The cathedral bells tolled thirteen times. That number had no place in any righteous hymnal.
The sound rolled through the stained glass like a migraine made audible. Judgment, or maybe just the universe groaning because Caelan was on the clock again.
He walked through rivers of blood in snow-white boots that refused to stain. Arterial spray had painted the pews, the altar, even the vaulted ceiling in dripping crimson, yet not one drop touched his cassock. He was an island of terrifying purity inside a sea of human wreckage.
Every corpse wore a smile. The signature of the Cult of the Gilded Thorn. Death by an angel's hand was their ultimate ecstasy. Caelan found it tedious.
He stopped before the altar. Copper, frankincense, and the ozone stink of a botched miracle hung thick in the air. Eden's Fang rested heavy and warm in his right hand. Forged from the melted gates of a paradise that no longer existed, the revolver hummed a low, hungry discord.
"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et perditionis tuae," he recited. The Latin tasted like ash, in the name of the Father, the Son, and your destruction.
The last cultist knelt at the altar. The Matriarch's devotion was carved into her skin in spiralling scars. Gold thread stitched her eyelids shut, yet she turned her head toward him with perfect certainty.
She laughed, a wet rattle from a throat full of nails. "I feel your wings, Saint. They burn like frost."
Caelan did not deploy his wings. They were vast, black, and bled starlight that stained reality. A hassle to clean.
"You violated the Silence Accord," he said. His voice carried the finality of a tomb door closing. "Sentence is absolute erasure."
He raised the revolver. The barrel, etched with the geography of a lost garden, aligned with the centre of her forehead.
The Matriarch leaned into the muzzle. "Tell me, Saint," she whispered, blood bubbling on her lips. "When you kiss the Devil's daughter, will you confess before or after you come inside her?"
His finger tightened. His heart, slow as tectonic plates, did not stutter. He was immune to the ravings of the condemned.
Or he had been.
"There is no salvation for you."
He pulled the trigger.
Eden's Fang did not bang. It screamed the death-cry of a seraph. The remaining stained glass exploded outward in jewelled rain. The bullet, a splinter of Original Sin, left the barrel in a flash of light that cast no shadows, only blinding clarity.
Her head ceased to exist. So did her name in the Book of Life, her ghost in the ether, and any fragment that might have reached judgment. Total metaphysical erasure.
One shot fired. Five remain.
White smoke smelling of apple blossoms curled from the barrel.
Caelan broke the cylinder open. One glowing casing, five live rounds pulsing with sick divine light. He left the spent casing in place. He liked the weight of a finished life.
"Sectors cleared," he murmured.
"Not quite, Daddy."
The voice was small, melodic, and utterly wrong in the abattoir.
On the third pew sat a child no older than twelve, wedged between a headless deacon and a disembowelled choir boy. She wore a sundress that had once been yellow. Now it was stiff with old grime. She drew on the pew-back with a red crayon: a black-winged man holding a gun over a horned woman, a jagged crimson line connecting their hearts.
Caelan raised the revolver, then lowered it. Soul signature: human, mortal, fragile.
"You missed one," she said without looking up.
He approached. His boots made no sound on blood-slick stone. "Who are you?"
"Seven." She finished the drawing. "Because I was supposed to be the seventh sacrifice tonight. You arrived at six. Lucky number."
Her eyes shifted colours like oil on water, ancient in a child's face.
"You heard the blind lady," she chirped, pointing the crayon. "About the Devil's daughter."
"Ramblings of a heretic." He holstered Eden's Fang beneath pristine white. "Leave. Cleanup arrives soon. They are less precise."
Seven hopped down, splashing through blood without care, and tugged his sleeve. "She's pretty, the lady in red. She's going to hurt you so good."
A phantom ache bloomed in his chest. For an instant, the copper stench shifted to the scent of roses and sulfur.
He should report her. Witnesses were loose ends. Protocol demanded a memory wipe that usually left mortals afraid of the colour white.
Instead, he pressed a heavy gold coin into her sticky palm. "Basement of the Last Supper diner, 4th Street. Ask for Ezekiel. Tell him the Saint sent you."
Seven bit the coin, grinned with too many teeth, and skipped away over severed limbs. "See you soon, Daddy."
The word crawled under his skin like frost.
A vibration at his collarbone. The summon.
He tapped the silver crucifix pin. Reality peeled back into blinding white static.
"Report," Father Elian's voice purred, velvet over razor wire.
"Cult dismantled. No survivors."
A pause. "Sensors registered a child leaving the perimeter."
"A rat. Recalibrate the machine spirits."
