"Like I said," Fatimah repeated, her voice hard. "There is nothing to discuss. You are not welcome here. Leave."
Adam let out a long, slow breath. "Look, I didn’t come here to pick a fight with you. I just wanted to talk to the big guy. Ask a few things. Maybe turn this whole place inside out after. Then go bother his kid." He shrugged. "But you’re standing in the way. So I won’t say no."
He half-turned.
David straightened up, his body tense.
Annabeth rolled her neck once, a faint crack echoing.
Adam grinned at them. "Tear it down."
He pointed at Fatimah. "Keep her alive. I want her to see what happens."
Fatimah didn’t move.
Alex stepped forward. "You don’t need to send them. You could do this yourself."
"Where’s the fun in that?" Adam replied. "This is for her. You can’t shield her from everything."
"I can save her," Alex said, his voice low. "I always will. Clone her. Reset the moment. Rewrite the damage. I’ll find a way."
Adam’s chuckle was dry. "I know. That’s why I’m not worried." He looked at Annabeth. "Show me."
Annabeth took one step forward.
Heaven reacted.
The watchers, the silent guardians lining the halls, charged. Not with a roar, but with a sound like a thousand sheets of glass being struck.
David’s wrist lit up, a band of white light humming to life. "Okay," he muttered to himself, sweat on his brow. "Okay. Don’t freak out."
A column of solid light dropped around him, swallowing him whole.
For a second, there was just light.
Then it was gone.
Something else stood where David had been.
It was taller, broader, covered in seamless, shifting plates of hard light that looked like armor but moved like skin. A single, smooth visor covered where his face should be.
The first angel reached him, a blade of condensed starlight in its hand. It swung.
David—or what was now David—moved. He didn’t duck. He simply wasn’t there when the blade passed. He appeared beside the angel, his new arm—a blunt, heavy-looking construct of pure force—slammed into its side.
The angel didn’t cry out. It folded in half silently and dissolved into motes of fading light.
Another lunged. David’s arm shifted, the blunt end elongating, sharpening into a spear point. He drove it forward. The second angel vanished.
Annabeth, meanwhile, just lifted her hand.
The first wave of beings rushing toward her simply... stopped. Not frozen. It was like the idea of ’moving forward’ was cancelled. They strained against nothing.
She closed her fingers into a fist.
They didn’t explode. They didn’t bleed. They came apart like sand sculptures in a strong wind, their forms dissolving into harmless, glittering dust that vanished before it hit the ground.
A judge, a taller being with multiple wings and eyes, raised a hand and spoke a word that hurt the ears. Pillars of searing, purifying light crashed down from the high ceiling, aiming to pin Annabeth.
She kept walking. The light touched the space around her and bent, flowing harmlessly around an invisible bubble she carried with her. Each step she took seemed to rewrite the rules of the ground itself, the marble-like substance shimmering and changing color under her feet.
A spear of crystalline fire flew at her back.
David, grappling with three angels, saw it. He tore one angel apart with his hands, spun, and caught the spear out of the air. He stared at it for a half-second, laughed a single, surprised "Ha!", and hurled it back the way it came.
It shot through the ranks, and three more watchers were gone.
Another group surrounded Annabeth, trying to overwhelm her with their presence.
She looked at the circle of them, her expression bored. "No," she said, her voice quiet but absolute.
The word landed like a hammer. Their forms glitched, flickered, and unraveled like a badly written sentence being erased.
David jumped, landing with a force that cracked the pristine floor. He looked at his light-forged hands, turning them over. "This is insane," he breathed, awe in his voice.
An angel he hadn’t seen struck from his blind spot, a blade aimed for the joint in his new armor.
David started to turn, but he was too slow.
The blade never connected.
Annabeth hadn’t even looked back. She just raised two fingers, and the attacking angel collapsed inward on itself, compacting into a tiny, shining point of light that winked out.
David let out a shaky breath. "Thanks."
"Focus," was all she said.
More came. Hundreds. Then thousands. Pouring from archways, descending from the glowing heights. The air filled with the sound of wings and silent fury.
Annabeth finally stopped walking. She lifted both hands, palms facing the advancing tide.
Heaven bent.
It wasn’t an attack. It was a correction. The straight lines of the hallways warped. The light stuttered. The ground beneath the host didn’t split—it simply ceased to be continuous, leaving some stranded on isolated platforms that floated apart.
The judges tried to speak their decrees, to banish or bind. Their voices cut off mid-syllable, silenced by a deeper, quieter law.
David shifted again. His form grew larger, more brutal. He became less a man and more a weapon, a moving storm of hard light and kinetic force. He tore through their disciplined lines, ripping apart formations, moving with a speed that left after-images.
Annabeth took another step.
With that step, time in the immediate area stuttered. An angel mid-charge was there, then it was five feet back, confused. Another found its weapon turned to soft feathers in its hand.
Fatimah watched, her earlier composure gone. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open. "No," she whispered, not in command, but in disbelief. "This cannot be."
Adam laughed softly, a sound of genuine enjoyment.
Beside him, Kahdijah clapped her hands together lightly. "She’s adorable."
Alex didn’t move, but his eyes never left Annabeth, sharp and calculating, his whole body coiled like a spring ready to snap her out of existence at a millisecond’s notice.
Annabeth looked up at the vast, glowing ceiling, at the endless ranks still gathering.
"So this is heaven," she said, her voice carrying. "It’s... fragile."
A new judge descended. This one was different. Older. Its presence was heavy, making the very air thick and hard to breathe. It didn’t speak. It just looked at Annabeth, and reality itself seemed to press down on her.
Annabeth raised her hand to respond.
And paused.
Something answered her.
Not from the judge. From the place itself. From the foundations. A deep, resonant pressure, a consciousness so vast it made the earlier hosts seem like whispers.
The gentle light of heaven dimmed. The harmonious sounds faded into an expectant silence.
Adam’s smile widened into something predatory.
"Oh," he said, his voice full of dark amusement. "Now it’s listening."
High above, the perfect, glowing sky of the realm cracked.
"The host of Heaven assemble."