🔴 — ADRIAN KELLS
Location: Beneath the Wrought Chapel | Time: 10:11 AM
The stone floor was freezing. Not cold—spiritually dead. A kind of dead that whispered back.
Adrian Kells moved barefoot across it anyway, the soles of his feet scarred, ritual-toughened. His spine ached under the carvings branded there—glyphs of disobedience, repurposed from forgotten scripture.
"Divinity isn't meant to be worshipped," he muttered to the dark. "It's meant to be reverse-engineered."
In the center of the room, a shallow pit smoldered. Inside, the scorched remains of Vernon Craig—bone, cloth, fragments of sin ground into silk. Around the pit, chalk lines curled in on themselves like serpents, nine circles deep.
Kells took a knee. Whispered the incantation. Opened the seer's eye—a polished glass sphere fitted with gold wire veins—and lowered it into the embers.
Nothing.
Then—a flash.
A vision.
A boy. White hair. Bare feet. Sitting in a ring of ash.
Symbols on the floor.
Symbols that shouldn't exist outside Mandate space.
Symbols that shouldn't come from a child's hand.
Kells exhaled slowly, holding the stone.
"So. He didn't bind him. He left the echo raw."
He closed his eyes, letting the residual pulse from the seer's eye tunnel into his own memory.
The glyphs Milo had drawn weren't just mimicry.
They were intuitively reassembled pieces of celestial language.
That was impossible.
"Or divine failure," Kells whispered. "The boy is an open wound in the system."
He stood, dizzy, light-headed from exposure.
"And wounds invite infection."
He picked up a vial of lamb's blood and poured it into the outer circle.
The lines hissed, reacting violently. That confirmed it.
"The resonance is holy—but unanchored."
If Elias didn't bind the boy soon, Milo would become something worse than a judge.
He'd become a reflection.
A raw spiritual mirror.
And mirrors don't choose what they reflect—they amplify it.
Kells retrieved a blade of volcanic obsidian etched with forgiveness runes—a mockery of absolution—and held it over the flame.
"Let's give him something to reflect."
He'd send someone in first. A test. A corrupted preacher. A known sinner cloaked in fake healing.
If the boy's echo consumed the heretic?
Then Kells would know he was ready.
— MILO
Location: St. Aurelia Children's Shelter | Time: 10:13 AM
The dreams had rules.
At first.
One hallway. One voice. One version of him.
But now?
Now there were three Milos in the same dream, standing in a burning classroom, each mouthing different verses from the Book of Judgment—none of which he'd read.
One turned to him and said:
"You'll die like a prophet—naked and screaming."
He woke up convulsing.
Not seizing. Not sick.
Tuning.
His body was aligning with something—vibrating like he was syncing with an invisible instrument.
He gripped the edge of the bed as light bled from the cracks in the walls.
He saw every lie the shelter staff had ever told—flashing like subtitles across their faces.
"We'll find you a family."
"You're going to be just fine."
"No one remembers what happened to you."
He tasted those lies. Ash. Bitter. Familiar.
His breathing slowed.
He stood. Walked to the window. Looked at his reflection.
But it wasn't him.
It was Elias.
Not smiling. Not angry. Just watching.
Behind him—twelve faceless judges, each bearing a different punishment instrument: brands, ropes, a crown of nails.
And all of them whispered his name.
"Milo…"
He turned from the window. The room was full now.
Not with people—but echoes.
Laughter. Screams. Footsteps behind the walls. Whispers under the bed. Prayers twisted into curses.
He raised his hand.
Glyphs pulsed under his skin, beneath his fingernails.
One of the walls peeled open like paper, revealing a space that didn't exist.
Inside—the courtroom of Judgment.
Silent. Glowing. Smoldering.
He stepped forward.
But just as he crossed the threshold—
A hand pulled him back.
Not Elias.
A child. Pale. Crying.
A version of himself, aged younger, mouth sewn shut, covered in handprints that glowed red.
Milo stared into the boy's eyes.
The boy whispered in his head:
"Don't let him use you."
Milo dropped to his knees, sobbing. He didn't know why.
And behind the door to his room, the hallway lights blew out.
A voice outside was praying in a language no one should know.
Kells's puppet had arrived.