Static hissed like a sigh. "You grow soft, Caelan. We will discuss it at your next purification."
The word purification made his left hand twitch. He remembered the rack, the holy fire, Elian's prayers while peeling sin from his back.
"I have five bullets," Caelan answered. "I am not due."
"No. But the Almighty grows impatient. A Priority Alpha has surfaced."
Parchment materialised from the static, human skin charred at the edges, reeking of brimstone and expensive perfume.
Target: Liliru.
Designation: The Crimson Princess.
Crime: Existence.
Deadline: 30 Terrestrial Days.
Beneath the curling script, a moving capture: a woman atop a Tokyo skyscraper, neon glinting off obsidian horns, arterial-red hair whipping in the wind. She laughed, holding a human heart like an apple.
Caelan stared.
He had erased demon lords, fallen seraphs, forgotten gods. None had ever looked so alive.
"She is the Morning Star's bastard," Elian said. "If she ascends fully, Heaven and Hell both fall. End her, Caelan. Perhaps we will shorten your sentence."
The static collapsed.
Caelan looked at the image again. Liliru winked.
Something stirred behind his ribs. Eden's Fang grew warm against his heart, as if the gun recognised its true prey.
Anticipation. The first real emotion in centuries.
The Obsidian Penthouse, New York City
Liliru was bored enough to consider eating her own tail.
She lay upside-down on a couch worth more than every soul in the building. Fishnet stockings woven from liars' shadows draped over the backrest. In one hand she swirled a crystal flute of distilled heartbreak, twelve years aged.
"Belial," she groaned. "Bring me something to kill or I'll wear your skin as a raincoat."
The Black Banker adjusted his tie, serrated teeth glinting. "Princess, you owe six hundred sixty-six favours. Wars are expensive."
"Watch me," she muttered, and took a salt-sweet sip.
Then the flute shattered in her grip.
Her heart, stone-cold for three centuries, slammed against her ribs. Heat flooded southward, electric and violent. A golden thread snapped taut across the cosmos.
Someone dangerous was looking at her.
A slow, delighted grin spread across her face.
"He's coming," she whispered. "The Saint."
She walked to the window, pressed a palm to the glass, golden eyes blazing.
"Belial. The good guns. Someone finally sent me a man worth bleeding for."
She laughed, and the shadows danced like they'd been invited to the wedding.
The cathedral bells tolled thirteen times. That number had no place in any righteous hymnal.
The sound rolled through the stained glass like a migraine made audible. Judgment, or maybe just the universe groaning because Caelan was on the clock again.
He walked through rivers of blood in snow-white boots that refused to stain. Arterial spray had painted the pews, the altar, even the vaulted ceiling in dripping crimson, yet not one drop touched his cassock. He was an island of terrifying purity inside a sea of human wreckage.
Every corpse wore a smile. The signature of the Cult of the Gilded Thorn. Death by an angel's hand was their ultimate ecstasy. Caelan found it tedious.
He stopped before the altar. Copper, frankincense, and the ozone stink of a botched miracle hung thick in the air. Eden's Fang rested heavy and warm in his right hand. Forged from the melted gates of a paradise that no longer existed, the revolver hummed a low, hungry discord.
"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et perditionis tuae," he recited. The Latin tasted like ash, in the name of the Father, the Son, and your destruction.
The last cultist knelt at the altar. The Matriarch's devotion was carved into her skin in spiralling scars. Gold thread stitched her eyelids shut, yet she turned her head toward him with perfect certainty.
She laughed, a wet rattle from a throat full of nails. "I feel your wings, Saint. They burn like frost."
Caelan did not deploy his wings. They were vast, black, and bled starlight that stained reality. A hassle to clean.
"You violated the Silence Accord," he said. His voice carried the finality of a tomb door closing. "Sentence is absolute erasure."
He raised the revolver. The barrel, etched with the geography of a lost garden, aligned with the centre of her forehead.
The Matriarch leaned into the muzzle. "Tell me, Saint," she whispered, blood bubbling on her lips. "When you kiss the Devil's daughter, will you confess before or after you come inside her?"
His finger tightened. His heart, slow as tectonic plates, did not stutter. He was immune to the ravings of the condemned.
Or he had been.
"There is no salvation for you."
He pulled the trigger.
Eden's Fang did not bang. It screamed the death-cry of a seraph. The remaining stained glass exploded outward in jewelled rain. The bullet, a splinter of Original Sin, left the barrel in a flash of light that cast no shadows, only blinding clarity.
Her head ceased to exist. So did her name in the Book of Life, her ghost in the ether, and any fragment that might have reached judgment. Total metaphysical erasure.
