The air between them was heavy, too heavy for mortal lungs to bear. Even here, in the shadow of the Ninth Heaven, where the boundaries between the worlds shimmered like a thin veil, something was wrong. It was not simply the words Raphael had spoken, but the way they had lingered, twisting in the silence like smoke, impossible to disperse, Gab and Luca di d not pay much attention to Mike's fading words they knew him well, Mike's words might have sounded towards Gabriel but in reality they were a test for Raphael, to see if he was still in communication with Buddha and Loki.
Luca's mind was a furnace, thoughts pounding in relentless succession.
How? How had Raphael done it?
To trace Uriel's energy, under the cloak of Buddha's serenity and Loki's chaos, was not merely skill. It was mastery of a kind no Archangel should possess, perhaps no being at all. Both Buddha and Loki's presences were veils so thick, so dense, that even the sharpest senses could not cut through them. Yet Raphael had done it, effortlessly, as though peeling a thin film from glass.
It was not even the act itself that unsettled Luca, it was the manner. There had been no visible strain, no subtle tightening of the jaw, no glimmer of sweat or falter in breath. It had simply… happened. As naturally as speaking.
Had Raphael been the one to set Buddha upon Uriel from the beginning? The thought struck like a cold blade.
Or was he letting his paranoia guide him?
Then again, how had Buddha known where Uriel was? That was not information scattered lightly upon the wind. Was that the reason Michael had been so furious?
Luca felt his grip tightening on reality. Was it wise, was it truly wise to restored man's Grace?
In the silence, memories of the war came unbidden, like the tide dragging wreckage onto shore. Some of the mysteries that had haunted those battlefields now whispered with new and terrible clarity.
If Raphael had been manipulating events from behind the scenes…
Mike alone should have been able to purge the lower angels. He was the sword of Heaven, the banner under which legions had marched. Yet, one obstacle after another had prevented him from acting. Lower angels, creatures who should have been swept away like chaff before the wind, had grown stronger, more defiant, their powers swelling beyond reason.
They had thought it was simply the nature of war: beings evolving under pressure, sharpening their fangs in the crucible of conflict. But what if that had been no accident? What if Raphael had been nurturing them, feeding a hidden faction like a gardener tending weeds, waiting for them to choke the vineyard?
Luca's stomach turned.
Was Raphael vying for the throne?
The question gnawed deeper. Had Raphael been kept close all these years not because his counsel was valued, but because someone had wary of him?, watched him, weighed him, waiting for proof?
And if so… was Raphael aware of it?
Another thought rose, dark and unbidden: was that why.....
The scythe was suddenly in his hands.
He had not willed it; his instincts had moved before thought could catch up. The familiar weight settled into his palms like an old promise. His robes, once pristine white and starlight, now rippled into inky black, the darkness clinging to him like the mourning shroud of a judge about to pronounce sentence.
Across from him, Raphael felt it. The shift in the air was impossible to miss, like the stillness before a storm when the clouds sink low and heavy, when even the smallest creatures hide. His skin prickled. The hairs along his arms and neck rose in warning.
Danger was here. Not approaching, here.
And yet…
Raphael did not falter. His posture was relaxed, his breathing unhurried. His smile small almost imperceptible never left his lips.
It was the smile of a man who stood at the edge of the abyss and found it amusing that others feared to look down.
"You two can be so clueless sometimes," Raphael said at last, his voice slow, almost conversational. The mockery in his tone was a knife wrapped in velvet. "It's no wonder we lost."
The words hung there, bitter as incense in a temple long abandoned, it was not clear if he was referring to Mike and Luca or Luca and Gab.
For a moment, neither Luca nor Gab spoke. The silence seemed to grow heavier, as though the walls of the world were leaning in to listen. Somewhere in the far reaches of Heaven, or perhaps beyond it, thunder rolled faintly, not in the sky but in the soul.
Luca's mind was still a tempest, but now the winds carried something sharper, memory.
The day the First Seal broke.
The hour they realized the war would not be won cleanly.
The moment the heavens themselves seemed to hold their breath.
Raphael had been there. Always there. Watching. Advising. Moving pieces on the board that no one else had the eyes to see.
And now, for the first time, Luca wondered if they had been his pieces all along.
Gab shifted beside him. His barely imperceptible illusionary wings rustled, but not from unease, Gab did not permit himself such weakness not before Ralph, it was no wonder he hated him so much, Ralph always had him feeling on Edge, there were no moments to show weakness around him. His eyes, however, told a different story. They narrowed, sharp as a drawn sword, locked on Raphael with an intensity that could strip stone from a wall.
"You speak as though you were not among us," Gab said finally, his voice low, the weight of authority and judgment woven into every syllable. "As though you were not one of the ones who lost."
Raphael's smile deepened by a fraction, just enough to suggest the possibility of secrets, layers within layers, a thousand unspoken truths.
"Perhaps," he murmured, "you lost because you never understood the game you lack the necessary foresight."
The words were like oil poured onto water, iridescent, beautiful, and impossible to grasp. They spread through the air, shimmering with danger.
Luca felt the pull of his own instincts again, that ancient rhythm in his blood urging him to strike, to end this before the shadow in Raphael's voice could take form. And yet, there was another pull, subtler but no less compelling: the need to know.
If Raphael had been the architect of their failures, then the truth was a weapon. And in wars such as these, weapons were never discarded lightly.
His grip tightened on the scythe. The blade caught the faintest glimmer of light, not sunlight, but something older, colder.
"Tell me, Raphael," Luca said, his voice dropping into the cadence of judgment. "When you traced Uriel's energy, under the veils of two gods, was it skill or...."
Raphael's eyes, those unblinking, impossible eyes met his without flinching.
"What difference would it make to you, if the result was the same?"
The answer was not an answer at all, and yet it cut as cleanly as any blade.
The tension between them grew taut, a bowstring drawn to its limit. In that moment, the air seemed to shimmer again, not with heat but with the presence of something vast and unseen.
Somewhere deep within the realms beyond sight, the record-keepers of Heaven might have leaned forward, their quills hovering over the parchment of eternity.
For there are moments in the history of creation when the words spoken echo not just in time, but in the fabric of what is.
And this, this was one of those moments.