My consciousness snapped back into my body with the jarring force of a high-G re-entry. The transition from the edge of the solar system to the Avalon penthouse was instantaneous, but the sensory whiplash was immense. My mind, which had just been stretched across billions of kilometers of void, felt compressed, the new, vast perspective of my Divinity crammed back into the confines of a human skull. The strain was profound, a sharp, conceptual ache behind my eyes.

I stood in the darkness of the living room, the city lights of Avalon glittering far below, oblivious. The quiet hum of the penthouse, the faint scent of Stella's slumber, felt impossibly fragile, like a whisper in the face of the hurricane I had just perceived.

They were coming. A fleet. Tainted with miasma, moving faster than light through the higher spatial layers, using the same pathways I had just learned to perceive. The Aegis Luna was a tripwire, and they had just crossed it. The war was no longer an abstract future. It was an imminent reality.

There was no time to waste, no time for quiet processing. My family, my team, needed to know.

I didn't bother with a phone. I reached out, my Divine will asserting itself, and tore a clean Grey seam through the fabric of reality. I stepped from the moonlit penthouse directly into the brightly lit, high-alert atmosphere of the Kagu Ancestral Estate's central command center.

The room was a hive of focused energy. My arrival, silent and unannounced, caused a universal, jarring pause. Lucifer, Ren, and my six fiancées were gathered around a central holographic map, likely planning the next phase of the Red Chalice Cult cleanup. Alice stood near Tiamat's imposing projection, the two of them in quiet, deep discussion. They all froze, their heads snapping in my direction, their expressions a mixture of surprise and immediate, heart-stopping alarm. My sudden, unannounced appearance, combined with the grim, cold aura I was currently radiating, told them everything they needed to know. This was not a social call.

"What is it?" Cecilia was the first to speak, her voice sharp, the Crown Princess instantly taking charge of the room's sudden tension. "Arthur, what did you see?"

"I extended my senses," I said, my voice quiet, though it seemed to cut through the low hum of the command center with absolute clarity. "Past the estate. Past Avalon. I went to the moon to check the Aegis Luna."

Luna's golden eyes widened. "You... you reached the moon? With your senses alone?"

"Divinity has its advantages," I said dismissively, brushing past the implication. "The Aegis is functional. But it's irrelevant. They are already past it."

A cold silence fell. "Who is?" Seraphina asked, her voice like ice.

"A demon fleet," I stated. "A vanguard. Moving fast, using high spatial layers. They are... close. Weeks, maybe days. Not years."

The reaction was immediate, visceral. Rachel's face went pale. Rose's hand flew to her mouth. Lucifer swore, his crowns flaring.

"That is impossible!" Lyra burst out, stepping forward, her usual composed, diplomatic demeanor completely gone, replaced by shock and disbelief. As a member of the Great Seven, this was her domain, her knowledge. "My people's last dispatch was clear! The Seven Demon Lords are all locked in a stalemate against the Great Seven's full might! We were pushing them back, especially after Lysantra's injuries crippled their command structure! And the Demon Overlord himself is in a direct, conceptual confrontation with God Akasha. They do not have the resources, the power, or the focus to launch a new, full-scale invasion of Earth! It is a strategic impossibility!"

Her words were desperate, clinging to the established facts, to the reality she knew. But I had felt the truth.

"Your intel is out of date," I said, my voice flat, leaving no room for argument. "Or we are being deliberately deceived. I did not just sense ships, Lyra. I sensed the conceptual weight of their commanders. Two of them. Divine-level signatures."

I paused, trying to find the words for the sheer wrongness of what I had felt, even from such an impossible distance. "One was... insidious. Cold. A creeping, gnawing, profound want for what was not its own. It felt like a void, defined only by what it lacked, and the burning desire to take it. It was... Envy."

Luna gasped, her hand gripping Rachel's arm.

"The other," I continued, "was simpler. Far simpler. It was pure, unadulterated, focused rage. A boundless, screaming, incandescent fury directed at... well, at everything. A mindless, world-ending tantrum given divine form. It felt like... Wrath."

Lyra staggered back, her face ashen, her eyes wide with a new, dawning horror that surpassed her earlier disbelief. "No... no, it cannot be. Envy and Wrath? Together?"

"What does it mean, Lyra?" Cecilia demanded, her voice sharp, sensing the shift from disbelief to terror.

Lyra looked at me, her gaze filled with a terrible, new understanding. "The hierarchy of the Demon Lords... it's not a simple council of equals. There is a ranking. An order of power." She took a shaky breath. "Lysantra, Lust, the one you killed, Arthur... she was the Second Strongest."

"And these two?" I pressed.

"Wrath," she said, her voice trembling, "is the Third Strongest. A being of pure, catastrophic force. But Envy..." She shook her head, as if denying her own words. "Envy is not just a Demon Lord. Envy is the First. The strongest of the Seven. The most cunning, the most powerful, the one who whispers in the shadows and pulls the strings of the entire Abyssal hierarchy."

The room fell silent again, the implications settling like a layer of thick, choking dust. Not only had a fleet broken free, but it was being led by the First and Third most powerful Demon Lords.

"They have abandoned their battle with the Great Seven," Alice stated, her voice a chillingly calm monotone, piecing it all together. "Or, they won. Regardless, they have disengaged. And they are coming here."

"It's not just them," I added, my mind replaying the sensory data. "The fleet itself is massive. I couldn't get an exact count, but I sensed the honor guard around those two primary signatures." I met the eyes of my team. "Four Demon Archdukes. Two of them at Peak Radiant-rank, two at High Radiant. And beyond them... 'numerous' doesn't even begin to cover it. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Demon Dukes, all at the Radiant-rank."

I also noted the ships themselves. "Their technology," I said, glancing at Rachel, "is... advanced. A seamless, disturbing fusion of miasma and hyper-advanced engineering, far beyond our current capabilities. But at this level, the ships are just delivery systems. It's the passengers that are the problem."

The air in the room was thick enough to cut. The despair was palpable. We had just defeated a Divine-level threat, a being who had pushed me to my absolute limit, forcing a breakthrough. We had thought, just for a day, that we had earned a moment of peace, a time to regroup.

And now, the real war was arriving, led not by one, but by two Divine-level threats, one of whom was ranked even higher than the foe we had just barely survived. And they were bringing an army of Radiants that dwarfed our own fledgling numbers.

I looked at the faces of my family. I saw the shock. The dawning fear. The crushing weight of the impossible odds stacking up against us.

But I felt... calm.

My new Grey Divinity settled around me, cool and certain. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp, unyielding resolve. The enemy had a name. They had a location. They had a trajectory.

Alyssara had been a complex, agonizing puzzle I had to solve.

This... this was just a target.

"They are not prepared for us," I said, my voice cutting through the despair, drawing every eye. "They don't know about Alyssara's fall. They don't know about the nine Peak Radiants standing in this room. And they certainly," I met Luna's gaze, then Rachel's, then all of theirs, "don't know about me."

I was not afraid. The path was clear. Let them come.

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