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They followed his gaze and saw them.

The Burning Angels.

Countless figures hovered in the molten sky, suspended like icons etched in divine glass.

Their wings blazed with eternal fire, feathers now embers.

Their halos, once symbols of holiness, had melted into jagged crowns of avarice and pride.

Blindfolded with golden veils, they didn't need eyes, their very presence judged.

Beautiful. Terrifying. Utterly still.

Until they weren't.

*CHIME*

A single, clear bell rang through the oppressive silence, soft, yet deafening in intent.

And then, they moved.

Wings ignited again, golden trails of flame cascading behind them like divine comets. They tilted their heads in perfect unison, facing downward...

Toward Taufik and his party.

"...Here we go," Basukhi growled, flashing his sharp teeth in a grin. A true beast born of war. "They finally moved"

"No sudden moves," Taufik muttered. His voice was calm, but firm. "Let me try something first"

He stepped forward into the open. His cloak rippled in the searing wind, his boots clicking against gold-tinted stone that hummed, like it was listening.

His voice rose, steady as a blade drawn in truth:

"We seek passage, not plunder. We have no desire for Mammon's riches. Let us through"

For a moment, nothing.

Then...

"LIARS!"

The angels' cry rang out like a cathedral collapsing. A choir of judgment and fury, unified in rage.

"Greed walks with you. Your hearts reek of hunger. You would profane the Hollow Citadel with your desire"

"Fuck diplomacy," Lembuswana muttered, grinning as his body began to shift, bones stretching, body growing.

He let the transformation begin, letting loose the power that earned him his title: The Beast of the End.

But the angels still did not strike.

Instead, the ground trembled.

The gold beneath them shifted, as if it were alive.

Cages erupted from the earth. Dozens. Then hundreds.

Towering, ornate, twisted like golden thrones built by a mad god.

And inside... souls.

Shriveled. Starved. Hollowed out by longing.

Each prisoner sat amidst towering piles of unreachable treasure, while coins rained down in slow, shimmering cascades, never ceasing.

Their hands were bound behind their backs, their mouths sewn shut with threads of platinum.

They could not eat.

They could not speak.

They could only watch.

And then... they laughed.

Not in joy.

Not in madness.

But in something worse: the laugh of those who had asked for everything... and were given too much.

"This is greed's heaven," Kl'lara whispered, gripping her spear tightly. "...And it's hell"

Then the angels spoke again, this time, their voices more intimate. Almost gentle.

"No being in this universe is free from Greed... not even the Creator. Greed wears many masks... Power. Hope. Will. And you... You carry all of them"

"Become what you already are," they said in one breath. "Or be unmade"

Spear of burning light lowered, not burning on holy Power, it's burning with Greed, each one pointed directly at Taufik, each angel moving in perfect synchrony, like extensions of a single divine mind.

Taufik exhaled slowly. He didn't flinch.

"…I thought," he said, "that since you were once angels, creatures famous for compassion, this might've been easier"

"Join us... or perish," the Burning Angels declared, their voices layered, echoing with celestial finality.

Their golden spears burned brighter, haloed wings flaring wide like righteous suns.

They took aim.

But they were not the first to move.

A roar tore through the skies, ancient, primal, devastating.

Lembuswana had completed his transformation. No longer the restrained guardian, he now towered as a titanic beast, his mane ablaze like molten obsidian, moved like tentacles as if having its own consciousness, a lion's face carved with the wrath of old gods.

His limbs, honed for predation, flexed with cosmic muscle.

From his back, wings unfurled, each beat shaking the air like thunder. His serpent-like tail, scaled and fanged, writhed with divine malice.

"We should've done this from the beginning," he growled, voice like cracking mountains.

Beside him, Basukhi stepped forward. His appearance was less chaotic, but no less terrifying.

The First Dragon, the Primal Flame, the Ancient Storm, the Frozen Tide, the Stoneborn Wrath, he was the living embodiment of the four prime elements.

His body shimmered with scales white as snow, his breath steaming with frost and fire.

"Let's cut their wings… and melt their crowns," he said, lightning arcing along his jaws.

He glanced at Taufik, his grin sharp as a blade forged in the heart of a star.

"We'll handle this"

Lembuswana added, with a low rumble of satisfaction:

"You and Kl'lara just sit back… and watch the fireworks"

Then, they moved.

Lembuswana, The Beast of the End, charged with the fury of extinction.

The very ground cracked and boiled beneath his steps. His roar shattered the first rank of angels, their divine forms trembling under his pressure.

Basukhi, the Dragon of the Beginning, followed in his wake, gliding like a storm given flesh. A spiral of fire, ice, wind, and earth swirled around him in a majestic vortex.

With each swing of his tail, an entire host of angels was scattered like embers in a hurricane.

The Burning Angels retaliated, unleashing spears of holy fire and hymns of ruin.

But they were ants biting titans.

