Angelica's fingers trembled as they dragged across her clenched teeth, nails scraping faintly like the hiss of steel on stone. The sound set my own nerves on edge. I reached outward, blindly, as though some unseen string pulled my hand. My fingers stretched, straining toward the warmth of my brother's skin.
But the space between us yawned wider than I'd feared. My heart pounded with a furious, unsteady rhythm; anxious heat surged through my arms until my chest ached. The cruel truth struck me. He was far, far beyond the reach of a sudden embrace. The thought hollowed me out.
Come back to me. The silent plea pulsed through my skull like a prayer hammered against the gates of heaven. Come back. If there were gods, I begged them to bridge the distance, to place him safely within my arms before the world could steal him away.
My gaze flicked toward Lucy, a wordless appeal caught in my throat. But his eyes were fixed elsewhere. Cold, sharpened by a threat I could not yet name.
"This Lucy ..?" A voice rasped from the gloom. The supposed leader of the devils stepped forward, his grin a sickle carved from shadow. "That is the great messiah? No wonder months have passed without a shred of progress."
His words slithered through the air, slick with scorn. Laughter leaked from his mouth, a slow, deliberate, like a knife drawn across flesh. "You hardly look like a man. Not even a boy. More like a woman drowning in her own sorrow."
He chuckled, a low, guttering sound that curdled the blood. "And beautiful… oh, unexpectedly beautiful. The hordes will savor such a lovely face." The men behind him barked their amusement, their mirth sharp and empty. For us, there was nothing to laugh. Atleast of all for Angelica, whose trembling hand had gone still. Then it came, a single, bone-shaking thud. Feathers burst into the air like shards of moonlight, and a searing brilliance swept across our vision. I had always been told angels carried their power like a quiet storm, a serene, unearthly, their blades tempered with mercy. I had even seen her move before, each swing of her sword a hymn of forgiveness. But not now. This time, her wings snapped open with the fury of a tempest. Rage poured from every beat, every flare of pinion. Her blade carved through the suffocating darkness, splintering it into fleeing shadows. No mercy lingered in her movement. Only judgment. Only wrath.
The blinding arc of Angelica's blade should have cleaved the night in two. Instead, the devil slipped aside as though the air itself bent to his whim. One moment he was in her path; the next, the sword sliced through nothing but a fading shadow. A grin spread slowly across his face, a cruel moon rising. "Oh..?" he purred, voice soaked in mockery, "attacking before introduction? How terribly rude." The air shifted. It subtle at first, like the hush before a storm. Then it thickened, heavy as wet sand. I felt it in my lungs, a sudden drag on every breath. Time itself seemed to lurch, each heartbeat stretching into a painful eternity. Angelica faltered mid-flight. Her wings, once a blur of furious light, shuddered as though caught in invisible tar. The rhythm of her movement broke; feathers drifted sluggishly, their fall stretched into an agonizing slow dance. The devil raised one finger, as if conducting the world. "A little trick of mine," he said lightly, almost bored. "I slow those who bore me. Makes them easier to appreciate." Angelica struggled against the unseen weight, her teeth bared, the radiant glow of her grace flickering like a dying flame. Her sword wavered, half-raised, frozen in the air.
He stepped forward with unhurried ease, each movement taunting in its normal speed against our crawling reality. Then, with deliberate cruelty, he planted a boot upon the angel's shoulder and pressed.
The ground accepted her with a dull, shattering thud. Dust and crushed feathers spiraled upward like a funeral pyre.
Leaning close, his grin widened into something unholy.he "Now then," whispered, his voice a knife of silk, "since you were so eager to strike first… why not start again properly? Introduce yourself, angel." The words dripped with amusement, each syllable a humiliation. And still the world moved at his chosen pace. It's slow, suffocating, and inescapable.
"MY NAME IS BELL! HOW ABOUT YOU!?"
