The air in the bar felt heavy. The lights above them flickered once, then again, as if the building itself reacted to something.
"Unlock Tier 1," Aron said.
A warning appeared in his vision, clear and red.
[Warning: Surrounding area will be damaged. Would you still like to Proceed?]
"Yes," Aron answered.
[Unlocking Tier 1.]
The men in the bar moved. They came forward with bats and hammers raised. For one second their speed looked normal. Then everything around them changed. Their arms and legs slowed down.
The swings they started took longer and longer to finish. Fingers stretched out in the air. Feet stayed in place mid-step. Every motion lost power until it stopped completely.
The whole room went quiet. Only Baal stayed the same. He did not slow down.
"You're breaking the rules, Slayer," Baal said. His voice stayed even, without any rise or fall. "You use your divinity in our dominion."
Aron's lips moved into a small curl. "I stopped caring about your shitty rules a long time ago." He raised one hand. "You know what, I won't make much of a mess here. My divinity is enough."
Baal's smile disappeared from his face.
"You will regret this, Slayer..." Baal lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. A red cape came out from nowhere and opened around him for less than a second. When the cape closed again, Baal was gone.
"...pussy," Aron said under his breath.
A new message appeared in his vision.
[Divinity release detected.]
Divinity was the power that belonged to angels. It was the same power used by those who lived in the higher places.
The Creator gave it as a gift to the ones who followed His orders exactly. It only went to those who served without question.
Aron had never received it as a gift. He had not earned it like the others. He was not like Adam, not like Eve, and not like Lilith. He had been born with divinity already inside him. It had been part of him from the first moment.
Maybe at the beginning the Creator had planned it as something good. Now Aron used it only as a tool. He used it to release pressure. He used it to strike back. He used it to end things.
The power left his body. It did not come out as a visible object or a flash of light. It worked like a rule that could not be broken. It was a law that acted on everything it touched.
The demons inside the bar felt it first. They had been hiding behind human faces. The power pulled at them from the inside.
It felt like gravity had flipped direction and now pushed everything toward the center of their own bodies. Their joints gave out.
Their chests pressed inward. Every part of them collapsed under the force. Bodies dropped to the floor. Some hit with a wet sound. Others landed with cracks of bone. Flesh and blood stayed where they fell.
The power did not touch the human customers. Humans remained the Creator's favorites. They stayed standing, but many of them screamed.
Some ran toward the doors. Others stood frozen and stared at the bodies on the ground.
Outside the bar, Uriel stood in the rain. She felt the release of power move through her body like a heavy vibration.
Her mouth opened. Angels had clear orders never to use this level of force inside a demonic territory. There were agreements and borders for exactly this reason.
"Aron," she said out loud. She watched people push their way out of the exit. Some ran into the street. "What... what have you done? You just started a war."
The divinity left the humans alone. They pushed past each other, shouting and crying. Some had blood on their clothes from the bodies that had fallen near them.
It was the kind of thing that stayed in a person's memory. Watching someone get crushed while standing right next to you changed how you saw the world.
When the last sound of the power faded, Aron walked out of the back room. Blood had splashed onto his boots and the bottom of his coat. One drop marked his left cheek.
He did not wipe it away. He walked straight to the car like the blood was ordinary water from the rain.
He opened the driver's door. It closed with a loud bang. He turned the key and the engine started.
Uriel's voice came sharp and tight from the passenger seat. "Do you know what... you... just... fucking... did?"
Aron pressed the gas pedal and the engine noise rose. "I thought angels weren't allowed to curse," he said. His tone stayed calm, almost like he was talking about the weather.
"We get a pass if the situation is dire," Uriel answered quietly. "Aron—this will ruin centuries of fragile peace. This will change everything. EVERYTHING!"
Aron kept his eyes on the road ahead. He did not turn to look at her. "Eve. I'm searching for Eve. I've been granted a new mission."
The inside of the car stayed silent for a long minute. Only the sound of the wipers and the rain filled the space.
"So the Lord truly did—" Uriel started to say. She stopped in the middle of the sentence. Her face showed a mix of feelings that were hard to read.
Aron drove without speeding up or slowing down too much. His hands stayed steady on the wheel. "Chaos is necessary to flush her out," he said. "I'll do here what I must."
