Night fell like a held breath.
Sanctum Academy emptied itself slowly, students retreating behind locked doors, prayers muttered into pillows, lights dimmed as if the building itself feared being seen. The bells did not ring for curfew. They waited.
Aiden lay awake in his dorm, staring at the ceiling as moonlight traced thin crosses along the walls. Sleep would not come. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it again,
that pressure behind his ribs,
that sense of being listened to.
A soft sound reached him.
Not a knock.
A note.
Low. Harmonic. Almost tender.
His heart tightened.
The sound drifted through the corridor, threading itself through stone and steel, growing clearer with every step he took toward the door. He hadn't decided to stand. His body simply moved.
The hallway was empty.
Candles burned where no candles should have been, floating inches above the floor, their flames pale and still. At the far end of the corridor, a door stood open, the entrance to the old chapel beneath the Academy.
The Lower Sanctum.
Restricted.
Aiden swallowed.
"Don't go," a part of him whispered.
Another part, the older one, answered: You already are.
He descended the stairs.
The air grew colder, thicker, heavy with the scent of wax and iron. Shadows clung to the walls, stretching unnaturally toward him. With every step, the sound grew louder, not music exactly, but voices layered over one another, humming a melody that felt carved into his bones.
The chapel doors closed behind him.
He was not alone.
Figures stood in a semicircle around the altar, students, robed in black, faces hidden behind porcelain masks etched with cracks like fractured halos. Light bled from beneath their feet, faint and gold.
The Choir.
They sang without mouths moving.
Aiden's knees weakened.
"Why am I here?" he asked, voice barely his own.
The singing softened.
One of them stepped forward. The mask was split down the center, revealing a single eye glowing softly beneath.
"You heard the hymn," the voice said, not aloud, but inside him.
"You were named."
Aiden shook his head. "This is a psychotic break."
The Choir tilted their heads in unison.
"Say that again," the voice replied gently, "after you remember how you fell."
The world fractured.
Images surged, fire licking marble, wings torn and screaming, a tower collapsing into light. A halo shattering as hands reached for him, not to save, but to cast down.
Aiden cried out, clutching his chest.
When he looked up, Seraphine stood at the edge of the circle.
No mask.
Her expression was soft. Regretful.
"You weren't supposed to wake up yet," she said.
"Do you know them?" Aiden demanded. "Do you know what this is?"
She met his gaze.
"Yes."
The Choir parted.
"He was once one of us," the voices whispered.
"A Watcher who loved too deeply."
"A halo broken by choice."
Aiden laughed weakly. "You're lying."
Seraphine stepped closer.
She reached up, brushed her thumb across his shoulder.
It burned.
Golden light bled through the fabric, forming the faint outline of a shattered ring.
Tears welled in her eyes.
"Welcome back," she said softly.
"My angel."
The candles extinguished at once.
Darkness swallowed the chapel.
And somewhere above, the bells of Sanctum began to scream.
WHAT THE HALO REMEMBERS
Aiden woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind, the hollow kind that rang in his ears like pressure before a storm. The stone ceiling above him was unfamiliar, carved with faded scripture and hairline cracks that resembled veins.
The Infirmary Chapel.
He pushed himself upright. His shoulder throbbed. Beneath the bandages, something pulsed, warm, alive, aching.
"You're awake."
Seraphine sat by the window, knees drawn to her chest, moonlight outlining her profile in silver. Her hair was loose now, her uniform gone, replaced with a simple dark robe. She looked… smaller. Human
"How long?" Aiden asked.
"Long enough for the Choir to scatter," she replied. "And for Father Lucien to start lying."
That earned his attention.
He swung his legs off the bed, wincing. "You knew," he said quietly. "All this time, you knew."
Seraphine didn't deny it.
"I hoped you'd never remember," she said. "I prayed you wouldn't."
He laughed, a dry, broken sound. "You prayed."
She flinched.
Silence stretched between them, heavy with everything unsaid. Outside, the bells had stopped screaming. Sanctum slept, ignorant and fragile.
"Am I insane?" Aiden asked at last.
Seraphine stood and crossed the room. Slowly. Carefully. Like someone approaching a wounded animal.
"No," she said. "But you are breaking."
She reached for his shoulder, then hesitated.
"May I?
He nodded.
When she unwrapped the bandage, the air shimmered. Beneath his skin, a faint ring of light glowed, fractured, incomplete. A halo that had never healed.
Aiden stared.
"I fell?" he whispered.
"You chose," she corrected softly. "You loved a human. You questioned an order. You stepped out of heaven and into fire."
His chest tightened. "And you?"
Her fingers trembled.
"I stayed," she said. "Long enough to regret it."
The words sat between them, raw, unadorned.
"So what happens now?" Aiden asked.
Seraphine met his eyes.
"Lucien will try to finish what heaven started," she said. "The Choir will want you back. And the halo…" She swallowed. "It will keep breaking the more you remember."
Aiden looked down at his hands. At the faint glow seeping through his fingertips.
"And if I don't want either?" he asked. "If I don't want heaven or Sanctum or their definitions of purity?"
For the first time, Seraphine smiled, not sadly, not gently.
Proudly.
"Then you do what you did before," she said. "You fall again."
Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.
Lucien's voice murmured orders.
Seraphine stepped back, eyes dark with urgency.
"They can't see you yet," she whispered. "Not like this."
She leaned in, pressing her forehead to his, a breath apart, close enough that Aiden felt her pulse racing.
"When they ask," she said, "you tell them you saw nothing."
"And you?" he asked.
She hesitated.
Then, quietly: "I'll be your sin."
The door creaked open.
Light spilled into the room.
Aiden closed his eyes.
And for the first time since Sanctum, he did not pray for answers.
He prayed for her.