The devil's roar cracked across the night like thunder rolling through a hollow canyon. His voice carried the weight of something older than the earth, something that wanted to be worshipped and feared. He drew back his leg with deliberate slowness, savoring the moment. Each second stretched taut, a cruel, glistening thread. His boot hovered above Angelica like the blade of a guillotine. He wanted her to feel it, the strange, quiet mercy of not yet. The sick ache of knowing the pain was coming. Angelica said nothing. Not a word. Not even the ghost of a sigh. Pride did not burn in her eyes; neither did fear. Only silence, unyielding, impenetrable. Bell's lip curled, the grin thinning into something colder. "You're a bore," he hissed, each syllable like a knife dragged across stone. "Stay there."
His attention broke away, the way a cat abandons a lifeless mouse. He turned slowly, scanning the ruin around him as though the dark itself might offer a more satisfying opponent.
"Well.." he murmured, voice lilting now, playful in a way that made my stomach knot. "Since the little angel toy has no taste for humor… why don't we play a different game?"
A quiet dread pressed in, heavy and cold as sinking water. My chest tightened until breathing felt like swallowing glass. Instinctively, my eyes sought Lucy—the one person I wanted to believe had an answer, a path through this nightmare.
Lucy stood frozen. His gaze, sharp and unwavering, stayed fixed on Angelica. The faint tremor in his lips betrayed him. He knew...Oh, he knew..That he should act. That something in him should break loose and charge forward. Yet he remained still, locked by a faith too heavy to carry. He trusted Angelica. Trusted her to rise. But beneath that trust I saw the truth flickering in his eyes. It was a quiet, gnawing expectation of the worst. Bell's shadow loomed closer. His hand, long-fingered, almost elegant, wandered toward my brother. The devil's smile widened with the patience of a hunter.
"The sister of this boy," he mused, his words soft and venomous. "You don't da—!" The protest ripped from my throat before I could swallow it back. Lucy's hand clamped over my mouth, sudden and desperate. His eyes begged me for silence, though fear tremored in every line of his face. Bell's gaze glittered, catching the faint light like shards of black ice. "The woman," he said, the grin returning, sharp and terrible, "will have to choose between her savior, Lucy…"—he paused, letting the name linger like a curse—"…or her brother." The air itself seemed to recoil. And in that suspended, shivering moment, every heartbeat felt like the toll of a distant bell, counting down to something we could no longer escape. My heart felt like a stone sinking through black water, heavy, unrelenting, dragging every breath down with it. For a fleeting instant, the selfless part of me, the part that once believed in virtue, urged me to honor the man who had saved me, the man who had given me the strength to stand and to keep standing even when the world collapsed around me. But my conscience whispered something darker. Selfishness. How I wished,oh, how I ached, to choose my brother without the iron weight of guilt that would surely follow. To reach for him with no thought of what honor demanded, no echo of shame gnawing at my soul. Why must it be this way? After years of carrying my own torment, of thinking at last I had found someone to share it, I am now forced to cradle a question so heavy it could break me. Why, God? Why must fate be so merciless? The sight of another night.. That night.. Flashed unbidden across my mind. Mud.
The reek of wet earth and smoke. My own knees giving way as if the ground itself pulled me down. I had knelt then, arms streaked with filth, my dress sodden and torn. Helpless. And now, I knelt again. My palms pressed into the cold dirt, the roughness biting into my skin. My legs betrayed me, folding until my body mirrored that old memory, a cruel reflection. "I.. I.." The words barely formed, each syllable a shard of glass in my throat.
This time, it was no enemy's strength that forced me down. It was my own heart.. My heart turning against me, heavy as iron chains, a traitor that would not let me rise. How am I supposed to know the answer? My head tilted upward almost of its own will, as though some invisible thread pulled my chin toward the faint, uncaring stars. My mouth trembled, but not as fiercely as my eyes. They shook with every breath, every heartbeat, until tears broke free and slid in trembling paths down my cheeks. I lifted my gaze to Lucy. My heart, caught between duty and desire, between what is right and what is mine, beaten like a prisoner rattling its chains.
"Lucy…" My voice cracked, a whisper splintered by despair. "…what should I do?"