The air was not merely thick—it was alive. A slow, syrupy rot clung to every breath, curling through the hollow bones of the cathedral like a blasphemous liturgy. The shattered stained glass bathed the ruins in fractured crimson light, painting the decay in the brilliant hues of old blood. The pews were not just broken—they were defiled, their splintered remains arranged in mocking imitation of worship.

And at the center of this corpse-church, two predators circled each other—one still clinging to the illusion of grace, the other savoring its ruin.

Arialis did not sit—she perched, like a wounded bird on the edge of a cliff. Her wings—once luminous—were now tarnished at the edges, their feathers ruffled with something deeper than exhaustion. The light of her halo sputtered, its glow weak and erratic, casting jagged shadows that trembled like frightened things. The scripture in her hands wasn't just frayed—its pages whispered, not with devotion, but with the desperate, half-rotted murmurings of a faith long since abandoned by its god.

Across the ruined altar, the demon was not lounging—she was sprawled, a living blasphemy draped over the sacred stone like a sacrificial offering left to spoil. The shadows clung to her, worshipped her, twisting into obscene shapes at her slightest movement. Her grin was slow, deliberate—an open grave of a smile.

'You're delicious when you're trying so hard to be righteous.'

Her voice was not velvet. It was the wet, ragged sound of a throat slit from ear to ear, breathing out its last words in a lover's sigh.

Arialis did not just flinch—her entire body recoiled, her wings twitching like a pinned butterfly. The words that left her lips were hollow, a prayer said by rote. 'Your presence is a stain upon this sacred ground.'

The demon's laugh was not glass and honey—it was the slow crack of bone under a torturer's boot. 'Oh, but nothing here is sacred anymore.'

She moved with the inevitability of a nightmare closing, slipping from the altar in a liquid motion. The shadows peeled away from her flesh like devotees desperate for one last touch. Her claws—blackened fragments of the abyss given form—traced the delicate arch of Arialis' wing in a claiming gesture.

'...does your God still hear you when you whimper?'

The angel's breath hitched, the sound too loud in the suffocating silence. Her halo flickered wildly, casting jagged shadows that danced like damned souls across the walls. The demon's tongue dragged up the column of her throat, tasting divine sweat, tracing the frantic pulse beneath pearlescent skin.

'I said—' Arialis' voice broke.

'Or what?' the demon purred, her teeth grazing the angel's earlobe. 'You'll pray harder?' A clawed hand slid between trembling wings, pressing against the small of Arialis' back—where her divinity was thinnest, where the warmth of her grace bled into something far more fragile. 'I can feel your heartbeat, little saint. It sings for me.'

When Arialis struck, it wasn't righteousness that fueled her—it was terror. Her nails raked down the demon's face with a wet, visceral tear, black blood blooming like a grotesque crown across the fiend's features. It dripped onto the angel's robes, sizzling through the sacred fabric, each drop whispering profanities as it burned.