Rebellion Against Heaven - Part 3

Chapter 3: Wrath of the Gods

The Tokyo sky was split in two.

A golden light descended like a heavenly curse, enveloping the city in a blinding glow. The impact was brutal: buildings exploded into pieces, asphalt opened into gigantic cracks, and cars flew away like broken toys. The air smelled of ozone and charred flesh.

At the center of the devastation, two figures emerged.

Aurion, the Supreme Guardian of Japan, hovered above the destruction with his cloak waving like the banner of an absolute king. His golden armor, soaked in the blood of countless heralds he had removed in passing, gleamed with an unholy light. His eyes were wells of unshakable judgment.

Beside him, Archangel, the Celestial Warrior, spread his wings of pure light, but his presence was far from comforting. The spear in his hand throbbed with an inhuman thirst. His face was unchanging, but his gaze contained a veiled emotion: contempt.

Ryuusei spat blood on the ground. His body, covered with deep cuts and burns, barely stood upright. Aiko, Black Herald's sword in hand, felt the weight of her own breath, each puff a reminder that they were alive... for now.

"They found us," Aiko whispered, her knuckles white on the hilt.

"No. They came for us. Ryuusei turned his head and spat out a broken tooth. Smiled. It was a broken smile.

Suddenly, a sickly crack ran through his jaw. Small bone fragments began to emerge from her gum, twisting like roots piercing her flesh. A sharp pain pierced him, as if a burning needle pierced his skull.

"Tch... Damn it..." he murmured, feeling the new tooth slowly snap into place, his mouth filling with the metallic taste of his own blood.

Despite the pain, her smile only grew wider.

Aurion uncrossed his arms, his voice sounding like thunder in the midst of the massacre.

"You criminals have murdered, you have destroyed a large part of this area, you have desecrated the order of this world. And now, justice has come for you.

Archangel swung his spear with an elegant, almost lazy movement.

"There is no redemption for you. Only purification through fire.

The air became unbearable. The pressure made Ryuusei's bones crack. But he smiled again, this time with a gleam of madness in his eye.

"Then come and take it.

The ground exploded.

Aurion vanished in the blink of an eye and appeared in front of Ryuusei. Before he could react, a fist shrouded in golden fire pierced through him. It was not a coup. It was an execution.

A burst of flesh and blood echoed through the air as the skin on his abdomen tore like wet paper. The impact shattered his ribs in a nauseating crack, fragmenting them into splinters that dug into his lungs and internal organs.

"What... shit... my stomach..." Ryuusei gasped, his voice barely a gurgling choked in the blood that flooded his windpipe.

Thick, red vomit erupted from his mouth as his body was thrown like a rag doll, leaving a trail of viscera and blood in the air. His back went through the first building, his bones breaking with each crash against the steel and concrete beams. Another impact. More blood. More fractures. His left arm bent at an impossible angle as his body pierced a third building, leaving a crimson crack in the walls, and his exposed insides could be seen trembling with each forced breath.

Ryususei's mangled body lay in the rubble, shaking spasmodically. Blood soaked the ground beneath him, forming a dense, dark puddle. His vision was a whirlwind of red and black, but he was not dead. Not yet.

Then, the regeneration began.

Excruciating pain pierced him like a thousand burning knives as his crushed organs began to rebuild. His lungs, perforated and collapsed, swelled again, pushing out the splinters of bone embedded in his flesh. She felt each of them tearing their tissues as they emerged, like burning needles digging into her.

Her abdomen contracted violently as her tattered intestine began to weave back. The torn muscles twisted like living snakes, closing the horrific wound in his torso. A new stomach formed with nauseating pulsations, bubbling with remnants of clotted blood and bile.

"Shit! He spat out a gasp as his spine, broken at several points, straightened up with a macabre creak. An electric pain ran down his back as each vertebra moved into place, forcing his body to arch in an involuntary spasm.

Then came the tooth. A stabbing pain pierced his gum as a new tusk emerged, slowly pushing the broken tooth away. He felt every millimeter tearing through the flesh, making his way through the blood and bone.

Eventually, his skin closed over the wounds, but he left behind a trail of blackened veins and still-burning scars. Ryuusei stood there, panting, his body still convulsing from the cracks of pain.

Aiko didn't even have time to scream before Archangel appeared behind her. A snap of his wing and Aiko's left shoulder exploded in a shower of blood and charred flesh.

"Aghh! Aiko's scream was drowned in her own blood as Archangel's spear pierced the ground where she stood an instant before.

He staggered back, his arm dangling like useless spoil, and swooped out with all that was left. His black sword whistled in the air, slicing through the wind with lethal precision.

But Archangel only raised his hand and caught the blade between his fingers.

Aiko felt a chill of sheer terror as the celestial being bowed his head, with a barely perceptible smile.

"Pathetic.

Before she could react, her light wing hit her with the force of a meteorite. His body was thrown like a broken doll, hitting the pavement with an impact that shattered the ground. His bones crunched like dry branches.

The pain was unbearable. Every nerve in her body burned with the divine purity that was corroding her from within.

In the distance, among the rubble and blood, Ryuusei stirred. His muscles were as good as new but he was not yet used to painful regeneration.

Aurion landed softly in front of him. Without a trace of effort, without a trace of doubt.

"You resist." But not enough.

Before he could react, Aurion pierced his chest with his bare hand.

Ryuusei felt his insides being crushed, his ribs cracking again with a grotesque crack, and internal organs being crushed in the process. A violent spasm swept through Ryuusei's body as he felt Aurion's fingers sinking into his ribcage, enveloping his still-beating heart.

