Mike stood in a daze, staring into the endless void as if his eyes could pierce its fathomless silence. The stars, scattered like burning embers across the canvas of eternity, flickered indifferently to his presence. Yet he did not look at them as one looks at lights; he searched through them, into the gaps, as though something lay beyond their radiance. His chest heaved, and at last he exhaled, a long, cold breath that seemed as if he had been holding it since the moment he awoke to himself in this mortal span. A sigh, weighted with the centuries of memory that clung to him like chains.
The battle was over. A battle that should not have lasted more than the beat of a wing. A battle against a creature who, in the measure of Heaven, was beneath notice. And yet he, Michael, General of the Legions, Champion of the Throne, had been made to sweat and strain. His knuckles still bore the phantom sting of the exchange, his wings, now hidden, still ached as though they had been bruised. It was shameful. A stain upon his name he would not forget.
Once, in the early days of his command, he had swatted aside beings like this with no more effort than one dismisses a fly. Even the so-called Buddha, in ages past, had fallen before him with the wave of a hand. And now? Now he had wrestled against this pale echo of transcendence and felt resistance worthy of memory. Why? What had changed?
It reminded him too much of the rebellion. In those terrible days, the lower hosts had risen, not with power of their own but with a strength borrowed, stolen, or kindled by rebellion's fire. Their sudden defiance had shocked him then, and now he felt that same astonishment in the limbs of Buddha's avatar. Granted, he had fought with less than a quarter of his true might, his essence fractured, his presence constrained by mortal coils, but even so, it should not have required this much.
Something was peculiar.
He drew his gaze down from the emptiness of the heavens to the planet beneath, and there he felt it, a pull. Not merely gravity, nor the curiosity of a soldier surveying ground conquered, but a familiarity. A resonance that tugged at the marrow of his being. He could not name it, could not dress it in words, but it thrummed within him like a chord struck upon a harp whose sound had not faded since creation.
At first, he thought it was Uriel. She was near, after all. When he first arrived upon this world, the warmth, the scent, the aura had been like hers, and so he assumed. Yet now, having stood in her presence, having touched the shimmer of her grace, he knew the difference. What clung to the planet was not her. It was kin to her, yes, akin in texture and fragrance, but not the same. Another resonance altogether, echoing through the soil, the waters, the very air.
His eyes shifted toward the cottage where he had left her. well this was another suprise, Her wings shimmered at the edges of perception, folding and unfolding as though woven from light itself. The very air about her seemed to bend under the weight of her revelation. Her existence was no longer dimmed. She shone. She glowed like dawn breaking against the long night.
And she was beautiful. Not merely in the sense of radiance, but in that higher terror, the beauty that bends knees and makes mortal tongues falter. Her wings were comparable to Lucifer's before the fall, when he was still Morning Star, brightest of the host. Uriel, little sister, mirror of brilliance, copy of the one she once adored enough to rival.
Mike's breath caught. He understood in that moment why the mortals here did not panic when the skies convulsed, when weather shifted from calm to violent in the span of a heartbeat. They had grown accustomed. They had lived beneath the tides of her grace all their lives. What he mistook for natural disorder was her seal fraying.
It dawned on him like a blade driven home: the seals Uriel had bound upon herself had weakened at his arrival. Perhaps they had been crafted to respond to the familiar aura of her brothers. To his presence and mybe Luca's, it was why her grace and seals had retreated so when Buddah and Loki probed them. And if so, then the longer she remained near him, the more those seals would loosen. Given enough time, they would break altogether, not with thunderous violence, but in waves, each tide bringing more of her true self to the surface.
She had played him. Pretending to be asleep, concealing her stirrings. Some things never changed.
Her grace came in tides, and he knew too well what that meant. At first, mortals would find her comforting, the gentle warmth of a hearth, the soothing glow of a candle. But as the tides grew stronger, the same grace would corrode them. Comfort would become corrosion; warmth would sear; light would blind. Her touch would unsettle mortal souls, stripping them bare until only ashes of fear remained.
His heart clenched. He could not let her linger here unchecked.
"Come, Urie…" he said at last, his voice steady, quiet, as though there were no void between them, no cottage walls, no gulf of distance. His words carried across without effort, for grace does not require sound. "Let's go home."
She turned her face toward him. And she smiled. A knowing smile. A smile that bore no fear, no submission, only confidence. She knew what he feared, and she dismissed it. She knew the tides he dreaded, and she embraced them. For if he understood the realms she had already reached, the mastery she had gained over her grace, he would not worry so much.
The embers of her wings pulsed, and her presence filled the space between them, her smile widening, she was finally going home, if she knew she was going to find Lucifer home God knows she would be the one dragging Mike home.