras flickering after having suffered the backlash of the < Genesis >.

They were preparing to charge again to finish off their former master, taking advantage of his manifest exhaustion.

"General Draken! Lord Stavenger!" ordered Loriel as she rose with difficulty, her Archangel aura pulsing with desperate authority. "Withdraw! Leave this ravine immediately!"

Draken, his face bloodied, hesitated, his arcanic fire axe still in hand. "He is at the end of his strength, Archangel! This is the moment to eliminate him for good!"

"It is an order from Heaven!" thundered Loriel, injecting all the mana she had left into her voice. "Go and lead the survivors to the base. I will take care of finishing with him. I will be his end."

The generals, intimidated by the power emanating from her despite her wounds, eventually nodded. They disappeared into the mists of Tenebris, leaving Loriel alone facing the man she loved and whom she had just condemned to eternal silence.

The fight that followed was a macabre dance. Sulyvhan attacked with the rage of a wounded animal, multiplying the < Flux Slicers > and the < Repulsions >.

But Loriel was not trying to kill him. She used her magic to deflect his blows, absorbing the impacts to get closer to him. Every cut he inflicted on her was a bite into her soul. She was outraged, revolted that he could believe she had betrayed him out of ambition or servile loyalty to the Seraphs. She had done it so that he would not be pulverized by Michael, so that he would have a chance of survival, even in the shadows.

But in the clash of steel and aura, neither of them cleared up the misunderstanding. Words had become blades, and silence, a poison.

Sulyvhan eventually collapsed onto one knee, his vitality consumed by the excessive use of the < Genesis >. He planted his two swords into the ground to avoid falling, his head hanging lamentably. Loriel approached him, her own clothes in tatters, revealing the curve of her hips and the bite of the aura on her alabaster skin.

She did not kill him. She did not bring him back to Heaven.

Using her last reserves of divine mana, she began to incant a Transcendent-rank sealing spell. Silver runes rose from the ground, wrapping around Sulyvhan’s swords and his broken body.

"Forgive me, Alexander..." she murmured, her tears mingling with her golden blood. "In this cave, time will no longer reach you. You will be sealed, protected from Michael... Until the world is ready for your return."

Sulyvhan raised his head, a sneer of contempt on his lips as the sealing chains began to freeze him into the rock of the unknown cavern. "You condemn me to an eternity of emptiness and you ask for forgiveness? You really are the vilest of creatures, Loriel."

She did not answer. She turned her back, unable to bear his gaze a second longer. She left the cave as the seal closed, condemning the first Sovereign to fifteen hundred years of solitude.

However, in the Celestial Kingdom, the Seraphs were not fooled. Jophiel, adjusting her cold glasses, observed the flows of mana through her mirror of truth.

"She did not kill him," declared Jophiel in a voice devoid of emotion. "She hid the Sulyvhan variable in Tenebris."

Michael, the Seraph of Judgment, rose from his golden throne, his aura of divine fire igniting the amphitheater. "Archangel Loriel has failed in her mission. She has succumbed to the corruption of mortal flesh. Because of her, the Sulyvhan anomaly persists."

When Loriel presented herself before the council, she found no clemency.

"Loriel," began Michael, his voice resounding like a death knell. "You chose to protect a banished one rather than serve the Order. As a result, Heaven strips you of your divine nature."

"What?" she stammered, feeling a primitive terror invade her.

Just as Diavolo explained to Klein, mortal souls can become angels or demons according to their faith or their corruption, but an angel who betrays their nature becomes what is lowest: a mortal.

The punishment was atrocious. The Seraphs unleashed a discharge of pure arcanic mana that tore off Loriel’s wings. Every feather was burned, every particle of divinity was extracted from her veins in a cry of pain that tore through the heavens. She lost her eternal longevity, her overwhelming power, her rank... She kept only her memories, a poisoned burden destined to torture her.

Condemned to wander the surface of the mortal world, Loriel was banished to earth. She fell like a shooting star, crashing into the forests of Alexandria, stripped of everything except her name and her hatred for those who had created her.

Centuries passed. Loriel, under the identity of Amaera Castillon, climbed the ranks of human society through the force of her will and her occult knowledge. She became the vice-director of the Academy, masking her fallen nature under a mask of cynical ice. She waited. She desperately sought a way to regain her power or to free Alexander, or perhaps... to take revenge on the entire system. Even if she resented him too, because it was his fault that she had lost everything.

When she finally met Klein’s gaze, she felt a familiar resonance.

And by the essence of Sulyvhan... Klein was also Alexander, he now had his memories, felt his feelings...

And when he saw Amaera and everything she had suffered because of him... He could only resolve to hold her in his arms.