A single candle burned at the foot of a broken crucifix.
The flame sputtered in protest as cold wind slipped through the cracks of the chapel's fractured stained glass. Red and blue light spilled like blood over the pews. Dust danced in solemn procession. The cathedral had long since been deconsecrated; now a ruin squatting like a forgotten saint in the city's underbelly.
But Sister Azraela knelt in the front row, still as though praying.
Blood matted her hair. A thin stream of it traced the curve of her temple to her jaw. She'd wrapped her ribs in gauze, stolen from a back-alley clinic run by a drunk ex-nun. Her twin guns were gone. Her gear was gone.
But her fury? That remained untouched.
She whispered psalms beneath her breath. Not for forgiveness: but to sharpen her hate.
A rustle behind her.
"I brought you water," said a voice. Soft. Androgynous. Reverent.
Azraela didn't turn.
"Instead of trying to stop me, Father Leo, you should've at least encouraged me?" she said as though he was the cause of her partially failed mission.
Leopold Noam: thin, middle-aged, hunched in his priestly blacks, placed the bottle gently beside her. "Encouraged you?" he replied, frowning. "I raised you to turn the other cheek. Instead you chose an eye for an eye. Was it my discouragement that got you nearly killed?"
Azraela finally turned. Her eyes like twin wounds.
"At least, being supportive would've boosted my morale, Father," she said. "I needed it for luck."
Father Leo gave a sad smile. "I doubt that. I neither support nor encourage vengeance. You know it's against my principle."
She stood, grabbing the water and downing half in one gulp. Her ribs groaned in protest. "They took my weapons. My gadgets. My edge."
"Good riddance," said Father Leo, relieved.
Ignoring his remark, Azraela continued, "That man: Seraph. He knew my name. Not just Sister Azraela. My real one."
"Now, how could he have known that?" asked Father Leo, his attention stirred.
"I was thinking Kreed told him."
"Kreed?" said the priest. "The same Kreed that was supposed to finish you off a decade ago?"
Azraela nodded a yes. "But then Seraph told me other things that Kreed didn't know. And that got me thinking."
"What other things?" asked the priest.
"He knew I survived the fire: Kreed didn't," she said. "He said they allowed me train so I can be a weapon for them later. Not exactly his words. But his implication."
Father Leo's brow furrowed. "Then this is deeper than vendetta. This is legacy."
Azraela stared at the cracked crucifix above the altar. "He said they let me live, implying that I'm a future asset to them. Why?"
The priest hesitated. "Because you were born in fire. Raised in ruin. And some devils don't kill their messiahs," he paused, "they mold them."
Azraela walked to the candle. "I need intel. Eyes. Access."
"You're asking for the Choir, aren't you?" Father Leo's face paled. "You know they don't talk for free."
"They owe me," Azraela replied. "I saved three more of them not quite two months ago. That buys me ears."
Father Leo swallowed hard. "Even so, the kind of intel you seek doesn't come cheap. You'll have to give them something still."
"I will," she said.
The underground station hadn't seen a train in twenty years.
Beneath the rusted rails, behind a false wall of graffiti-tagged concrete, the Choir of Teeth gathered.
They weren't a gang. Not exactly. Not a cult. Not quite. More a congregation of informants, misfits, and cyber-brain junkies; each member surgically altered to wear a row of sharpened animal teeth embedded along their jaws. Hence the name.
Each tooth told a story. Every mouth was a library of secrets.
Sister Azraela stepped through a graffiti-hidden metal door and descended. The smell hit first: ozone, rust, and sweet rot. Then the murmurs began.
"She walks again." one said.
"The Broken Nun returns." another said.
"Blood for the Blades, bled by them too." the third added.
They greeted her with a song: soft hissing whistles passed from one scarred mouth to another like verses of a psalm. A ritual. A memory.
At the end of the tunnel stood the Choir Master. A tall, bald woman with teeth from sharks, wolves, and lions soldered into her cheeks. Her eyes were milk-white but missed nothing. They don't only see. They know. They, too, were augmented.
"Sister Gun," the Choir Master said, spreading her arms like wings.
"Master Teeth," Azraela replied with a faint nod.
