ONLINE: Blades of Eternity

"Took them long enough" Endless suddenly muttered in a low and chilling voice which made everyone present wondered what he meant.

Because of that, a silence spread across the fractured coliseum—deep, unnatural, sacred.

Then the heavens tore open.

A sudden crack rang out across the skies above Valoria Kingdom, like the splitting of an ancient seal. Every living thing—man, beast, and monster—felt it in their bones.

And then it came.

A majestic, blinding, holy white light poured down from the rift in the sky like a descending judgment. The light was pure, untainted, and overwhelming. It washed over the broken battlefield, stretching across the horizon, bathing even the shattered mountains and ruined cities beyond in its sacred glow.

It was divine.

And it was absolute.

Everyone—Reeves, Lila, Marel, General Cao, even the barely-conscious Kaelen and Kelvin—squinted and turned their faces, struggling to even breathe in the presence of that light. It wasn't just bright—it was dominating, like the gaze of gods watching from eternity. Mortals could not withstand it. Their instincts screamed submission.

Only one being stared unflinchingly at it.

Endless.

He stood still amidst the radiant storm, his naturally made black robe flapping in the divine wind, eyes behind the eerie mask locked on the rift above. He smirked.

"Well, well…" His voice echoed through the light like oil slipping into water. "The glorious Celestials have finally deemed us worthy of their presence. Two centuries or even more of silence, and you choose now to descend?"

He chuckled, low and mocking. "I must say, I'm touched."

Then, from the heart of the rift, four silhouettes emerged—no, not silhouettes—pillars of divinity.

They shone brighter than the sacred light itself, as if they were its source. Their very existence seemed to reject the world around them. Golden halos, wings of prism light, celestial garments laced with starfire and law, and forms so ethereal that even gods would lower their heads in reverence.

To the humans below, they were nearly impossible to perceive. Their figures constantly shimmered between reality and concept, like trying to gaze at the sun through clear water.

Kaelen tried to raise his head but found his neck frozen. His blood ran cold, not from fear—but from the sheer pressure of their divinity. His sacred armor, cracked and damaged, began disintegrating further just from their presence.

"Damn..... it"

Beside him, Kelvin groaned as the Unending Darkness domain flickered and then died, unable to exist alongside such holy power.

"Wh-what are they…?" Marel whispered, breathless.

Reeves dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth. "They're not just strong… they don't belong here. They're... too pure. Too ancient."

Lila's hands trembled violently. Her mana refused to respond.

General Cao had drawn his weapon, but he dared not lift it. Sweat rolled down his temple as his earth domain fractured into dust.

Then Endless's voice slithered in again.

"Celestials." He said the word as though it were a joke. "The so-called wardens of order. How noble you must feel, arriving just in time to salvage the mess you helped create."

The beings above did not respond.

But their presence spoke volumes.

The wind howled with truth.

Reality twisted with laws far beyond the comprehension of mankind.

And Kaelen's mind reeled. 'Celestials... the creators of the mana laws… the protectors of the Divine Balance… beings that haven't moved since the birth of the First Era... they're real? And now they're here?'

Then something worse occurred to him

'Wait.... what if they're not here to help.....'

He could feel it—deep down. The gravity of the situation. They didn't come as saviors.

They came as judges.

And they were here… because Endless was not supposed to exist.

Reeves, panting heavily, muttered hoarsely, "So the stories were really 100% accurate. The Eternal… who defied creation… the Celestials… who sealed him… They're all real…"

Kaelen didn't respond. He couldn't. His gaze was locked upward, his body paralyzed, his heart thundering.

And all the while, Endless's smirk grew wider beneath his mask.

"So... which of you will speak first, my radiant jailers? I've been waiting... for quite a while."

And so, a suffocating silence had stretched into something primordial, timeless—until it was shattered by a voice so vast, so overwhelming, that it seemed to come from within the minds of all who stood beneath the heavens.

"Endless… You are not a being fit to exist within the bounds of Aetheris. You are the mistake that defied form, law, and cycle. And today, we have come to pluck you out."