"Look how he clings to life," Aurion murmured with a sadistic smile, squeezing the throbbing organ as if it were ripe fruit.

The pain was indescribable. Ryuusei tried to breathe, but a bubbling hiss escaped his throat; his lungs were perforated. An agonized gasp erupted from her mouth along with a rain of dark blood, splattering Aurion's face, who didn't even bother to wipe it off.

"Weak," he whispered, and with a brutal jerk, he tore out one of Ryuusei's lungs.

A wet, sickening sound filled the air as flesh tore apart and arteries ruptured, spreading blood in all directions. Ryuusei felt his chest empty, the cold of death seeping into his body as his vision blurred. But Aurion wasn't done.

He raised the still-warm lung in front of Ryuusei's face and slowly squeezed it, making it crackle and collapse like a deflating balloon. Blood and tissue fragments dripped between his fingers as life slipped away from the organ.

"Tell me, how does it feel to drown in your own blood?" Aurion whispered, dropping the shattered organ to the floor with a wet, repulsive sound.

Ryuusei's eyes blurred, his consciousness floating in the abyss. His body trembled, unable to process the pain that consumed him, his heart struggling to keep beating in his enemy's fist.

Ryuusei lay on the ground, his body a bloody ruin of his former self. His limbs trembled uncontrollably, an involuntary reflex of his nervous system collapsing in the face of trauma. Blood soaked the ground around him, forming a thick puddle that bubbled with each agonizing breath.

His eyes, once filled with fire and defiance, were now two glassy abysses of suffering. The right pupil trembled erratically, out of focus, while the left barely remained open, bloodshot and with the eyeball half protruding from its socket. A trickle of tears and blood ran down her cheek, mixing with the cold sweat that covered her skin.

His mouth was half-open, but not of his own volition. His jaw trembled, broken teeth dug into his broken tongue, and every attempt to breathe only caused him to choke on his own blood. A bubbly, raspy sound escaped from his throat with each gasp, like the rattle of a dying man.

His chest rose and fell erratically, but his left side barely moved. A huge blackened, smoky cavity marked the place where his organs had once been, and every slight movement caused new threads of blood and viscera to slide from the open wound.

The skin on his hands had turned ashy, his fingers twitching like the claws of a fresh corpse. His fingernails, broken and full of clotted blood, scratched the ground feebly in a desperate attempt to hold on to something, anything, lest he be dragged into the void of death.

But the worst were his eyes. Not just because of the pain or agony. There was something else in them: terror. Not the fear of death, but the horror of feeling his own body fail him, of realizing that his life was slipping like sand between his fingers.

The great Ryuusei, the unstoppable warrior, was reduced to a quivering mass of flesh, caught up in his own despair.

Aurion smiled with monstrous coldness as he leaned over Ryuusei's dying body. His fingers closed tightly around her jaw, and with a dry tug, he tore it from her face as if it were the lid of a broken box. A stream of dark blood gushed out in all directions, soaking Aurion's hands and covering the ground with pieces of shattered flesh and teeth.

Ryuusei tried to scream, but only gave a muffled gurgling sound. His tongue hung from his mutilated mouth, trembling spasmodically. His eyes, filled with pain and indescribable terror, searched desperately for something, anything, in the distorted vision he had left. But Aurion wasn't done.

"Don't look away. His voice was a cruel whisper.

With chilling accuracy, Aurion plunged two fingers into Ryuusei's eyes. The resistance of the eyeballs lasted only an instant before they exploded into a repulsive mixture of vitreous humor and blood. The eye socket was empty, a black hole of shattered flesh and foamy fluids. Ryuusei convulsed, his body betraying him in a spasm of pure suffering.

And then, Aurion decided to end the show.

Without letting go of his prey, his golden energy concentrated in his hands, building up until the air around him began to burn. Within a second, the explosion was unleashed from inside Ryuusei's body.

The torso swelled grotesquely before bursting into a shower of viscera and pulverized bones. The head, already shattered, disintegrated into a mass of charred flesh. The arms were torn to pieces, their fragments flying through the air like the remains of an infernal piñata. The sound of organs exploding and flesh tearing echoed like deafening thunder, blanketing everything with a thick spray of blood and charred remains.

Only Ryuusei's legs remained, standing for a brief moment before collapsing heavily among the pile of scorched remains.

Aurion looked at his masterpiece with a satisfied smile.

"This is my absolute power," Aurion whispered. The strength of a god on Earth.

— Now it's that girl's turn — Saying it coldly

Aiko, with tears of fury in her eyes, tried to move. Every breath was a dagger in his broken ribs, and his body trembled between helplessness and excruciating pain. His throat was burning, but he still shouted with all the strength he had left:

"RYUUSEI!"

Aurion looked away at her, with an expression of cold indifference. Then, he looked at Ryuusei's mangled remains, his mouth cracking a mocking smile.

"That was what it was called?" He muttered, taking one last look at his opponent's limp legs. Never mind. It was nothing more than a stubborn sack of meat.

"My companion Archangel and I will give you a quick death. You should feel honored. Aurion tilted his head, his tone dripping with disdain.

Archangel raised his celestial spear, which vibrated with pure and relentless energy. Aiko felt a chill run down her spine as she saw the silhouette of the warrior approaching. He knew his fate was sealed. But even in his agony, he did not look away. He would not allow his last image to be that of those monsters celebrating his victory.

Aiko's scream ignited something inside her.