Seraphina was already halfway down the hallway.
It was supposed to be a holiday. It took them years to make him believe he should stop believing he would ever get a chance in a ritual, only to be called suddenly on the day of the biggest ritual with no message before.
He was headed toward Zephyr's desk. The only place you could get uncensored and unfiltered data. That was its worst part, too. Some were too scared of the truth that they didn't just avoid the table. They avoided Zephyr too. But for Seraphina, he was the only friend he had in the entire building.
Zephyr was on the other side of the reception, in the same coat he had been wearing since the first time they met. Zephyr slid the file to him without asking. Not even the god of deception knew how Zephyr would always give the correct file.
"What happened?" Seraphina asked.
"See for yourself."
Seraphina picked up the file.
"A kid?" Seraphina blurted out. A kid shouldn't be able to do something like this, even with the best guidance. Someone else must be involved.
"He had so many good things going on before he chose to get stuck in this mess. Well, they really are good at making people believe that they can save the world," Seraphina said.
"He is the prime suspect in the failure of the ritual," Zephyr said.
"I saw that coming once I was called. But do you really believe the kid did it?"
"See for yourself," he replied as he tossed Seraphina the keys.
Seraphina took a look at the keys. Room 306.
"Level three! For a kid!" Seraphina exclaimed, slamming the file onto the table.
The pages inside it flew across the table, most of them landing beyond Seraphina's reach.
"Yes, reminds me of you." Zephyr picked up the file, gathered the papers, placed them inside the file, and handed it over to Seraphina.
"You think he's innocent too?"
"That's for you to find," Zephyr said, switching on the computer behind him.
This feeling was new to him. He had never felt sympathy before an interrogation. Yet here he was.
The lift was off with a caution-for-danger sign in front of it.
He sighed at his first look at the stairs. They stretched down further than the building. Stair after stair, he reached the room.
Upon reaching the hallway, he really wished he had just jumped down.
A clink came from behind him. He recognized it. He turned around. The lift opened. Valerius came out of it. The same file was in his hand.
"Why do you look so tired?" he asked.
Seraphina just gazed at him without moving. "Wasn't the lift closed?"
Valerius turned his head to the side and giggled. "You never knew that it's always open for us?"
Seraphina turned around and headed to the room.
"Wait, it's not my mistake you didn't know," he said as he caught up and placed his hand around Seraphina's shoulder.
The sensation of level three remained identical from the time he had been locked up. The feeling of knowing, finding out their innocence was only a formality. Innocence didn't matter once you were in there. Sitting in loneliness, waiting for something to happen. He knew how it felt to lose himself to a room. To this day, he refused to work with those two who broke him.
"The tools are inside the vent," Valerius said when they reached the room.
They went inside. They had done it too many times to discuss beforehand.
It was clear to both of them that the kid was innocent. Talking about it wasn't necessary for them. They did all they could. They used the least painful tools, recorded it, pressured him in a way the kid wouldn't lose his will to live. Which only made it worse. Knowing the end, they still did all that. When all of this would go to waste.
But even if they could save him, they wouldn't.
There was a dark monster inside him waiting to eat something. No tool could touch him on the inside. As soon as they switched to his inner thoughts, they exploded.
"What do you think? Is he the one?" Valerius asked.
"Not in the slightest."
Valerius moved toward the lift. "We need more information to choose his owner."
"His owner?"
Valerius circled his neck. "Don't make me look like the bad guy. You saw it coming. This is above us. Either we let him die or give him those who can save him."
Seraphina clenched his fist in silence.
The lift opened in front of Zephyr, waiting for them. "What do you think?" he asked as soon as the lift opened.
"What really happened?" Seraphina asked him, pressing Zephyr against the wall.
Zephyr lowered his eyes. "Aurelion was behind it," he said. "He was there, beating up the kid after he got corrupted from stopping the ritual."
Seraphina's grip loosened. "Who?"
Valerius didn't look at him. "You've been here two years and you don't know that name?"
"Should I?"
"Every god that's tried to set foot on Earth in the last decade, he's the reason it didn't take. Personally." Valerius said it flat, like a man reciting a debt he still owed. "No, this is good. He could be the one to take the kid."
Zephyr nodded.
"Are you crazy?" Seraphina said, terrified. "That monster will kill him. Didn't you hear what Zephyr said?"
Valerius turned back. "Yeah, and that was when he got corrupted. I have known him for years. You just came here. You don't know who he is. His works have always been something to be scared of, but he is someone I trust more than those whom we serve."
"If you want to do it, make it quick," Zephyr said.
Valerius threw away the file and asked, "Where was he last seen?"
"Backstage."
Valerius ran through the hallways.
Seraphina couldn't move an inch. He was never taught to fight a god-level threat.
