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TW: Blood and dismemberment

The bodies of his fallen people scattered across the field, painting the ground crimson as if it were a canvas. Though there was another mixture amongst them; silver. The blood of their enemies. 

Although the war had been going on for a week, it only took the Heavenly Realm to send thirty of their soldiers and an hour to almost completely massacre them, leaving only two of their kind left, and soon only one would be left.

His people never stood a chance. They weren't warriors or soldiers to begin with. They never raised a weapon in their entire lives either. They were merely farmers, woodcutters, fishermen, and so forth. They were just your ordinary folk except for the half blood that runs within their veins.

Nephilim are beings that weren't supposed to exist: a half-angel and human.

A mistake had been made a long time ago that resulted in the birth of the Nephilim. The angels that were involved, also known as the Grigoris, were punished for their crimes of procreating with mortal women. However, for their offspring, God didn't think it was fair to punish their children as well, and so an oath was made between the Nephilims and God.

The Nephilim are allowed to live amongst humans, but they can never lay a hand on them. If the Nephilims were to break the oath, they would be deemed as enemies of Heaven and be hunted down.

The Half-Bloods lived quietly, hidden far from human society; they built themselves a community and never once used their powers they inherited from their angelic parent, simply because they didn't have the need to. Since then, they've never had any contact with mortals and are oblivious, ignorant even of the ever-changing world. Therefore, they weren't aware of how cruel and evil humans can be.

With that in mind, when a white-clothed woman 'accidentally' stumbled upon their abode, they welcomed her with open arms, excited and curious to interact with a human for the first time.

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He could be mistaken for a corpse. His body was tainted with bruises and cuts. He was at his limit and could barely keep his eyes open. He had been on the battlefield for days and had no time to treat his wounds. As a result, his wings have become a burden to him; they were badly injured and crawling with maggots, feasting on his flesh and gauging themselves as if their food source would be taken away at any moment.

His wings, which were once brilliant white, were now rotting to a dark brown color. It was a wonder it hadn't torn off his back by now. 

At the start of the war, his heterochromia eyes, both gray but with edges of brown on the left, showed determination and spirit, but now replaced with despair and desperation as he watched his comrade's life slowly fade in his arms.

When the Nephilim waged this war against the humans, they knew the Heavenly Realm would interfere since they had broken their oath to God but because of what the humans had done to them, that oath was regarded as shit.

Enraged and fueled with grief—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth— they wanted revenge and justice. Even if it meant their kind would cease to exist, and so the Nephilims conjured their powers for the first time, raised a weapon for the first time, and slaughtered as many humans as they could before Heaven deployed their warriors.

"Eden..?" She said his name in a soft mutter. Despite looking directly at him, her azure eyes weren't focused. The blood beneath her continued to pool, her breathing was ragged. She had shielded him from getting stabbed by the last wave of angels. "Did you get hurt?"

Iris was the embodiment of joy in their community. A mother of three with a loving husband, she loved to sing and dance, especially under the rain as she prayed for their crops to grow. Always cheerful and shining with happiness until her children were brutally killed alongside her husband because she refused to have her hand severed when the humans were curious whether she could regenerate it and she ended up injuring multiple of them.

As punishment, the humans brought over her husband and children; Iris was restrained to a chair and without hesitation, they shot her loved ones in the head with an unfamiliar weapon called a 'gun'. 

However, they didn't end there.

Her deafening screams when the humans began the dismemberment of their lifeless bodies will forever be ingrained in his mind.

Unfortunately, one of her children survived the shot and was ruthlessly mutilated alive. The little girl was screaming as they sawed her, begging for her mother to help her whilst Iris was pinned down and her head was held steady to be forced to witness the barbarity.

Eden held her close. "I'm unharmed." as those words left his lips, the sound of trumpets roared across the sky once more. Eden looked up. More armored Angels were descending from the clouds and approaching fast in their direction.

'We've lost.' He thought. There was no way both of them could defeat all of them in their current state.

While he considered what action to take, his eyes widened when he saw a familiar face among the Angels. Eden had admired him since he was a child because he regarded him as a hero, saw him as a brother and mentor but when he went down to his knees and begged to be saved and rescued by him, his prayers were ignored because humans were more important to him.

He is God's strongest warrior, Archangel Mikhail.

Eden turned his attention back to Iris, only to find she had passed out, most likely due to blood loss. He carefully laid her down and stood up to face the Angels. The Angels readied their weapons but Mikhail raised his hand as a silent command to lower them, and they looked at him in puzzlement but obeyed their commander.