"Why bleed again?" the Master asked, stepping forward. "Why crawl to the mouths that sing only when fed?"
Azraela opened her palm. In it, a microdrive. "Encrypted footage from the docks. Faces. Audio. Shipment logs."
The Choir Master leaned closer. Sniffed it like sacrament. "Dangerous information," the Master said, dragging her words. "This will cost."
Azraela knew the drill. But decided to bargain anyway. "You owe me."
"But this is biiiig," countered the Master.
"Three lives," Azraela bargained further. "I saved three more of your fold. That should even up the scores."
"Not even close, baby," the Choir Master countered. "The intel you seek is bigger than them. Bigger than you. Bigger than me. Way bigger than your vendetta spree."
Finally, Azraela gave up. These cunning bastards are masters of bargain, she reasoned. But she didn't mind. She understood the price of secrets. Plus, she was ready to pay whatever coin it took to get the intel. Besides, information this dangerous wasn't cheap.
Without a word, she reached into her pocket.
When her hand emerged, a single Gugo coin gleamed in her palm, catching the tunnel's dim light like a falling star.
The Master's milk-white eyes lit up instantly.
A Gugo!
Mined from pure gold, but valued far beyond its weight: a single piece worth more than a thousand dollars, and many times that on the black market, depending on the bargaining power of the owner.
Tonight, it bought loyalty.
And respect.
Azraela tossed the gold-coin. The Choir Master caught it. Pocketed it.
"And what do you seek in return?" the Master asked toothfully.
"Seraph," Azraela said. "The Fang-faced bastard in the Blades. Where he sleeps. Where he sins. Where he dies."
The Choir hissed.
Some laughed. One wept.
The Master stepped close, her breath warm with old secrets. "Seraph is no pawn. No soldier. He's," she paused, "unmoored. Unstoppable. Part of something ancient. Something," again, she paused, "otherworldly. If we speak his name, we must also speak the name Mirabel."
Azraela frowned. "Who's Mirabel?"
The Choir Master nodded slowly. "Not a person. A place. Below the city. Older than the city. Every Blade answers to it. Or from it. And Seraph? He guards it."
Azraela clenched her fist. "Where?"
The Choir Master leaned close. "You won't like it."
"Try me," Azraela said with a mischievous grin.
"The Catacombs," the Master replied.
Of course. The old ones. Beneath the church ruins. Beneath the city morgues. A graveyard within a graveyard.
But before she could respond, a soft beep chirped from her belt.
A tracker.
"What?" Azraela gasped, taken aback.
She spun: but too late.
Gunfire roared through the tunnel mouth. Bullets lanced the walls. Teeth shattered. Screams rang like stained glass being smashed.
The Blades.
Azraela dove behind a support beam. "AMBUSH!"
The Choir scattered. One drew a blade. Another bit through her own tongue in ritual. Blood was their gospel now.
Azraela pulled a knife from her boot and moved.
A Blade in all-black surged forward. She moved like a phantom, cut under his arm, ripped the knife across his ribs. Another grabbed her robe. She twisted, flipped him into a support pillar and dislocated his jaw with the pommel.
"GET OUT!" she shouted to the Choir.
The Master didn't move. Instead, she opened a hidden vent and shoved a pouch into Azraela's hands.
"For Mirabel," she whispered.
Then a shot rang out. A bullet tore through her throat. Blood spilled. She fell to her knees, singing through a muffled voice, until her voice stopped.
Azraela didn't scream.
She ran!
An hour later, she burst into the chapel, her knuckles bloodied, her eyes hollow.
Father Leo rushed to her. "What? What happened?"
"They found me. Traced me," she said. "Damn tracker was on my belt. I pulled the belt out while escaping and tossed it into the river."
"Smart daughter of mine," Father Leo said, making light of the dangerous situation. Truth: he was unnerved. The thought of his adopted daughter living dangerously on edge was enough to unnerve any father.
She threw the pouch onto the altar. Out spilled maps. Old. Annotated. And a vial filled with iridescent dust.
"What's that?" the priest asked, voice shaking.
Azraela wiped blood from her eye. "My lead."
"Where to?" demanded Father Leo. Gently.
She stared into the candle flame again, which now flickered erratically, as if it too were afraid. "To Mirabel."