The warehouse floor smelled of machine oil and ozone, but all Lyra could register was the phantom heat of a bonfire and the trace of ancient sorrow.
"Who was that, reporter?" The Aegis Hand the man in the sleek, dark armour—was already at the fire escape, his tactical light slicing through the industrial gloom. His voice was cold, filtered through a helmet visor that lent him the impersonal authority of a judge.
Lyra, still breathing hard from the shock of the vision, had forced herself to move, crouching beside the recently opened crate. The divine hunter was Seraphiel's latest mortal recruit a genetically augmented soldier, fast, strong, and fanatically loyal to the Cathedra. His type called themselves 'Aegis Hand.' They weren't true angels, but they were deadly enough to clean up the messes left by Heaven's wars.
"No one," Lyra said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline-fueled tremor in her hands. She snatched the data chip containing scans of the relic from the floor. "You broke the seal and spooked him. Just a vagrant, startled by the light."
The Aegis Hand turned, his light pinning her to the wall. His visor was obsidian, but Lyra knew the intensity of his gaze was focused entirely on her. She felt exposed, not just as a journalist snooping on a black-market exchange, but as a target.
"You came here for the Hilt of Sanctus," the hunter stated, his tone flat. "A relic of the Fall. Explain your presence, Lyra Cross."
"I'm investigating the disappearances in the Neon-Haze," she lied, easily. "The missing people are connected to this smuggler ring, the same one that moves illegal tech. I heard rumours of a high-value score tonight, something connected to the old faith." She gestured to the open crate, now holding only the heavy, nondescript hilt of a sword, its metal a dull, unreflective grey.
Not that, she thought. The high-value score was the man. The silver-eyed man who made her soul feel like it was simultaneously freezing and burning.
The hunter stepped closer, his armoured form radiating a low, sterile hum of heat. Lyra didn't flinch. Years of chasing stories in the Shattered City had taught her to hold her ground against worse than a religious zealot in body armour.
He didn't search her. He didn't have to. The Aegis Hand had her file. They knew her profile: reckless journalist, conspiracy theorist, chronicler of the forgotten gods.
"The Cathedra handles divine artefacts," the hunter said, his voice a pronouncement. "We are purifying the city. Stay away from the ruins, Ms Cross. For your salvation."
He moved past her, and his gaze lingered on the dark corner where the other man had stood. Lyra knew he was lying. Purifying meant destroying. The moment Heaven's forces acquired an angelic relic, it vanished forever. This wasn't about salvation; it was about control.
Lyra watched him go, then slipped out the opposite door to the street. The synthetic rain instantly plastered her dark hair to her face, a welcome, cold shock that washed away the oppressive heat of the hunter's presence.
By the time Lyra reached her apartment in the Spireshadow Dwellings, the first light of a bruised, grey morning was creeping over the massive corporate spires. Her building was an old, concrete block, perpetually cast in the shadow of the Nether Spire Hell's embassy, ironically which loomed nearby like a needle piercing the sky.
She locked her door with four different layers of digital and physical security. Then, in the dark, cramped sanctity of her office corner, she pulled up the data chip she'd risked her life for.
The relic's scan was a disappointment. Just the hilt—a heavy, cold piece of sculpted iron, embossed with a series of celestial runes she couldn't translate. The energy signature was non-existent. It was dead.
"Just a piece of junk," she muttered, trying to convince herself. She needed to focus on the facts. Hilt of Sanctus. A legend in the black market: the weapon of a vanished archangel. That was the story.
But the data had nothing to say about the silver-eyed man.
She brought up the blurred image her ocular implant had captured just before the Aegis Hand had turned its light on her. A shadow in the rain. Tall. Barefoot. Blackened wings.
She closed her eyes, trying to suppress the memory. Wings. It had to be rain on a tattered coat, a trick of the light, an overactive imagination fueled by fear.
He looked at you and the world stopped, a small, traitorous voice whispered in the back of her mind.
The vision of the fire came back: the wood smoke, the smell of her own fear, and the intense, paralysing love for the man who was weeping while she burned.
"No," she whispered, opening her eyes.
She was Lyra Cross. Investigative reporter. Twenty-one years old. She believed in data, verifiable evidence, and the corruptibility of power. She did not believe in reincarnation, or angels, or forbidden love. This was a hallucination, a stress reaction from getting too close to a dangerous story.
He's dangerous. He's the monster from the myth.
She tried to push the silver eyes out of her head, to focus on the Aegis Hand. That was the real danger: Seraphiel's army. They were organised, powerful, and actively trying to bury the truth about the angelic murders.
But the image of the man persisted. He hadn't been wearing a helmet. His eyes had been utterly human in their pain, yet utterly divine in their light.
Resistance. She threw herself into work, compiling a dossier on the Cathedra's recent activity, determined to build a wall of cold, hard facts between herself and the burning connection she had felt. She spent two hours mapping the Aegis Hand's movements using its traceable signal through the city's grid, trying to predict its next move.
Then, she found it.
Embedded in the corner of a public data stream, a CCTV feed from a junction two blocks from her building. It was a still image, low resolution. A single figure, obscured by the rain. But there, on the collar of his suit jacket, was a tiny, faint shimmer a sigil only visible when the light caught it.
It was the five-pointed star of Seraphiel's elite guard. The Aegis Hand was here. Now.
Her stomach dropped. They weren't just purifying the city. They were hunting her.
She didn't grab her weapons. She grabbed the data chip containing the image of the man. She slipped her journalist's drone into her satchel and headed for the fire escape.
The Spireshadow Dwellings were old, with a maze of service tunnels and utility shafts running beneath them. Lyra knew them all. She had practised these emergency exits since she was a teenager, always knowing one of the powerful groups she investigated would come for her.
She heard the heavy thud of the Aegis Hand's armoured boots on the stairs just as she was lowering herself into the maintenance shaft. He was moving fast, no longer bothering with stealth.
"Lyra Cross! Stop immediately! You are compromising a divine inquest!" his filtered voice boomed, echoing through the empty stairwell.
Lyra dropped five feet down a ventilation chute, landing silently on a pile of discarded utility cables. She didn't look back. She scrambled on hands and knees through the tight space, the cold, stale air a blessing against the adrenaline rush.
She had been hunted by crooked cops, corporate spies, and data-brokers. But never by an agent of Heaven.
When she finally emerged, breathless, onto the grimy asphalt of the lower street level, she ran until her lungs burned. She ran past neon signs, past the shuttered stalls of the Limbo Streets, until she knew she had broken the Aegis Hand's tracking grid.
She collapsed into a darkened alcove, pulling out the data chip and staring at the faint, silver-eyed image.
They didn't come for the hilt.
They came for me.
And the only thing that had changed, the only thing that connected her to a powerful, hidden enemy, was the brief, terrifying moment she had locked eyes with the monster from the ruins.
The Saint.
I have to find him. I need to know why his face is the last thing I see before the fire.
Her resistance was gone, replaced by a terrible, desperate need for the truth a need that outweighed all common sense, all fear of damnation, and all the journalistic cynicism she had built up over a lifetime. He was the most dangerous thing in the city, and he was her only lead.