Extra: Yandere Milfs Obsessed with me!

The world shrank to a cold burn. Loriel felt the broken cobblestones against her cheek, the taste of blood and dust on her tongue, but her fingers did not release the shaft. She heard the sound of her own lungs filling with fluid, a wet rattle that boded nothing good. The angel who had struck her stood over her, his blade still smoking, and he raised his arm for a second blow, this time aimed at her nape.

The gesture never finished. A hand, bony, covered in the amber blood of seraphim, fell upon the angel’s ankle. Konstantin, on his knees, his entrails half-exposed by the gaping wound, had found the strength to drag himself to the attacker. His fingers traced a rune in the void, a single one, a symbol of constraint that the Eastern monastery had taught novices to tame elementals. Red light coiled around the angel’s leg, and the angelic flesh began to sizzle, to split like parched earth under a leaden sun. The angel screamed, a shrill sound that pierced Loriel’s eardrums, and he collapsed, his blade clattering on the flagstones beside her.

Loriel could no longer move. Her legs were heavy, inert, as if they belonged to another creature. But she could still see. She saw Konstantin straighten up, one hand pressed to his stomach, the other extended toward the Gate. The three remaining angels, two wounded and one unharmed, rushed at him. Their black wings beat the air in rhythm, and their blades traced arcs of deadly light.

The old mage, his fingers trembling but his will intact, pressed his open palm against the marble of the Gate. The stone vibrated, groaned, then blazed with a radiance so powerful that Loriel had to close her eyes. Through her shut lids, she perceived the shadows of the angels throwing themselves upon him, their silhouettes shredded by the white light. She heard their cries, their wings tearing, their bodies striking the marble.

When she opened her eyes again, Konstantin was still standing, but his face was that of a living dead man. His skin was grey, his lips cracked, and his eyes, once so vividly blue, had become opaque, milky. He gripped the frame of the Gate with both hands, his fingers sunk into the incandescent stone, and he recited the words. His voice was no longer his own: it carried the echo of thousands of ancestors, monks who had sealed the first Gate, kings who had wept over the fall of celestial cities.

The surviving angels rose, their armour blackened, their feathers scorched. They no longer had the terrible beauty of celestial warriors: they were spectres, scavengers, their tattered wings trailing across the flagstones. One of them, the tallest, raised a twisted sword and drove it into Konstantin’s shoulder. The mage did not flinch. He continued reciting the words.

The other angel struck him in the flank, where the archangel’s wound still gaped. Konstantin staggered, but his fingers remained fused to the marble. The third angel struck him in the back, and a spray of blood burst from his lips.

And then, a whisper. Barely audible, but Loriel heard it as if the whole earth held its breath. Konstantin spoke the last word. His fingers loosened, his knees buckled, and he collapsed, his face turned toward the sky, his arms spread wide.

The Gate trembled. The incandescent marble became covered with fissures, then with veins of gold and silver, and the runes carved into the frame blazed with a radiance not of this world. The blinding light that had flooded the city retracted, sucked into the stone like water into parched earth. The angels, caught in the flow, began to scream, their wings disintegrating into a dust of grey ash, their bodies bending, twisting, reducing to nothing. One of them stretched a hand toward Loriel, but his fingers disintegrated before reaching her face. Another, the last, tried to fly away, but his wings were now only frameworks of calcined bone, and he collapsed at the mage’s feet, his yellow gaze fixed on the void with a final glimmer of incomprehension.

Silence fell upon the promontory like a leaden cloak, so sudden and so complete that Loriel believed for an instant she had lost her hearing. The clouds of dust settled slowly, veiling the bodies of the angels, the debris of the ballistae, the broken flagstones. The column of fire had died out, leaving only the Gate, now grey and cold, its runes extinguished, its surface smooth as an obsidian mirror.

Loriel moved forward, she did not know how, nor with what strength, but she crawled. Her elbows scraped against the stones, her belly traced a bloody furrow. She passed near the broken lance of a seraph, near the mangled body of a cherub, near the black wing of an angel still floating in a pool of amber blood. She crawled to Konstantin.

He was motionless, lying on his back, his two hands still raised, as if they still held the frame of the Gate. His wide-open eyes stared at the sky, but Loriel knew he could no longer see anything. His lips were parted, and a thin trickle of blood flowed from his mouth, mingled with a silvery glow, the last trace of the grimoire he had consumed to seal the breach.

"Konstantin," she breathed, her voice hoarse, broken.

He did not answer.

Loriel placed her hand on his chest. It was still warm. She parted the folds of his torn robe and uncovered the wound. It was deep, yes, but it no longer bled. The skin around it had healed, but in a strange way: it had become grey, like stone, and traversed by fine silver veins that barely pulsed.

"The seal...," Konstantin murmured, his voice so faint it was no more than a breath. "The Gate... is closed."

He turned his head toward her. His eyes, still milky, nevertheless seemed to see her. His heavy hand rose slowly, and his fingers came to rest on Loriel’s cheek.

He coughed, and a thread of silver light escaped his lips. The glow danced, hesitant, then rose toward the sky, ascending above the promontory like a shooting star in reverse.

"I am tired, little one," he breathed. "Let me rest a while..."

Loriel raised her head. The Gate stood before her, closed, silent. Its obsidian surface reflected the twilight sky, a sky of red and orange, where the last clouds of the battle were slowly vanishing. The runes, extinguished, were now only grooves barely visible in the stone, like ancient scars.

Loriel knelt, her hands resting on the cold marble of the Gate. She pressed her forehead against it.

"Rest, Konstantin," she murmured. "The Gate is closed."

Around her, the bodies of the angels were consuming into grey dust, carried away by the wind. The debris of the ballistae, the traces of the combat, everything faded in the waning light of day.