One shot fired. Five remain.
White smoke smelling of apple blossoms curled from the barrel.
Caelan broke the cylinder open. One glowing casing, five live rounds pulsing with sick divine light. He left the spent casing in place. He liked the weight of a finished life.
"Sectors cleared," he murmured.
"Not quite, Daddy."
The voice was small, melodic, and utterly wrong in the abattoir.
On the third pew sat a child no older than twelve, wedged between a headless deacon and a disemboweled choir boy. She wore a sundress that had once been yellow. Now it was stiff with old grime. She drew on the pew-back with a red crayon: a black-winged man holding a gun over a horned woman, a jagged crimson line connecting their hearts.
Caelan raised the revolver, then lowered it. Soul signature: human, mortal, fragile.
"You missed one," she said without looking up.
He approached. His boots made no sound on blood-slick stone. "Who are you?"
"Seven." She finished the drawing. "Because I was supposed to be the seventh sacrifice tonight. You arrived on six. Lucky number."
Her eyes shifted colors like oil on water, ancient in a child's face.
"You heard the blind lady," she chirped, pointing the crayon. "About the Devil's daughter."
"Ramblings of a heretic." He holstered Eden's Fang beneath pristine white. "Leave. Cleanup arrives soon. They are less precise."
Seven hopped down, splashing through blood without care, and tugged his sleeve. "She's pretty, the lady in red. She's going to hurt you so good."
A phantom ache bloomed in his chest. For an instant, the copper stench shifted to roses and sulfur.
He should report her. Witnesses were loose ends. Protocol demanded a memory wipe that usually left mortals afraid of the colour white.
Instead, he pressed a heavy gold coin into her sticky palm. "Basement of the Last Supper diner, 4th Street. Ask for Ezekiel. Tell him the Saint sent you."
Seven bit the coin, grinned with too many teeth, and skipped away over severed limbs. "See you soon, Daddy."
The word crawled under his skin like frost.
A vibration at his collarbone. The summon.
He tapped the silver crucifix pin. Reality peeled back into blinding white static.
"Report," Father Elian's voice purred, velvet over razor wire.
"Cult dismantled. No survivors."
A pause. "Sensors registered a child leaving the perimeter."
"A rat. Recalibrate the machine spirits."
Static hissed like a sigh. "You grow soft, Caelan. We will discuss it at your next purification."
The word purification made his left hand twitch. He remembered the rack, the holy fire, Elian's prayers while peeling sin from his back.
"I have five bullets," Caelan answered. "I am not due."
"No. But the Almighty grows impatient. A Priority Alpha has surfaced."
Parchment materialised from the static, human skin charred at the edges, reeking of brimstone and expensive perfume.
Target: Liliru.
Designation: The Crimson Princess.
Crime: Existence.
Deadline: 30 Terrestrial Days.
Beneath the curling script, a moving capture: a woman atop a Tokyo skyscraper, neon glinting off obsidian horns, arterial-red hair whipping in the wind. She laughed, holding a human heart like an apple.
Caelan stared.
He had erased demon lords, fallen seraphs, forgotten gods. None had ever looked so alive.
"She is the Morning Star's bastard," Elian said. "If she ascends fully, Heaven and Hell both fall. End her, Caelan. Perhaps we will shorten your sentence."
The static collapsed.
Caelan looked at the image again. Liliru winked.
Something stirred behind his ribs. Eden's Fang grew warm against his heart, as if the gun recognised its true prey.
Anticipation. The first real emotion in centuries.
The Obsidian Penthouse, New York City
Liliru was bored enough to consider eating her own tail.
She lay upside-down on a couch worth more than every soul in the building. Fishnet stockings woven from liars' shadows draped over the backrest. In one hand she swirled a crystal flute of distilled heartbreak, twelve years aged.
"Belial," she groaned. "Bring me something to kill or I'll wear your skin as a raincoat."
The Black Banker adjusted his tie, serrated teeth glinting. "Princess, you owe six hundred sixty-six favours. Wars are expensive."
"Watch me," she muttered, and took a salt-sweet sip.
Then the flute shattered in her grip.
Her heart, stone-cold for three centuries, slammed against her ribs. Heat flooded southward, electric and violent. A golden thread snapped taut across the cosmos.
Someone dangerous was looking at her.
A slow, delighted grin spread across her face.
"He's coming," she whispered. "The Saint."
She walked to the window, pressed a palm to the glass, golden eyes blazing.
"Belial. The good guns. Someone finally sent me a man worth bleeding for."
She laughed, and the shadows danced like they'd been invited to the wedding.