Chapter Four: Godfall
The Gulf wasn’t a coast anymore.
It was a wound.
Aetherstorms tore across the shattered landscape, turning air into blade, sand into fire. The ocean pulsed like a dying thing, glowing with toxic light. And in the distance—rising from the broken shoreline like the spine of some buried titan—was The Gate.
It wasn’t a door.
It was a monolith—obsidian and cracked, pulsing with glyphs older than language. Static bled from its surface. Around it, the world bent. Nothing survived long near the Gate.
Except Kael.
They came for him before he reached the base—Gate Warden beasts, born from the system’s final firewall. Crawling things of bone and logic. Seraphic monsters coded to kill anomalies.
Kael killed them all.
He unleashed the Chainfire Disc—turning one into flaming pieces. He blinked through the others with Voidstep, cutting them down with Reaver Slash while Bloodhound, his new summon, tore through ranks like a wolf made of smoke and fang.
[AETHER: 40/100… 25/100… 10/100]
His deck bled dry.
His body screamed.
He didn’t stop.
Evie clung to his back the whole way, sobbing, begging him to stop.
“I can’t,” Kael whispered, dragging himself up the stone incline. “My family’s behind that Gate.”
And then—
A voice.
“Kael?”
He stopped cold.
The Gate shimmered.
And from its fractured surface stepped a girl—taller now, bruised, bloodied—but unmistakable.
Isla.
“Isla!” Kael dropped to his knees, arms wide as she sprinted into them. “God, I thought you were—”
“We made it,” she gasped. “Dad… Mom… Ember. We’re alive. We found shelter when the storm started. The Gate kept the monsters out. Something… something in the system didn’t register us here.”
Evie burst into tears as Isla hugged her, too.
“Thank you for keeping him human,” Isla whispered.
Kael stood slowly, trembling.
Nolan Mercer—his father—emerged from the shadows next, cradling a Relic rifle. Liora, her face lined with tears. Ember, who clung to her mother like a child too brave to cry.
The family was whole.
Just for a moment.
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Then the sky turned gold.
And Kael knew what came next.
It descended without sound.
The Null Angel.
Bathed in light, wings spread wide, spear of law forming in its hands.
The Gate pulsed behind Kael’s family—glowing like a dying star.
Target locked: ANOMALY MERCER
Priority: TERMINATE
Kael looked at his sisters. At Evie. At Isla’s hand in Ember’s hair. At his father’s trembling mouth. At the tear in his mother’s eye.
And then he stepped forward.
Alone.
“Take them,” he told Isla. “Get through the Gate. Hide on the other side. Whatever’s there—it’s safer than here.”
“Kael, no,” Isla cried. “Don’t—”
“I made it this far for you,” he said, voice breaking. “Now let me finish it.”
He stepped into the light.
Cards burned in his chest. The Glitchborn flared to life behind him, full and terrible. His deck ignited—Voidstep, Chainfire, Gravepulse, all ready. His body bled Aether.
And the Null Angel raised its spear.
Kael raised his blade.
No backup.
No mercy.
No second chances.
This was him against the system.
Against the god that ruled the ruins.
He took one breath. One final look at the people he loved.
And charged.
***
The first blow shattered the sky.
Kael slammed into the Null Angel mid-strike, his Glitchborn flaring behind him like a shadow made of storm. Their weapons met—spear and blade—and the impact cracked reality. Air screamed. Aether split apart. Every window in a hundred-mile radius blew out.
[AETHER: 70/100 → 40/100]
Kael was fast. Faster than he’d ever moved.
The Voidstep activated mid-strike—phasing him past the Angel’s counter, slashing through its golden armor. Sparks exploded from the wound. Not blood. Code.
But the Angel didn’t fall.
It turned.
And everything around them died.
The ground rippled as the Angel launched. Glyphs spun in the air like divine sigils. The spear fractured into seven—light made sharp—and rained down like a holy meteor swarm.
Kael activated Glass Ward—his only defense card.
[CARD ACTIVATED: GLASS WARD | Duration 1.2 sec]
[AETHER: 18/100]
The shield shattered as the spears struck. One grazed his ribs—fire, pain, blood. Another seared past his face, slicing into his cheek and down to bone.
He roared and blinked again, rolling across the broken platform at the Gate’s base.
The Angel descended.
Silent. Judgment incarnate.
Above, beyond the Gate—
Isla held Ember tight as the world outside pulsed with war. The Gate’s interior flickered, half-formed. Their mother sobbed. Nolan stood in silence.
Evie stared back through the crack in the stone. “He’s going to die…”
Isla said nothing.
Because part of her believed it, too.
Outside—
Kael coughed blood.
The Null Angel stood above him, blade to his chest.
“You are a fracture,” it said—voice like thunder trapped in a cathedral. “You are an error. You were not chosen. You are not meant.”
Kael smiled through blood. “That’s what makes me dangerous.”
The card in his hand exploded.
Not physically. Systemically.
The Glitchborn screamed into existence—no longer just summoned… but merging.
[UNAUTHORIZED FUSION INITIATED]
[GLITCHBORN ENTITY + HOST = TRUE SYNC]
[ERROR: CLASSIFIED PROTOCOL AWAKENED]
Kael stood.
But he wasn’t just Kael anymore.
His veins pulsed with static. His body shimmered with glitch-code. Aether bled from his eyes.
He had become the glitch.
And the system recoiled.
STATUS: ASCENDED ANOMALY – CLASS UNKNOWN
WARNING: NULL ANGEL COMPROMISED
The Angel lunged.
Kael caught the spear with one hand.
It stopped.
His other hand ignited with Gravepulse energy—he ripped the spear apart, reversed the kinetic blast, and slammed the Angel backward through the sky. The shockwave turned buildings to glass dust.
[AETHER: 200/???]
The Angel roared—its form unraveling. Divine code peeled away, revealing what hid underneath: a skeleton of script and soul, screaming in machine agony.
Kael flew.
Yes—flew. His body flickering like corrupted light, he shot into the sky and collided with the Angel mid-air. Fist to face. Blade to core.
Strike after strike after strike.
Each hit warped the world.
Each hit screamed defiance.
And the final one?
Shattered the Angel.
It fell—like a sun extinguished.
And Kael descended behind it, trailing fire, smoke, and silence.
Below—
The family watched the light fade.
The Gate pulsed once. Then again.
And Kael stepped through the mist.
Bleeding. Burned. Glowing with residual power.
But alive.
Evie ran to him. Isla ran to him. Ember sobbed into his side. Nolan grabbed his shoulder.
Kael looked at them all. Then collapsed to his knees.
“I’m still here,” he whispered. “I didn’t break.”
The Gate’s glyphs pulsed again.
Not red. Not gold.
Blue.
And the system—watching through unseen eyes—whispered a new classification:
Kael Mercer – Status: Undefined.
Title Earned: Godbreaker.
