The graveyard was old enough that the stones had forgotten the names they carried. Moss dripped like rot down broken crosses. Wind hissed through cracked angels, their wings chipped away by rain and time. Somewhere, a bell tolled the hour — but there was no church to claim it. Only the dead and the drunk priest standing among them.
Father Malachai Kael knelt in the wet dirt. His cassock was threadbare, black soaked to a funeral grey. Before him lay the fresh mound of earth he'd dug himself. No gravedigger would touch this corpse — not when people whispered it was possessed.
It wasn't. Not anymore.
Her name was Miriam Kael. His sister. Her face — what was left of it — stared up at him through the rain. One side caved in, bite marks that no wolf ever left. Her eyes were open. Always open.
Malachai pressed two fingers to his temple, mumbling Latin half-remembered from seminary. The gin on his breath turned his words sour. He tried to finish a prayer, but the words tangled like thorns in his throat.
Somewhere behind him, the shadows moved — shadows in a place that should have been empty. He didn't flinch. He was too tired. Too drunk.
The thing stepped from the darkness like oil spilling across stone. Not a demon. Not yet. The shape resolved — robes like torn silk, eyes like a star trapped in a skull. Sariel. The Oathbound. The betrayer who still wore a halo cracked like old porcelain.
> SARIEL: You have bled enough prayers, Malachai Kael.
Malachai didn't look up. He just wiped his nose, left a smear of red on his sleeve.
> MALACHAI: "She screamed for me. And I was too slow. It wore her skin like a fucking coat. And I was too slow."
Sariel drifted closer, no footsteps — just a cold wind that rattled the dead branches. He crouched — angelic mockery in the shape of something that once guarded Heaven's gates. His voice made the worms shift in the grave.
> SARIEL: You know their names now. The old words. The secret ones. But words are not enough. You need teeth.
Malachai's laugh was more a cough. He spat — blood and gin, soaked into the grave dirt.
> MALACHAI: "What's the cost?"
Sariel's smile was gentle — the way a snake might look at a bird's egg.
> SARIEL: Your soul. It is worthless where you're going. But it will buy you a blade. A tongue of fire. The right to drag them back screaming.
Malachai's eyes flicked down at Miriam's corpse. The flies were already gathering, even in the cold. He pressed his palm to the soil — felt the wet seep between his fingers.
> MALACHAI: "If I take your deal. They'll fear me?"
> SARIEL: They'll curse you. They'll call you monster, drunk, exile. But the shadows will run when they hear your name.
He snorted. Then he started to laugh — a raw, broken sound that rose to a scream before he choked it back down with a swallow of gin. He pulled a shard of glass from his coat pocket — an old bottle neck — pressed it to his palm until blood welled up dark and oily in the moonlight.
He dipped two fingers in it. On the tombstone behind Miriam's grave, he drew a sigil — jagged, wrong, the sort that buzzed behind the eyes if you stared too long.
Sariel opened his hands. A parchment unfolded itself from nothing — made of skin, old and thin, veins still visible beneath the waxy surface.
> SARIEL: Sign it.
Malachai pressed his bleeding hand to the skin. The parchment drank deep — the blood vanished, sucked in like roots drawing rain. The sigil on the tombstone flared once — black flame in the shape of screaming faces.
Something inside him shifted. He felt his bones bend, his veins twist like new wires feeding into something old and cold. Somewhere far away, a bell tolled backward.
Sariel rose. The grave dirt trembled. The shadows at the edges of the graveyard hissed — tiny shapes, demons sniffing the air. The Oathbound's eyes burned with triumph.
> SARIEL: Go, Malachai Kael. Go be their butcher. Be their blade.
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Twelve Years Later
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Thorn's Hollow. A city that smelled of old rain and dead prayers.
A child screamed in an abandoned tenement, voice cracking windows three floors down. The neighbors heard it but nobody moved. You don't open your door when the Devil's doing business.
Up the cracked stairwell came Malachai Kael. Older now — eyes sunken, coat patched with tape and dried blood. He smelled of gin, stale incense, and burnt hair. In one hand: a battered flask. In the other: the Hellglass Dagger, humming with a low, insect hiss.
He kicked open the door.
Inside — a child on the ceiling, twisted backward, fingers digging into plaster like nails into flesh. Her mouth unhinged, eyes milky white. Her voice — not hers. A man's voice, a beast's voice, all at once.
> POSSESSED CHILD: EXILE. DRUNK. TRAITOR.
Malachai laughed — a bark, dry as old leaves. He took a long swallow from his flask, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
> MALACHAI: "I know who I am. Do you know who you're talking to, pigshit?"
The child's body convulsed — black bile dripping from her hair. A long, lolling tongue, not human, flicked at the air. The thing inside her tried to crawl out — lumps shifting under her skin.
Malachai raised the Blood Psalter. Whispered a prayer that made the wallpaper peel. Latin twisted into something fouler.
The shadows flickered. Something screamed inside the child — a shape like a crow with too many wings burst from her chest, clawing at the air. Malachai stepped forward, stabbed the Hellglass Dagger into the shadow — black mist hissed and shrieked, sucked inside the blade like water down a drain.
When it was done, the girl dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Alive — but not untouched. She'd dream of this forever.
Malachai stood over her, chest heaving. He tucked the dagger away, took another drink.
Behind him, footsteps. A gun cocked.
Detective Crowe's voice: cold, angry, hoarse from too many cigarettes.
> CROWE: "Hands where I can see them, priest."
Malachai turned, eyes ringed with veins, grin crooked and savage. He lifted his flask in mock salute.
> MALACHAI: "Careful, detective. Don't stand in the door too long. Shadows bite."
Behind her — deeper in the hall — something moved. Watching. Waiting. And Malachai Kael, soul sold, half-dead, half-damned, just laughed in its face.
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⚰️ END OF CHAPTER ONE