The cold night air stung Kreed's face as he pulled the collar of his jacket higher and stepped into the serpentine alleys of Serendi City. His nerves were fraying by the second. He knew he was being watched. Could feel it in his spine.
Every shadow whispered her name: Sera.
He cut through the alleyways like a man trying to outrun judgment. Neon lights flickered overhead; bloody reds, sickly greens; making the walls pulse like a living thing.
Kreed ducked into an abandoned metro station, a shortcut to the south docks where he planned to disappear. But halfway down the graffiti-choked steps, he heard the scraping of metal against concrete.
He froze.
A silhouette stepped into view. Hooded. Robed.
Not Sera. Taller. Bulkier. Reeking of machine oil and incense.
A Blade tracker!
Kreed spun, running back up the stairs.
Too late.
Another figure blocked his path. Masked. Armored. The Blade had found him faster than he feared.
"You sold us out, Kreed," the first figure growled. Voice distorted by a vocal augumentor. "Nine of our men dead: all because of you!"
"No! No, I didn't." he stammered.
A fist crashed into his gut. Kreed doubled over.
The second figure grabbed him by the hair, forced him to look up.
"We know you talked to her. We know you also warned Blade. Now you'll tell us everything she said."
Kreed whimpered, blood dripping from his lip.
In the shadows, a third presence stirred.
Silent.
Watching.
A glint of silver under a nun's robe.
But no one noticed. Not yet.
Meanwhile, within the Catacombs, Azraela stumbled after Mirna through crumbling tunnels lit by bone lanterns. Her vision still shimmered with after-images of the machine's touch.
They moved fast, deeper underground, away from the machine chamber. Time was short.
Mirna spoke without looking back. "You saw Seraph? Good. This changes everything."
"How?" Azraela asked.
"Now you know what you're fighting, replied Mirna. "Now you have a perfect sense of direction."
Azraela gritted her teeth. "I need my guns."
Mirna smirked darkly. "You'll get something better."
They emerged into a wide underground plaza. At its center, an altar. A grotesque thing cobbled from rust-eaten iron, shattered armor, and bone fused into the metal like trapped souls. Above it loomed a mural, monstrous in its scale: a burning saint crucified in midair, wings of twisted barbed wire unfurled in mockery of salvation, crowned in a corona of devouring flame.
Shadows moved along the perimeter. Gaunt figures cloaked in ruin. Survivors. Apostates. Outcasts. Desperados. Madmen and broken warriors. Mirrors of Azraela's own fractured soul.
Mirna stepped into the center, her presence a sharpened blade. She turned toward Azraela, and her eyes, no longer entirely human, blazed with an ancient, pitiless light. "You want revenge?" she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "You want to tear Seraph's throne down?"
Azraela trembled with the passion of purpose, her hands clenching into fists. "Yes!"
"Then kneel!" Mirna commanded.
The congregation of the damned stirred, their attention pressing down on Azraela like a thousand invisible hands.
Still she hesitated. "Is this a Pagan ritual?" she demanded, her voice brittle. Deep within her, old catechisms shrieked in terror, warning her of damnation.
Mirna's mouth twisted into something between a grin and a snarl.
"No," she whispered. "It's still a Christian ritual, but of Pagan origin: borrowed. No! stolen and twisted by your priests. A defiled relic, plundered from tombs far older than Bethlehem. Your priests buried its roots beneath a thousand lies. Now kneel, daughter of dust, before you lose your inheritance. Before you are forgotten."
Defiled relic? Stolen and twisted? The words slammed into Azraela's mind like hammer blows. Her faith shuddered: not broken, but cracked enough for something darker to bleed through.
And so, heart thundering, she reluctantly bent the knee before the altar.
Mirna drew forth a dagger: not forged, but seemingly grown from bone and black iron, humming with a life not its own. The blade drank the pallid light around it. She pressed its tip against Azraela's brow.
A sound rose from the altar: not a whisper, but a dirge, a groaning of earth and spirit in a tongue that predated memory itself.
Mirna's voice followed, woven with the cadence of binding:
"By the ash of the First Flame, by the blood of the Unnamed, by the silent oaths of the broken, I brand thee, Sera Valtoria, as sword and scourge."
The dagger pulsed once, twice; then flared. Azraela's skin burned and blistered under the sigil's kiss, and in the agony, she glimpsed terrible visions: a field of broken halos, rivers running red with heavenly blood, wings torn asunder in endless night.
Then it was done.
The mark faded into unseen ink beneath her flesh, but its hunger remained.
Mirna lowered the blade. When she spoke again, her voice was a tolling of fate.
"With the Sigil of Michael carved into your soul, you are now bound to his last vengeance. You are the relic of wrath. You are the fiery blade he left behind."
The broken choir answered with a sonorous "Amen," their voices ragged but resolute.
Azraela rose, unsteady but unyielding. Her mind reeled, Sera Valtoria, a name she had buried beneath layers of mortal forgetting. How had Mirna known?
Her voice, when it came, was hoarse but defiant.
"Whose weapon do I wield?" she demanded.
Mirna's grin was a terrible thing, sharp enough to draw blood.
"The Flaming Sword of Michael the Magnificent," she said. "Forged in Heaven... with the Flame of Hell!"
Back in the metro station of Serendi City, the two Blade enforcers raised their weapons.
Kreed involuntarily knelt down. Closed his eyes as though silently saying his last prayer. Trembling.
A soft whistle.
Then, a thud.
One of the enforcers dropped like a ragdoll, his throat cleanly slit. The second enforcer barely had time to pivot, weapon up.
Too slow.
A flash of black and crimson robes cut through the smoke.
Gunfire erupted, violent and sudden.
It was over.
When the smoke cleared, Sister Sin stood over the bodies. Her eyes burned cold.
She looked down at Kreed.
"You're lucky," she said. "I need you alive a little longer."
Kreed, gasping for breath, managed a nod. "You're not Sera." It wasn't a question.
But Sister Sin's reply was. "Sera Valtoria?"
"Ye-yes!" Kreed stammered, not knowing if his answer would earn him the mysterious nun's approval. Or a death sentence.
Sister Sin leaned close enough that Kreed could smell the metallic tang of blood on her breath, her voice a razor whisper. "Take me to her."
Kreed whimpered in resignation. "I don't even know where she is. The last time I saw her, she found me. With a freaking gun." Kreed made a frightened face while emphasizing on the gun.
"A gun," echoed Sister Sin. So, Sera is a gunslinger as well, she reflected. Interesting.
"Then keep your eyes open," she said, straightening. "When she surfaces, you'll inform me."
"But? Can I get up?" implored Kreed. His knees were in pain from kneeling longer than his age could carry.
Sister Sin noded.
"How do I find you when I see her?" he asked, standing up, confused.
"You won't find me: I'll find you," she replied enigmatically, already turning away. Then she paused. "And, Kreed?" her voice dropped to a silken threat, "don't even think about leaving town. You wouldn't last ten steps."
"But the Blade..." Kreed implored in protest.
Sister Sin cut him off with a hand-wave. "As long as I have my eye on you, the Blade is the least of your problem. Do you know why I kept you alive?
Kreed shook his head, unable to form a coherent answer.
"I need intel: lots of intel," she said. "Beginning with Sera's whereabout."
Kreed's mind spun. "Of course, intel is my superpower, Sister. What name should I call you?" he inquired.
"Sister Sin. But Sera wouldn't know me by this name." With that, she was gone: disappearing into the darkness as mysteriously as she had appeared.