The stars were wrong.
Above the jagged cliffs of Eastern Turkey, under the skeletal ruin of a fortress older than Rome, a Shaaman knelt inside a ring of scorched bone and salt, chanting in a forgotten tongue.
The fire danced the wrong way — downward, not up.
The wind refused to howl. The earth held its breath, complete silence.
He had meant to summon a high ranked demon, someone bargainable, someone with power enough to grant him what he seeked. Immortality. Instead, the cave cracked, a sigil burst into white flame.
Then he came.
A figure fell from the air like a puppet cut from unseen strings — robes smoldered at the edges, skin pale and flickering with fading flame.
The air shuddered as he landed, half-conscious, wings crumbling into ash behind him.
"What... are you?" the Shaaman whispered, inching forward.
The being raised his head slowly. Eyes like extinguished stars. A face that had forgotten how to weep.
Ramiel.
The last of the Djinn.
His voice was brittle, broken glass wrapped in silk.
"You... should not have... reached for me."
"I summoned you," the Shaaman said, trembling but grinning. "Your power. It's mine now."
Ramiel closed his eyes. "The gifts... are not for you to inherit. Nor for me... to grant."
The Shaaman scowled. "You will give me what I ask."
"No."
The room snapped colder.
Rage twisted the Shaaman's face. "Then rot here, you cursed relic."
He drew a binding rune in the air, one of the most powerful he could conjure, for he didn't understand the being before him. Chains of lightless iron erupted from the stones, wrapping around Ramiel's limbs and throat. He did not resist.
He simply whispered:
"You mistake silence for weakness. One day... you will learn."
But the Shaaman would not live long enough to.
A night later...
The winds howled through the broken peaks.
Six figures crept through the shadows of the ruined fortress — garbed in black etched with silver, marked by the ancient sigil of a hound's eye pierced with a thorn: the Bloodhound Crest.
"One life sign. Deep. Faint," whispered Seren, the youngest of the hunters, checking her relic monitor.
"That's our ghost," muttered Tavin, drawing his rune-rifle.
They entered the heart of the fortress, where cold fire flickered on the ceiling and rot stank from unholy rituals. They found the Shaaman asleep beside his rituals, eyes wide in shallow death, of course executed by one of them.
"Throat slit," said Tavin. "No sign of struggle."
Behind a cracked altar, they found Ramiel.
Barely breathing. Still bound.
"Is that a fallen?" Seren whispered.
"No wings," said Tavin. "Looks... burnt out."
Ramiel's eyes opened — barely. A flicker of something ancient passed through him, recognition tinged with sorrow.
"Not fallen," he croaked. "Not yours to judge."
"You're coming with us," Tavin said, aiming his weapon.
"Where?"
"To the Council," Seren said softly. "To decide if you're myth... or monster."
They cut the chains. He collapsed into their arms.
* * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * *
A Bloodhound transport tore through the sky, carrying the Last Djinn in silence.
Ramiel, too weak to fight, stared at the stars through the glass canopy.
He whispered, so low only the night could hear it:
"They think they are the judges... but they've forgotten who wrote the law."
And somewhere, in Noctem Palace, Lucifer looked up — and felt the sky shift.