The words weren't loud. They didn't need to be. The voice—neither male nor female—carried finality, absolute judgment, like the tolling of a bell announcing the end of time. Every tree in the shattered landscape bent. Dust rose in arcs. Even the coliseum's ruins trembled.

Kaelen and the others couldn't see the speaker clearly, only that the Celestial who spoke radiated an aura so clean it burned to feel it. The very concept of sin seemed to recoil in its presence.

But Endless?

He smiled.

He had been expecting this.

"Of course, that's your verdict," he said, his voice filled with both venom and amusement. "You always feared what you couldn't understand… even after all these years."

As he spoke, something foreign—something utterly unnatural—began to stir.

Kaelen felt it first. It wasn't mana. It wasn't aura. It wasn't anything he could identify—only that it began to swirl, like a primordial fog, around Endless's figure. The space around him warped, subtly bending, as if the world itself struggled to comprehend what it was being asked to contain.

Lila gasped. "W-What is that…?"

"I don't know," Marel muttered. "But it's not from this world."

Endless raised one hand, palm open. "Then come. Deliver your verdict. Let's see if your judgment... holds true."

But it wasn't the Celestial who had spoken that moved.

Another did.

This one was larger, more robust than the others—like a figure carved from the foundations of law itself. His body glimmered with shifting runes and radiant armor crafted from celestial constellations. The moment he took a step forward, the entire kingdom quaked—not from force, but from the weight of the reality he brought with him.

Endless's swirling aura responded immediately, thickening like storm clouds ready to collapse the sky.

Reeves' eyes widened. "This is it! Everyone—get in formation!"

Marel's breathing quickened as he raised his hands, golden chains of protective magic surrounding the group.

"General!" he yelled.

"I'm already on it!" General Cao slammed his palm into the ground. The cracked battlefield trembled again as colossal slabs of earth rose, forming natural bulwarks in a massive dome around Kaelen and the rest.

Reeves barked out commands. "Everyone stay close! Don't scatter—if this gets any worse, none of us will survive alone!"

Kelvin, coughing blood, pressed his hand to his side, nodding grimly as the black remnants of his domain crackled around him.

Kaelen, however, stood frozen.

It wasn't the impending battle or Endless's growing presence that held his mind hostage.

It was the faint ding that echoed in his head—one only he could hear.

[System Notification]

[Mission Objective Update: Retrieve the sealed artifact Magic Pandora before judgment is fulfilled.]

[Warning: Mission will be automatically failed if not completed within 10 minutes.]

His heart thudded.

'Magic Pandora...? Now? In the middle of... this?'

'And why are they giving me a time limit now!?'

Kaelen's eyes darted across the battlefield as he thought. The world around him was unraveling into celestial warfare, and yet here he was—receiving a system command he hadn't expected.

But the system didn't care for timing. Or his injuries. Or the lives at stake.

[Second Notification]

[Time Remaining: 09:45]

[Failing this mission will result in loss of exclusive pathline: "Ascension Through Ruin."]

'Ascension Through Ruin? What in the world is that?' Kaelen thought with a confused look on his face.

But after seeing the situation he is in with the magic Pandora no where in sight....

Kaelen suddenly gritted his teeth.

'Damn it. I have to move—'

But before he could act, the robust Celestial raised his hand.

The air stilled. Even time seemed to hesitate.

And with a single movement, he vanished, reappearing directly in front of Endless with a shockwave that displaced clouds across the entire continent.

Endless was ready. His masked face tilted up, still smiling as the foreign aura thickened into claw-like tendrils around his form.

They didn't speak.

They didn't have to.

In the span of a blink, reality shattered around them as the two forces clashed—divine order versus unbound chaos.

And all Kaelen could think, even as the world broke open around him, was:

'Where the hell is this Magic Pandora?'

But unbeknownst to Kaelen and the other mortals, the celestials who spoke earlier suddenly turned their head and placed it on Kaelen and the sword he is currently holding.

Right after, they then turned to Kaelen as they felt the aura of the orb of chaos. And not a second later, they muttered.

'Seems like there are three things that needs to be plucked out of this world'