One angel dove with a flaming lance, Lembuswana caught it in his jaws and crushed it with a snap, divine ichor exploding like nova-blood.

Another battalion soared overhead, Basukhi roared, summoning a meteor storm of molten stone, incinerating them mid-flight.

Their weapons were sacred, but they broke against scales older than memory.

Their burning wings were divine, but they burned in the winds of true dragons.

Their light was pure, pure of Greed, but it dimmed against the abyssal fury of Lembuswana's wrath.

The battle raged like a divine storm.

But it was not a war.

It was a massacre.

And when the last of the Burning Angels realized the futility of their resistance, they turned to their final act.

One by one, they began to merge, wings folding into wings, flames melding into a singular blaze, voices harmonizing into a singular scream.

Their forms coalesced into something immense. Glorious. Terrifying.

A single entity emerged, a Crowned Seraph, blazing with seven wings of fire and a hundred arms wielding weapons made of suns and scripture.

A face with no eyes.

A mouth that spoke in divine chords.

It was no longer an army.

It was a god.

And it had come to erase everything.

The very air around the Crowned Seraph trembled, as if creation itself hesitated before its presence. The molten earth beneath its feet turned to glass, the skies above wept ash, and time seemed to stagger under the weight of its existence.

This was no longer a creature of heaven nor hell, it was not a divine being who surrounded themselves in Greed... it was a manifestation of final judgment.

Its voice shattered the sound barrier as it sang.

"Judgment has come. Flesh shall be unmade. Flame shall be truth... From now on, none of you shall exist"

The hundred arms moved as one, each swing unleashing torrents of holy fire, blades made from condensed scripture, and radiant beams of annihilation that turned craters into voids.

Every movement was a sermon of destruction, a hymn of absolution.

And yet...

Lembuswana did not falter.

Basukhi did not bow.

The Beast of the End bared his lion's teeth and hurled himself into the onslaught.

Divine swords shattered on his horns. Holy fire turned to steam against his skin. He howled, not in pain, but in challenge, his roar cracking mountains, louder than the Seraph's song.

Basukhi rose with the calm fury of a primordial storm. He opened his maw, and out came not just flame, but ice, wind, and stone, a tempest of all the elements shaped by a will older than the stars.

The Crowned Seraph turned toward him, recognizing an equal, and launched forward.

The collision was cataclysmic.

Heavenly fire met elemental wrath.

A clash between a god born of desperate fusion and beasts born of ancient order.

Each strike between them shook the foundations of the layer, breaking the laws of physics, turning light into sound, and time into dust.

Suns bloomed and died in seconds.

Gravity fractured.

The horizon twisted into a spiral of chaos.

Yet within that maelstrom, two titans stood.

Lembuswana, charging like an unstoppable comet.

Basukhi, coiling and weaving through divine strikes with serpentine grace, retaliating with draconic devastation.

They fought not like beasts.

They fought like the end of all things.

And above them all, watching from a rift in the sky carved by the clash of divine forces, stood Taufik and Kl'lara.

The air around them trembled with the aftershocks of the battle below, scorched with light and shadow.

Still, Taufik's expression was unreadable, calm, sharp, calculating.

Kl'lara stood beside him, her ethereal robes swaying gently despite the chaos.

Her voice was hushed, reverent, tinged with disbelief.

"That Doll… Lembuswana… is this strong?" she whispered. "My Lord… how did you defeat Lembu and tame Basukhi into a companion?"

Taufik was silent for a moment, his gaze unwavering as he looked down at the remains of celestial fury.

He had always known.

Lembuswana… had never shown its true power before. What they saw today was only a glimpse, an echo of its true might.

Finally, he replied, almost casually.

"...How?" He exhaled. "Simple. Just become stronger than them. Easy, right?"

Kl'lara blinked, scoffing softly, clearly unsatisfied. "It's easy for you, my Lord. You're just… unreasonably strong"

Taufik shrugged with a faint smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Well, that's how I do things." He turned his gaze toward the ravaged land below. "But forget that. The battle's over. Let's go see what's left of the Hollow Citadel"

With that, the two descended.

What had once been a beacon of Greed's divine order was now a ruin of its excess.

The Hollow Citadel, once shining with impossible light, each pillar carved in gold, each altar echoing with hymns of false salvation, now lay cracked and crumbling beneath the weight of judgment.

Marble towers, once singing with the light of Mammon's glory, were shattered and scorched.

The golden streets, once smooth and immaculate, were now fractured veins of molten slag.

The fountains no longer poured wine or jewels, only smoke.

Holy flame still flickered along the edges of broken sanctums, not in victory, but in mourning.

Above it all, the wind whispered through hollow spires and empty thrones.

No prayers.

No choirs.

Only silence.

And even that silence felt… wrong.

The war had ended.

But peace had not returned.

Only silence.

And the silence, too, was uneasy.

....

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