Mikhail didn't change a bit. His light green eyes carried the same intensity in them as if there's a war raging inside but the aura that surrounded him was gentle. He didn't wear armor but instead wore a simple chiton and sandals. He looked Eden up and down, a worried expression plastered on his face, and he spoke, "Let's just stop this. Right now."

Eden blinked in disbelief.

"Stop this? You think this is a child's conflict, Archangel?" Eden laughed mockingly but went silent when Mikhail looked serious. 

"Haa .. seriously you angels are so blinded by your love for humans that it's disgusting."

Offended, the other angels immediately stepped forward but Mikhail stopped them once more,

"Eden, I didn't come here to fight. I will talk with the others and give you leniency-"

"I'm about to be the last of my kind." Eden interrupted him, his eyes filled with venom. "What makes you think I give a fuck?"

Mikhail paused for a moment, stunned by his choice of word and his jaw tightened. "Eden, I have known you since you were a child. You must realize you people have killed hundreds of people in a span of four days."

Because Mikhail was caught off guard, Eden managed to close their distance and he raised his sword, almost meeting with Mikhail's chest if he didn't dodge it in time. 

Eden's body swayed, as he tried to steady himself and he fought to keep his vision clear since his opponent was now the Archangel that defeated the devil and casted him down to hell.

"Just mere hundreds? That's not enough for the pain we endure."

The Archangel's reaction was shocked, to say the least. He never imagined Eden would try to harm him. Mikhail actually cared deeply for the boy, but he couldn't interfere when the Nephilim were held captive and experimented on because it involved humans. 

That being said, he thought that the Nephilim could just tolerate it until he figured something out. They share the same blood after all, but thinking about it now, their actions and anger reminded him that they are also of human descent. 

"Eden, I'm sorry for failing all of you." Mikhail said as he summoned his sword to his side in a blinding white light, "And I'm sorry for everything that I'm about to do."

Eden charged once more. Mikhail swung his sword at him but Eden made a hard sidestep immediately, taking him by surprise again and willed his sword to change into a bow. 

Although it only took seconds for Mikhail to raise his sword again, it was enough time for him to stretch the string as a silver arrow automatically appeared and he fired into the archangel's abdomen, just as his bow turned back into a sword and clashed against Mikhail's but,

Despite being pierced by the bow in his abdomen, Mikhail didn't even flinch at the pain and the weight of his sword was as if Eden was the one carrying the weight of the sky instead of Atlas. Eden gritted his teeth when the Archangel started to swing his sword repeatedly against his.

Eden was desperate to find an opening but he was exhausted. His hands had begun to shake.

Mikhail took notice and took this opportunity to reach out his hand and took a grip on the boy's wings before mercilessly kicking him at his side as the sound of ripping flesh from his back resounded followed by screams of agony. 

Eden screamed until his throat felt dry and raw, his eyes tearing up at the excruciating pain; it felt there were millions of fire ants biting his back all at once. He watched Mikhail tossed his maggot infested wings to the side. 

The Angels shifted uncomfortably at the scene. Their wings were special to them after all. It has been with them since birth, to lose them meant losing part of yourself as well. 

The boy struggled to get back on his feet. Even when he managed to stand up on both feet, he would immediately fall back down. Mikhail decided that this was enough.

He pulled out the arrow from his abdomen, the wound healed up almost instantly. Mikhail was about to approach Eden when he felt a tight grip around his ankle. He looked down to find a pair of dying azure eyes looking back at him. 

"I won't let you harm that child anymore, Mikhail." Her voice was weak but held conviction. Thunder echoed the sky as dark clouds approached in unusual speed and before long rain had begun to fall heavily.

Mikhail knew it was her doing but he didn't see the point of it until he felt a chill on his skin and all of the sudden a memory passed through his mind. He immediately turned towards the child.

Eden had closed his eyes in concentration and surged a huge amount of his power; vapors of ice swirled wildly on his palm and the ground he was standing was beginning to freeze. Seeing this, Mikhail immediately barked orders to the other Angels to stand further back as he also willed his powers to come forward and fire engulfed his hand, the droplets of rain turning into steam once it fell into it.

Then the world seemed to slow down when Eden opened his eyes, his gray eyes glared at Mikhail's and then, with a wave of his hand; sharp and huge icicles emerged from the ground and rushed towards the Archangel and in return Mikhail threw his blazing ball of fire.