The sky had not known silence for months. It roared, split by the cries of metal. Each dawn opened like a fresh wound.

  Arthuria’s boots pressed into the ash of Vernesya’s ruined landscape as the legions of Brittania moved across what used to be the eastern ridge—a plain now split by the yawning chasm of the First Heaven Gate. In that place, the world had abandoned the laws of gravity and grace; the very ground shook, convulsing in a disorienting swirl of colorless light. Corpses floated upward, weightless as unanchored prayers, then fell back into the chaos of ash.

  The soldiers called it the Shattered Threshold. But to the holy priests of the Engine of Divinity, it carried a far darker name—The Mouth of Heaven’s Regret.

  Arthuria led the forward charge. Her armor, darkened by the frostlight’s touch, gleamed with shards of frozen brilliance; her sword trailed behind her, sending flickers of sparks through the dust-choked air. Behind her came ranks of infantry, their banners stitched with the heraldic lion of Brittania and the sigil of the Covenant Church, its once-gilded threads now dulled to a desolate green, stained by the unending fallout.

  “Maintain your formation,” her voice cut through the thick silence enveloping them, steady and firm. “If the ground hums, retreat. If it sings—run!”

  Without question, they followed her orders. None dared to challenge her authority since that fateful day in Eirefane when she had killed her own captain, the angels not descending to save, but to audit the living. The fissure had not simply cracked the earth—it had rewritten the very principles of divine loyalty.

  The sound of marching turned into a weary hymn, echoing the collective exhaustion that pressed down upon them.

  And then—absolute silence.

  A streak of green flame cut through the horizon, crashing beyond the hills with the finality of a cathedral's collapse. The soldiers came to a halt, squinting against the sudden brightness. Where the flame hit, an unnatural glow remained. It spread. Like veins of green glass, it crawled across the ground, its touch a whisper that wrapped around their senses.

  Arthuria raised her sword, its blade glinting dully in the damp air. The whispering deepened into a rhythmic pulse.

  Every heartbeat echoed back to her—a haunting chorus of life.

  In that moment, she felt it: the unmistakable presence of something vast, ancient, and curiously alive.

  The Green Star.

  Legends spoke of it not as just a meteor, but as a fallen soul—one of the Seven Seraphic Architects, the creators of the Heaven Gates before they collapsed under the burden of their own arcane mathematics. Now, that Architect had returned, not as a kind angel, but as a contagion.

  Arthuria stepped forward through the pale fog.

  Every breath she took felt heavier, as if she were inhaling the weight of centuries that had passed.

  The first fissure opened before them like a wide eye—its pupil vast and shimmering with liquid iron.

  “Commander,” the adjutant said urgently, “the readings are unstable! The mana fields are dropping below safe levels. Should we—”

  He trailed off, the tension heavy in the air.

  The fissure breathed out, a sound that echoed through the bones.

  Metallic rain fell upward—shards of burned halos, bits of swords, and molten feathers spun through the air. The sky itself cried crimson. And from that gaping wound, something moved—slowly, as if waking from an ancient slumber.

  What emerged was not light but a strange reflection.

  A figure of elegant form appeared, her body shrouded in mirrors of emerald glass, hair intricately woven from melted copper, eyes multifaceted like precious gems, reflecting countless realms at once. She represented both the divine and the decayed; half of her face remained molten, while the other half appeared sculpted from sorrow itself.

  The Green Star had taken on flesh.

  Arthuria felt a constriction in her throat.

  Every instinct screamed at her to kneel. Yet, she forced herself to stay upright, the tip of her blade touching the trembling ground.

  “You are…” her voice shook, a hint of doubt gnawing at her resolve, “…the remnant of Heaven?”

  The entity tilted her head, and when she spoke, her voice flowed through the air in haunting layers—one familiar, warm and human, another divine, radiant, and a final tone that felt completely foreign.

  “Remnant suggests an end. But I am not bound by such finality. I am the continuation of a tragedy.”