Valerius turned back. "If you don't wanna come, then I have no problem doing it alone."
Seraphina had suppressed the urge to ask Valerius why he would defend Aurelion so much. He was afraid to question Aurelion.
Seraphina caught up with him before the destination. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"There's only one place he could have escaped to." His voice lowered. "The statue room."
"The statue room! We aren't allowed to go there."
Valerius replied in an instant. "We aren't allowed to save the kid, either."
The hallways were silent. Everyone was busy with their own work. They had their own work of cleaning up the mess. And as usual, the higher-ups never showed their faces and apologized to their god.
Suddenly, the air thickened. Valerius took a right. Seraphina followed.
Their friends were attached to the wall. No blood or signs of any harm.
"He didn't kill them," Valerius said. "He ended them."
At the far end of the corridor, they opened the door.
The Statue Room was far larger than they had expected. It stretched deep into the darkness, lined with endless rows of stone carvings. Every statue was carved with unnatural precision, not as decoration, but as a record. Some stood alone in silence. Others appeared in pairs, the same figure preserved across different stages of life: older, broken, loyal, or somehow all of them at once.
Valerius stopped just inside. "I hate this room."
"You're late," someone said from inside the room.
Aurelion was near the center of the room. At first glance, he remained unchanged: the same physique, the same attire, the same precise lack of movement. The more he studied him, however, the less solid his form became. Not blur, just layering, as if multiple images of him were in the same place, none quite right.
"You're corrupted," Seraphina said.
"That's the wrong word for it."
"It's the only word that fits."
Aurelion shrugged and said in a cracking voice, "Only if change and corruption mean the same thing to you."
The corruption was as strong as it got. Aurelion combined with the uncertainty of getting corrupted was something to fear even more. It wasn't the most precise version of Aurelion. He was the most dangerous one.
"Did you attack him?" Seraphina asked, taking a step forward.
"I did what was needed." No pause.
"Why?" Seraphina pressured him further.
Aurelion looked toward the nearest statue. "Because he did not fit."
"In what?"
"This broken world, he would never fit in it."
It should have sounded evasive. It didn't. It sounded like a finding.
"The ritual couldn't affect him beyond the surface," Aurelion said. "He didn't change. He didn't even fail correctly." Aurelion turned. "If I had tried to kill him, you wouldn't be asking me these questions."
"You still used lethal force," Seraphina said.
"I used enough force to reveal what was underneath."
"And what did you find?"
"Nothing."
The word landed differently in this room than it would have elsewhere.
It made complete sense that the kid didn't have something more that stopped them from searching him further. He had nothing. A monster would have been better. You can destroy something that existed. This was worse. There was nothing to destroy.
Aurelion passed between the statues, one hand running along the stone with his glove on. "All of this is for something. For ritual, for name, for office, for corruption, for devotion, even for rebellion. Except the boy."
"Or not yet," Seraphina said.
Something in Aurelion's attention sharpened. "He has been exposed to the ritual. To the Void. To me." He took a step. "Still nothing." He looked at Valerius. "Resistance implies opposition. This is absence."
"Absence of what?"
"Control, and someone who can't be controlled is someone I have to control."
"Most people need something outside themselves to become legible," Aurelion said. "A god. A doctrine. A wound. A purpose inherited so completely they mistake it for identity." He went quieter. "He does not."
His corruption dripped from every word he said. It revealed too much. Aurelion didn't know what he was doing. Valerius had heard many of the tales. It wasn't a predetermined story, but its start was clear. Aurelion was stating his own theory about it. This had never happened before, at least for Valerius, who hadn't lived through everything. So, if it had, and Aurelion knew, maybe this was the successor timeline. And that would be an insane change of things. Possibly the only one every one of them would enjoy.
Valerius tried to hide it, but the enormous grin was all over his face.
"Difficult things are the most valuable ones too."
"He's uncontrollable, not just difficult," Aurelion said, as if correcting a small factual error.
"Then he's a liability for both of us."
"Everything is uncontrollable at first."
The shape of it arrived all at once. "You attacked him to confirm your theory," Seraphina said. "Then you came here to announce it."
Valerius turned his head around upon listening to Seraphina break their moment.
"Yes."
"But why?"
Aurelion raised one hand toward the statues.
The room changed.
The statues didn't move. Pale mist gathered before the carved figures, rising in slow coils, taking shapes that were almost human heads, shoulders, and the suggestion of faces. Messengers. Not avatars. Mouths through which gods addressed mortals when distance stopped being practical.
Valerius exhaled slowly. "Be ready for the worst."
"Yes, I am ready," Seraphina said.
Aurelion looked at them both. "Yes," he said. "That's why I called them."
The room held itself still.
And somewhere beyond sight, something began to choose.