The chapel was quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of silence that didn't belong in a house of worship. It was the silence of held breath. Of something. Waiting. Something about to happen.
Sister Azraela knelt before the altar, hands clasped, rosary coiled like a sleeping serpent between her fingers. The candlelight painted soft shadows over her face, casting her hollow cheeks in flickering gold. Outside the stained-glass windows, thunder rolled. Rain began to tap gently against the glass.
"You can't leave like this, Azraela," the voice of a middle-aged man sounded behind her.
She didn't turn to face Father Thorne. His voice, though aged and brittle, still carried the weight of command. She felt the tremor in it. Not from age.
But from fear. The fear of losing her.
Ever since losing her parents a decade ago, Azraela had been raised by two men she called "Father": each shaping her in starkly different ways. Father Thorne, fierce and unyielding, taught her the language of survival: grit, guns, and the art of killing. His love was forged in fire and discipline.
Then there was Father Leo Noam, the quiet force of conscience, who showed her another path: one of mercy, restraint, and the strength it takes not to kill. But in a world where compassion is seen as weakness, Azraela made her choice.
She chose strength.
"I was never meant to stay," Azraela said to Father Thorne, rising to her feet. Her voice was calm. Cold. Ten years of sermons and silence had trained her well. She owed that much to the man she now took as her father. "You raised me for this."
Father Thorne stepped forward from the shadows. His robes were faded, his collar slightly askew. In his eyes lived the ghosts of all the lives he couldn't save. "I raised you to survive," he whispered. "Not to kill."
Azraela turned now, and the change in her was undeniable. She was no longer the wide-eyed orphan he'd found bleeding in her burning house and unconscious ten years ago. She was steel. Fire. Vengeance wrapped in a nun's habit. She fought the rising feeling of fury, of memories too unforgivable to forget. And with a wicked grin, she won.
"I'm not going to kill, Father. I'm going to deliver judgment," she calmly said.
Outside, thunder cracked. The wind howled.
"One more thing," she murmured.
She stepped into the confession booth and returned carrying a silver case.
Father Thorne froze. His eyes locked onto it like a man watching a serpent uncoil at his feet.
Azraela placed the case atop the altar, clicking it open with a soft, metallic snap.
Inside, twin Glock Nineteens gleamed under the low chapel lights: matte black frames, each barrel etched with a ghost-white crucifix. They stared back at her like loyal hounds thirsting for command.
Alongside them lay two suppressors, a neat row of loaded magazines, and a single laminated photograph: Her family. Before the fire. Before the Blade Mafias came with guns, knives and fire. It was the only thing she'd ripped from the wreckage. The only piece of a life that once believed in mercy.
"You kept the guns," Father Thorne said, his voice caught between admiration and sorrow.
He had trained her to walk the Way of the Gun. He hadn't foreseen she would become its avatar. Or that the world would one day demand it of her.
"I polished them every Sunday," Azraela said, her voice calm as the grave.
She screwed the silencers onto the barrels in smooth, mechanical turns. Each click echoed like a drumbeat before battle.
"The city's changed," Father Thorne said quietly. "They've evolved. It's not the world you left behind."
"Good," Azraela said, snapping the last suppressor in place. "I've changed too."
She flipped her trench-coat-styled robe.
For a moment, the world seemed to catch its breath.
Underneath, a body-fitting leather suit caught the candlelight: trousers and boots gleaming black, sculpted to move like a second skin. She looked more like a terminator than a nun.
But then again, a terminator was what she had become.
Twin holsters rode low on her back like black wings.
With a fluid, almost reverent motion, she holstered the guns.
The robe fell back into place, swallowing her lethal silhouette, cloaking judgment beneath humility once more.
She was like a shadow among shadows, except this one had come to collect sins with blood.
She held the crucifix of her rosary very tenderly, like one about to confess to God. Actually, she was about to: "Father forgive me for I'm about to sin." She kissed the crucifix and made a sign of the cross.
Then she emptied the magazines from the case inside her robe's pocket.
Kissing the family picture, she said: "I'll make them pay, my loves." Then, she placed the picture back inside the case, locked it, and took it back to where she brought it from.
Father Thorne approached her as she was about to leave. "If you go now, there's no turning back."
"I never planned to turn back." Then she walked past him, down the nave, her boots echoing between the pews.
Father Thorne didn't stop her. He knew better. He simply whispered a prayer to a God he wasn't sure was still listening.