  The soldiers positioned behind Arthuria began to murmur prayers, but their words betrayed them—their syllables looping strangely, reversing with an unsettling rhythm. Some dropped to their knees, blood trickling from their ears, unable to withstand the sound.

  Arthuria clenched her jaw, determination hardening within her. She had seen angels before, yet this figure emanated a scent of rust and the burden of old sorrow.

  “What do you want?” she demanded, her voice steady despite the chaos surrounding her.

  “Want?” The Star’s lips curled into a wistful smile. “That word belongs to your world, not mine. I have an insatiable hunger for balance. But is hunger not a form of imbalance itself? Tell me, knight—how do you navigate such a contradiction?”

  Arthuria raised her sword high, the blade igniting with runes of flickering blue flame. “I will cut through this!”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Ah,” the Star said, approaching her with elegance. “The mortal belief: violence pretending to be reason. But I did not yield to the lure of war. I fell for longing itself; for the vision of perfection your kind received as a blessing from those angels who abandoned it.”

  The abyss behind her expanded, howls erupting from its depths—neither human nor divine, but a restless echo trapped in a twilight realm, as if ideas were being devoured by fire.

  Arthuria pressed onward. The air around her shimmered with discord: snow ignited, shadows emitted light. The presence of the Star distorted the battlefield, casting countless images of Arthuria—some praying, some bloodied, others already gone from this realm.

  She swung her sword.

  The Star made no attempt to block—she simply breathed.

  The blade stopped mid-swing, hanging in a flow of liquid time. Arthuria's breath turned to fine dust. Her heartbeat faded, an eternity wrapped in an inconceivably brief moment.

  “You seek salvation,” the Star whispered. “But do you even recall why the Heaven weeps iron? Because faith deteriorates faster than flesh, because perfection, once pursued, decays into despair.”

  Arthuria strained against the stillness with sheer will, breaking time’s hold. The sword surged once more, cutting through the veil of illusion. The clash sent a ripple through the chasm; shards of light fell like an ethereal rain.

  “You speak as if you are a deity in disguise,” she challenged.

  “And you wield a sword like a wound dressed in the guise of humanity.”

  The duel ignited, exploding forth with the fervor of a storm.

  With each strike, the air itself trembled. Runes shimmered and twisted chaotically, the ground buckled and the sky dripped forth lines of burning script. Arthuria’s armor struggled against the oppressive heat, seams creaking ominously, yet with each swing of her blade, her resolve sharpened—driven more by an unyielding spirit than by cold strategy.

  In the midst of the clash, realization struck her: the Star was not just attacking her; she was teaching a lesson.

  Every motion she made reflected Arthuria’s own, exuding an elegance that went beyond mere understanding, as if every flaw in her form was carefully crafted into a dance of grace. Each wound Arthuria dealt breathed life into a tune of correction, a harmonious rebuke.

  “Stop—” Arthuria gasped, cutting through a shimmering projection that dissipated into a mist of vibrant green. “What do you want me to learn?”

  “That Heaven's mercy was nothing but a lie.”

  The Star raised her hand with a fluid ease. From the crack, chains of vibrant green light surged forth, ensnaring the broken forms of angels, their wings grotesquely twisted, mouths open in silent plea, as if crying out for salvation.

  “They thought ascension would purify them. Instead, it stripped them of their will. They shed iron tears when they realized that to be perfect was to be void.”

  Arthuria knelt, the psychic chaos tearing at her mind. Her eyes were filled with fractals—faces of fallen angels blending into liquid steel, prayers distorted into cold calculations, stripped of their warmth.

  Images flickered in her mind—Zaahir, his body hollowed out, devoured by Auditor’s corruption; Irithya, her face stained with tears beneath the merciless, blood-red sun; and the sigil of the Voidwright, blazing against the horizon like a divine wound.

  “You’ve seen him,” Arthuria whispered, her voice barely audible.

