In the previous era, the Abyss God had opened a passage between the Abyss and Heaven. Legend had it that his lower body stood in the Abyss while his upper body rested in Heaven, his own body serving as a bridge.
The image of the angel had actually originated with the Abyss Church. Their earliest duty had been to carry messages between Heaven and the Abyss, and the wings on their backs were sacred artifacts of flesh and blood that could pierce the barriers of the void.
But the concept of an "angel" had not been invented by the Abyss. It specifically referred to messengers, special envoys, and beings assigned special missions by a god. They were a god's most loyal slaves.
The Light of Order described them as follows: angels were vessels of will created by gods.
Here, Order had even excluded "angels" from the ranks of intelligent life altogether, placing them countless levels below even the ferocious beasts under its command. They were simply... crafted objects.
The existence of "angels" formed a link between gods and churches, but it also indirectly demonstrated that gods and churches were not the naturally unified entities people habitually assumed them to be.
Puer had once teased Kevin, asking why he had not set up a little church of his own for fun back then. Even if it had failed to become a Great Church, perhaps a little searching and scrounging could still have turned up a few surviving remnants.
Kevin's answer had been: a church was also a restraint on its god.
It was like an emperor and his bureaucracy. Together, they governed and ruled the empire, yet conflicts and checks on one another often existed between them.
One immediate example was the Fundamentalist Group within the Order God Church. They clearly