Uriel's expression changed. Her jaw tightened. "You mean… you're going to—"
"Yes," Aron said. His voice carried no extra emotion.
"All the remaining forty-eight original demons?" Uriel asked. Her words came out almost too soft to hear.
"Yes."
Uriel did not speak again right away. She knew there was no point in arguing. Once Aron took on a mission, he finished it.
He did not stop because of cost. He did not stop because of damage. He did not stop because of rules. He completed the job.
"You already wiped out a quarter of them," Uriel said after a while.
"Then more will die until I get what I want," Aron answered. He said it the same way someone else might say they needed to buy milk on the way home.
Uriel stayed quiet. She understood what this meant, and she knew every important person in heaven understood it too. Michael, who led the main forces, would know.
The remaining stations that had once numbered seventy-two would know. Even Lucifer would hear about it soon enough.
When Aron accepted a mission, the outcome was fixed. He made it happen. The path might be bloody. The path might break long-standing agreements. But the result stayed the same.
Uriel swallowed once. "So it begins again. And I thought we might have decades of peace."
Aron gave no reply. He drove faster now. The car moved through the city streets while rain hit the windshield hard. He ignored red lights. He passed between groups of people walking on the sidewalks.
The car looked old and plain on the outside, like any ordinary vehicle someone might park on a side street. But it accelerated without hesitation and cut through traffic like it had a single purpose.
Less than ten minutes later, Aron stopped the car in front of a tall white building. It rose straight up into the night sky, clean lines and bright lights at every level.
The sign near the entrance read Angelic Tower in plain letters. This was the main headquarters for the brigade that handled operations on this side.
Uriel looked out the window. Her eyes widened. "This is—"
"He ran here," Aron said before she could finish.
"This… Baal? Why is a demon in our jurisdiction?"
Aron opened his door and stepped out. His boots left red prints on the wet curb. He threw the car keys toward the valet station without looking to see if anyone caught them.
Blood still marked his cheek and his clothes, but he did not try to clean it off.
Uriel got out on her side. She followed him toward the entrance. The automatic doors opened with a soft sound. Inside, the lobby was bright and quiet. Marble floors reflected the overhead lights.
A long desk sat at the far end with two people working behind it. They both looked up when Aron and Uriel entered.
One of the workers, a woman in a neat uniform, stood up quickly. "Sir, you can't—"
Aron kept walking. He did not slow down. "Baal came through here. Where did he go?"
The second worker, a man with short hair, glanced at the blood on Aron's boots and then at Uriel. "We need to call security."
Uriel raised her hand. "Stand down. This is official brigade business."
The workers looked at each other. They stayed behind the desk but did not try to block the way.
Aron moved past the lobby and headed for the elevators. He pressed the call button. The doors opened immediately. He stepped inside and Uriel followed. Aron pressed the button for the top floor.
While the elevator rose, Uriel spoke again. "If Baal is inside this building, it means the treaties are already broken from their side too. Or he has help from someone here."
Aron watched the numbers on the display change. "Doesn't matter. He ran. That tells me enough."
The elevator stopped at the highest level. The doors opened onto a wide hallway with windows on one side that looked out over the city. Rain streaked the glass. At the end of the hall stood a set of double doors marked Restricted Access.
Aron walked straight to them. He placed his hand on the handle. The lock clicked open without a key. He pushed the doors inward.
The room beyond was large and mostly empty. One wall held screens that showed feeds from cameras around the city. In the center stood Baal. He had his back to them at first.
When the doors opened, he turned around slowly. The red cape was gone. He wore a simple dark suit now.
"You really followed me here," Baal said. "Bold, even for you."
Aron stepped into the room. Uriel stayed near the doorway.
"You crossed the line first," Aron said. "Now I'm finishing what you started."
Baal smiled again, but it did not reach his eyes. "The original demons are not as easy to crush as the ones in that bar. We have survived longer than you have been alive."
Aron took another step forward. "Forty-eight left. I'll reduce the number until Eve shows herself. You can be the next one or you can tell me where she is."
Baal laughed once, short and dry. "You think she hides from you? She has her own plans. Always has."
Uriel spoke from the doorway. "Baal, if you are here without permission, heaven will treat this as an act of aggression."
Baal looked past Aron toward Uriel. "Heaven's rules stopped mattering the moment your Slayer used divinity in our territory. The peace was already dead. He just made the corpse obvious."