  “The Voidwright?” The Star's tone was almost gentle, a soft touch against the heaviness of reality. “Yes. He is the echo that feasted on the Choir, a hunger Heaven has decided to overlook. And now…”

  She brought her fingers to her chest, and with a shard of green glass, a faint black pulse shimmered within. “…I can feel his rhythm beating inside me.”

  A jagged strike of lightning split the edge of the fissure.

  The ground shuddered beneath her, as if it aimed to reject her troubling insight.

  Arthuria rose again, her body trembling, words spilling from her lips like a prophecy.

  “If he returns, all worlds will fall.”

  “If he awakens, all worlds will recall the memories of their creation.”

  Her laughter, soft but eerie, carried the weight of a sorrowful truth.

  The Star advanced with a grace that seemed to warp the very air, rippling with a warmth tinged with sorrow. “Deliver this to your queen: Heaven no longer watches over you. It is now consuming. The angels, once harmonious, have fallen silent. They feed. Even your revered saints now taste the iron rain that falls.”

  Arthuria gathered her strength to strike, yet her hand wavered. The contagion surged through her veins—the painful burn of a flawed divinity.

  The Star's fingers brushed against Arthuria’s cheek, igniting a flood of visions—

  Cities turned to salt.

  The grand towers of Brittania crumbling into the sea.

  Rinoa kneeling beside Fitran’s still form, his void spilling forth like an endless eclipse.

  And a child, draped in green, weeping among the remnants of Heaven.

  In a fit of rage, Arthuria screamed, her weapon swinging wildly. The blade struck the Star's shoulder, scattering luminous green shards like ethereal pollen.

  “Good,” the Star replied, her voice a soft whisper. “Hold onto your fury. You will need it when Heaven begins to consume itself.”

  The fissure flickered, dimming as the Star began to dissolve, her fragments lifting into the air like green motes, dancing at the edge of existence.

  “When you wake, the heavens will wear a new face.”

  And just like that, she disappeared.

  Arthuria crumpled to her knees,

  as rain started to pour—heavy, metallic, tasting of iron and ash. The soldiers, lost in their stupor, emerged from their daze, eyes wide with dread.

  “What happened?” one of them whispered, fear trembling in his voice.

  Arthuria’s throat felt raw as she replied, “Heaven… has just bled.”

  From the fissure, a new wind stirred—its sound resonated like a heartbeat, echoing throughout the very fabric of existence. Somewhere deep in the north, amidst the crumbling remains of the Gamma Front, the black sun pulsed once, as if acknowledging an unseen call.

  Later that night.

  Arthuria settled beside the wreck of a transport crawler, her fingers trembling like leaves in a storm. She gazed into a shard of shattered armor, seeing her reflection staring back at her. Her eyes—once a vibrant blue—now shimmered with a disturbing hint of green.

  In the distance, the fissure still shimmered with an unsettling glow.

  But now, the aurora shifted, transforming before her.

  It no longer looked like delicate wings.

  It seemed instead like a gaping mouth, ready to consume.

  A messenger came closer, his figure wrapped in ash. “Commander,” he said, breathless. “Reports from the northern front—Terranova’s line has crumbled. The Voidwright's sigil now hovers ominously above the Spiralium fields.”

  Arthuria fell silent, her heartbeat still in sync with the Star’s unyielding rhythm.

  In her ears, Heaven continued, weeping iron.

  For the first time, she found herself wondering—

  Was Fitran consuming the divine, or was the divine starting to desire as he did?

  Slowly, she stood, fastening her cloak with careful intent, her voice barely piercing the roar of the storm.

  “Gather the Iron Choir,” she commanded, each word a stone thrown into the churning waters. “We march at dawn.”

  The soldiers snapped to attention, saluting, unaware that the dawn they awaited was not just the start of day—but a judgment.

  As the first light spilled over the jagged rifts of the earth, the rain changed into shards of crystal.

  And in that shining reflection, Arthuria saw it anew—

  The Green Star, a radiant smile blossoming on the horizon, softly whispered:

  “When Heaven sheds its tears of iron, the world will never forget the cost of holiness.”