Private Jet – Somewhere over the Mediterranean
The cabin smelled of consecrated leather and brimstone perfume.
Liliru sprawled across the couch, boots on the armrest, studying a map inked on human skin. Caelan sat opposite, suit immaculate, white glow leaking through his shirt like a dying star.
"Half our week is gone," she said. "No more shakes. You're burning brighter. I'm running darker. We're… functional."
"We are operational," he corrected.
"We're addicted," she shot back. "You need my chaos to keep your light from imploding. I need your order to keep my darkness from eating me. We're the same drug now, Saint."
She tossed the map between them.
"Belial traced their money. They aren't trading souls. They're trading concepts: Hope, Loyalty, Purity. All roads lead to the drowned vault under Venice."
Caelan leaned in. "The Choir wants a Perfect Paradox. A single entity to replace Heaven and Hell."
"Not just any entity," Liliru said quietly. "My child. They're accelerating the pregnancy with ritual sacrifice. They want to birth the new god early."
Caelan went very still.
"That requires months."
"Not when the conception was sealed with shared golden blood," she answered, eyes locked on his. "We already did the ritual, Caelan. We just didn't know the words."
Venice – The Vault Beneath San Michele in Isola
Fog swallowed the city. The sunken church leaned into the canal like a drunk saint.
They descended past weeping marble into a circular chamber of black-and-white stone. The air tasted of ozone and endings.
Nyxael and Lumina waited in the centre, wings spread, black touching white, chanting in one voice that fractured reality along perfect seams.
Caelan's gun came up. "Stand down."
The twins turned in eerie unison. Serene. Hungry.
"Caelan," they sang. "The Recurrence arrives exactly on schedule."
"There is no fusion," he said.
"Your soul stutters when she breathes," Lumina smiled. "We felt the kiss across planes."
"You were the first," Nyxael continued. "The original Saint who fell for the original demoness. Heaven executed him for it. Hell thought her dead. They salvaged a shard of his heart and forged Eden's Fang from it. They wiped you, cloned you, sent the copy to finish the job."
Liliru's hand found Caelan's wrist. He didn't pull away.
"You are not Caelan," the twins said together. "You are the echo. And she is the reincarnation of the woman who refused to let you die."
Caelan's finger whitened on the trigger.
He fired.
The bullet streaked white-hot, Original Sin made manifest.
Nyxael threw absolute darkness. Lumina threw absolute light.
The round met a perfect balance and simply ceased to exist.
Two bullets left.
"They're untouchable alone," Liliru hissed.
"Then we stop being alone."
Caelan seized her face, slammed their foreheads together.
"Maximum synchronisation. Everything you have."
She poured chaos into him like molten night. He fed her absolute order like glacial daylight.
Power screamed between them, a living circuit.
Her whip formed, no longer black, threaded with white fire.
His wings erupted, no longer void, edged with crimson embers.
They moved as one organism.
The Paradox Whip cracked. It wrapped Nyxael's wing and severed it clean.
Caelan drove his fist into Lumina's chest and released a pulse of star-death cold. Black ice exploded across her feathers.
The twins crashed into opposite walls, symmetry shattered, harmony broken.
Caelan landed between them, gun steady.
"Seraphiel's location."
Lumina laughed through frozen lips. "Where the first Saint died. Golgotha. The Garden is ready."
Nyxael's remaining eye found Liliru. "The child is already quickening. Your kiss was the conception. Your blood is the seal. The war begins tonight."
Liliru's knees buckled. Her hands flew to her stomach, still flat, but now she felt it: a tiny, impossible star of fused light-and-dark beating under her skin.
Caelan lowered the gun.
He had built the bomb he was sent to defuse.
And the timer had just started ticking out loud.
End of Chapter 6