The black flames burned his body instantly. They reached his arms.

His hands.

He looked at his hands and watched them decay at the edges, watched the fingers lose their sharpness, watched the skin and the flesh and the bone beneath start to release themselves into nothing. It started to turn into ash as the black fire consumed his body.

Then he looked up at Amon.

His violet eyes, still glowing faintly with the last traces of the purple light that had been burning in them all throughout this fight, found Amon's black void eyes across the distance between them.

There was no anger on his face now. No composure. There was no pride. There was calculation.

There was only fear.

Real, undeniable, ancient fear. The fear of something that had existed for a very long time finally… completely… changing.

Amon looked back at him.

Still smiling.

Still quiet.

He was utterly certain.

The burning reached Kazriel's chest. His torso. His neck. The white feathers of his enormous wings began to release from their shafts one by one, burning with dark flames. Their ashes drifted briefly in the still air before dissolving before they could fall.

He opened his mouth. No sound came out.

The fire reached his face. His violet eyes held Amon's black ones for one final moment.

Then he was ash.

Then he was less than ash.

He was not really going to die. He had possessed another body to fight, yet while gazing at the boy, he felt fear.

Then the wind that was not blowing moved what remained of him through the gray air in slowly thinning wisps of nothing, dispersing and dimming and fading until there was no evidence remaining that Kazriel had ever stood in that place at all.

The black blazing spear, deprived of the body it had passed through, continued a short distance further before the dark fire guttered and went out, and the weapon slowly burned itself and turned into ash.

Then what remained was complete, absolute silence.

The gray sky hung above. The ruined ground stretched in every direction, cracked and broken and scarred from what had happened across it. The pit where Kazriel had landed. The craters from the shockwaves. The burn marks from the purple flames. The dark scorching where the shadow had spread and contracted.

Amon remained floating above it.

The darkness across his body was beginning to recede slowly, pulling back from his neck and jaw, the black veins fading gradually, his wings losing some of their smoky dark quality, but they still remained dark black. The veins on his skin still remained black.

His eyes were still like two empty voids. His left hand was empty. The dark fire was gone.

He stood there, breathing steadily in the wreckage of the fight, looking at the place where Kazriel had been.

Inside him, Vetaal said nothing for a long moment.

Then, very quietly, with something in his voice that was not easy to name, he finally spoke.

"You killed him, boy."

Amon did not respond immediately.

He looked at his left hand. The hand that had caught the blazing spear. The hand that had held dark fire and thrown it through the chest of an ancient being and watched him decay into nothing.

Then he closed his fingers slowly.

Opened them again.

And very quietly, to no one in particular, he said,

"I know."

He exhaled slowly.

His body was once again starting to feel exhaustion.

But just then he felt something.

Amon's whole body went rigid in mid-air.

Thump

Thump

Thump

Thump

His heart started to beat faster.

Fear crawled over all of his body. He couldn't understand why he was feeling like that.

What was the reason behind it? Sweat dropped from his forehead.

"V-Vetaal… what's this feeling… I am feeling like… someone is watching us… something far beyond us… something unknown…" he asked.

But he didn't get any reply.

Then Vetaal's heavy voice came. Slow and serious.

"It seems like… she finally decided to watch us…"

As Vetaal said that, Amon instantly understood who he meant.

He slowly raised his head to look at the gray sky above them.

To see what was there… that was watching them in silence. Yet its presence could be felt by Amon.

It was old, ancient, dangerous, and something that no one could understand.

Amon glanced at the gray sky.

There was nothing… for a while there was nothing.

Even Vetaal from inside Amon watched everything silently.

There was silence everywhere.

The only sound was that of wind flowing with a faint whistling sound.

Just then, a crack appeared in space above them. Not one, but two cracks.

Crack

The space started to break. The cracks widened from within. They spread, and inside them there was nothing.

The two cracks widened and formed the shape of two humongous eyes.

"That's…" Vetaal watched it with intense focus.

Was there something that was coming from that crack in space?

Another angel? Or something else?

Both fractured spaces were in the shape of eyes. Black, voidless, hollow eyes.

Realization soon dawned upon Vetaal.

"Amon, don't look!" he tried to take control of Amon's body to move him.

But Amon's pitch-black eyes were already staring at the two eye-like structures in the sky.

Just like his eyes, those two were empty and hollow.

It was like they were looking directly into Amon's eyes.

"Amon, they are eyes! Eyes of the Chaos Goddess—!"

Before he could complete his sentence or take control over Amon's body—

A sharp, intense pain shot through Amon's whole body.

"ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

His eyes were wide open. His mouth opened as a shrill scream left his throat.

Black blood started to stream down from both his eyes. From his mouth.

His brain ached painfully, as if someone was trying to shatter it with a massive hammer, striking again and again.

His entire being was going through unbearable pain as he looked at those eyes.

In time, Vetaal took control over Amon's body and moved it with all his strength in the direction of the tower.

Suddenly, Amon stopped screaming.

His body flew through the air. The black veins on Amon's body started to turn back to normal. His once pitch-black eyes turned blood red, with white sclera.

His wings turned dark blood red, while the blood inside his body that had changed into black soon returned to its normal color.

Vetaal tried his best to get closer to the tower as fast as possible.

"...w-w-what… was… that?" Amon asked in a painful and exhausted voice.

He couldn't understand what had just happened.

After staring at those eye-like things, he had gone blank. His whole body froze, and he couldn't move or hear anything.

Soon they were closer to the top of the tower, where the wall had been broken by Kazriel's punch.

From where Amon had fallen earlier, they were near.

But those two eyes above them kept looking at them.

And finally, they did what they had come for.

"Shit!"

Suddenly, Vetaal's control over Amon's body started to weaken. He was being pushed out of Amon's body.

'Dammit!' Vetaal cursed.

Using the last of his strength, Vetaal threw Amon's body toward the broken wall at the last moment.

Vetaal's form was forced out of Amon mid-air.

Instantly, the wings on Amon's body disappeared into thin air.

His height returned to normal.

"Amon! Wake up! Don't lose!"

Amon, who was dazed and on the verge of going unconscious, forced himself back to awareness.

He looked forward and saw the broken wall that led inside the tower. He was very closeer to it, his body still moving through the air.

But as he got closer, his speed slowed.

'No… no! I can't!'

Amon stretched his hand forward.

And he grabbed the edge of the broken wall.