Outside, the city at night breathed smoke and neon as rain poured on the street. The rainy clouds tangled with the skyline like fists in hair.
Azraela stepped into the rain without flinching. It wasn't a bother. It was home. The shadows under their umbrellas parted for her. Some curious ones stared at her as though she had lost her way to the chapel. And felt sorry for her.
"What the hell?" one exclaimed, surprised to see a nun walking under the rain, and in an unholy hour.
"Hello, sister? Lost your way to heaven already?" another mocked as he passed her by.
Laughter.
"Need an umbrella, sister?" a seemingly concerned passer-by offered to help her. But what he said next completely pissed her off. "There's love in sharing, you know."
"And there's death in daring," she hissed. Silently. Venomously.
The shock he showed afterward satisfied her.
"Whatever happens to being a good Samaritan?" he said in resignation.
She followed the map etched in her memory to a place she hadn't visited in a decade.
The Lamb's Gate Tavern.
Back then, it used to be an ice cream shop. Her father used to take them there every week for ice cream shopping. Now, the intel was it had become a hangout for knife-pushers and data runners. A haven for whispers. If the Blades still had informants in the city, this was where their scent would be thickest.
She pushed open the door.
Smoke. Laughter. Music low and dangerous.
And then…
Silence.
Eyes turned. Stares burned.
A nun had just walked into hell.
She moved like a ghost, her robe soaked with rain, her gaze scanning the room until it landed on a familiar mark: a snake tattoo curling around a man's neck, ending at his ear.
Kreed.
Ten years ago, he was her neighbor. Now, he worked for the Blades. Contingency. Small time.
Azraela walked up to the bar and sat next to him.
He didn't recognize her. Not yet.
"Whiskey. Neat," she said.
The bartender raised a brow but poured it anyway.
Kreed leaned in, grinning. "Didn't know nuns drank."
"Only on holy days," she said.
He chuckled. "What brings a sister to this side of the city?"
She turned to face him fully now, letting the light hit her face.
Kreed's smile faded.
His eyes widened. "No! No way!"
On Azraela's face, below her left eye was an old straight scar he recognized. However, as dangerous as this scar made her look, it never disfigured her face. Rather, it added more beauty to her dangerous look.
"Hello, Kreed."
He started to stand, but her hand was already on his thigh, pressing the barrel of her gun beneath his belt buckle. How the gun appeared in her hand was something his eyes couldn't register.
"Sit," she whispered. "Or junior ascends to heaven, right here and now."
He sat. Looked down in-between his legs. And let out a resigned but comical groan. He needed no prophet to interpret her sermon.
"You're supposed to be dead," he rasped.
"Then consider me a ghost," she replied. Coldly. "Tell me where they are."
"Who?" he asked, though he knew who she was referring to.
"Who else?" she asked back.
"I... I don't know," he stammered.
She leaned closer, her rosary dangling between them like a pendulum. "Don't lie. You don't want to die. Yet. I'm in the mood for penance, Kreed. I'll start with yours."
All eyes were on the two. But no one dared attempt to bail Kreed out. Though a trouble fermentor, he was a small-timer, one not worth getting into trouble for. And the "nun"? She looked like trouble itself. A trouble from hell. For a nun to walk under the rain she was not supposed to walk, into a night bar she was not supposed to be, and hold out a gun at Kreed, must mean one thing: she had to be a hell-raiser. And not the kind you dared to test.
Sweat rolled down Kreed's temple. "Okay. Okay. Look! The Blades aren't like before. They have ranks now. Territories. Codes. You can't just walk in and start shooting."
"Watch me," Azraela said. Smoothly. Coldly.
"There's," Kreed paused. But for the sake of his life, he had to tell her something. "There's a meet. Tomorrow night. Warehouse Nine. East docks. Small-time runners bringing in a package for one of the top Blades. That's all I know."
She nodded, pulled back, and slid a gold coin across the bar. "For the drink."
Then she stood, tucked her gun back into its holster, turned, and walked away.
As she reached the door, Kreed shouted after her. "You won't stand a chance, Sera. They'll kill you!"
She didn't turn back. "Sera is already dead," she said. "They can't kill a ghost."
A cold chill ran through Kreed's bones.
Outside, the rain had stopped.
And somewhere in Serendi City, the first line of her gospel was already being written; not in ink, but in blood.