There was no sound, no flash of light. One moment they were in the cluttered, greasy warmth of the fast-food restaurant. The next, Cain felt a lurch in his stomach, a sensation of being yanked sideways at impossible speed.
The smell of fried food was replaced by the clean, sharp scent of wild grass and damp earth. The cacophony of human voices vanished into a vast, whispering silence broken only by the wind.
Cain stumbled, his sneakers sinking into soft, wet soil. He looked around, his heart hammering against his ribs. They were standing in the middle of an endless green plain under a vast, cloudy sky. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon in every direction. The Jollibee, the mall, the entire city, were gone.
It was just the three of them now: Cain, Lucifer, and the angel named Zephon, standing in a sea of swaying grass.
The disorienting lurch of teleportation faded, replaced by the solid, unsettling quiet of the vast plain. Cain blinked, his senses scrambling to catch up. The first thing he realized was that he was no longer standing beside Lucifer. He was several yards away, his shoes sinking into the damp earth.
His body froze. He could not feel the air entering his lungs, even though his chest was moving. A cold, primal terror locked his joints. His heart began a frantic, painful pounding against his ribs. Slowly, against his will, his eyes tilted sideways.
A figure stood between him and Lucifer.
It was a man, but the word felt inadequate. He stood at least six foot seven, clad in a long, rugged trench coat that seemed to drink in the muted daylight. His eyes glowed with a bright, unwavering blue light, and they were fixed on Cain with a dread-filled intensity that felt like a physical weight.
"Michael wants you," the being, Zephon, said. His voice was not loud, but it carried across the distance with unnatural clarity, vibrating in Cain's bones.
Zephon raised an arm, his hand extending toward Cain with deliberate, ominous purpose. He intended to touch him, to take him.
Before Cain could even flinch, Lucifer made a swift, dismissive swiping motion with her hand through the air.
The ground beneath Cain's feet shifted. Not the ground itself, but the very space he occupied. He felt a sickening yank, and then he was stumbling, suddenly back at Lucifer's side. She immediately reached out, her hands patting his arms, his chest, her touch clinical but urgent.
"Are you experiencing dizziness? Nausea? Spatial dislocation can be disruptive to mortal physiology," she asked, her eyes scanning his face.
Then she looked past him at Zephon, and a wicked smirk spread across her lips. "Oh! My mistake. I never thought you would be slower than I anticipated." Her gaze locked with the angel's, a clear challenge.
"I came for him. Not you," Zephon stated, his glowing eyes never leaving Cain.
"Go get him." She mocked.
Then, Zephon moved.
There was no run-up, no blur. One moment he was standing still. The next, he was simply there, right in front of them, having crossed the distance at a speed beyond human perception. His hand shot out again for Cain.
But Lucifer was faster.
Her arm wrapped around Cain's waist, and the world became a streaking smear of green and gray. Cain felt a violent rush of wind, a sensation of being ripped sideways. When the motion stopped, they were twenty feet to the left. Zephon stood where they had just been, his hand closing on empty air. He turned his head, the movement unnervingly smooth, to look at them.
Lucifer stood confidently, one arm still loosely around Cain, her smirk wider now. She looked directly at Zephon as if daring him to try again.
"You are fast," Zephon conceded, his tone giving away nothing.
Lucifer raised her free hand, curled her fingers in a 'come hither' gesture, the mockery blatant. "I know. Did Michael not inform you?"
Her mind, however, was racing. What is his Authority? If he is the Commandment whose power manifests through speech, then this human is in catastrophic danger.
Cain stared at Lucifer's profile, at her absolute, unshakable confidence. He couldn't move. He couldn't believe any of this was real. The fact that such a being wanted him. The fact that he had just been moved across a field faster than a thought. His mind was a white noise of shock.
Holy shit, he thought, the words a numb echo in his skull. Is this what angels really are?
He managed to lean closer, his lips almost touching her ear, his whisper trembling. "Did I hear that right? He wants me? Why? What did I do?"
Lucifer glanced at him, one eyebrow elegantly arched. "I do not know. You must have committed an act that severely displeased them." She said it lightly, a teasing lilt in her voice.
She was joking. She just wanted to mess with him, to cut through his terror with something familiar.
But Cain took it literally. His eyes widened in dawning horror. He had made mistakes. Many. Could one of them have angered heaven itself? Only one scenario fit: Lucifer had said angels hunted her. He had given her shelter. He had fed her. He was an accomplice.
Panic overrode sense. He took a stumbling step away from Lucifer, raising his hands toward Zephon in a gesture of helpless surrender.
"Hey!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "I didn't know who she was! I was just a bystander! She approached me! She said she was hungry and needed help! That's the truth! I swear to God!"
Lucifer's head snapped toward him, her playful expression vanishing into one of stark alarm.
This is bad. He just lied. Directly. To a Commandment.
She looked back at Zephon. The angel had not moved, but a change was upon him. From his back, a single, magnificent wing of shimmering, light-drinking feathers manifested, unfolding with a soft, resonant sound like a great banner catching the wind.
Zephon's glowing eyes fixed on Cain. His lips parted.
"Lies," he uttered.
The word was not loud, but it carried a final, cosmic weight.
Cain felt it immediately. A cold, invasive force, like liquid nitrogen, surged through his veins. It started in his toes and fingers, a terrible, numbing petrification crawling up his limbs toward his core. He tried to gasp, but his lungs were stone. His vision darkened at the edges, the vibrant green of the plain leaching into gray.
The last thing he saw was Lucifer's golden eyes blazing like twin suns.
Thwip.
The sound was a soft, localised reversal of reality.
The cold shattered. Sensation and color rushed back in a dizzying wave. Cain collapsed to his knees on the soft grass, gasping huge, ragged breaths of air that felt like fire in his newly restored lungs. His heart hammered wildly, a frantic drumbeat of terror and relief. His arms and legs trembled violently, muscles remembering the sensation of becoming unfeeling rock.
He looked up, tears of shock and pain blurring his vision.
Lucifer was looking down at him. A faint, visible steam was rising from her skin, like heat haze on a desert highway. She spoke normally, but there was a subtle, sharp edge to her breaths, as if she had just sprinted a great distance. "You idiot. You should never lie to an angel. Some of them possess the power to make their judgments… literal."
Cain just stared up at her, still wheezing, unable to form words. The sheer, overwhelming scale of what was happening—the power, the danger, the stakes—threatened to drown him.
Lucifer watched the terror in his eyes, the human fragility laid bare. She understood. This was too much, too fast.
"Alright," she said, her voice softening just a fraction. "I will send you back. Return to your dwelling. I will find you there once this is concluded."
Cain could only manage a weak, jerky nod.
Lucifer raised a hand and made a gentle, pushing motion toward him.
The world around Cain dissolved into a streaking blur of meaningless color and sound. There was no sensation of movement, only a violent dislocation. Then, with a sudden, solid thump, he was on the rough concrete of the mall parking garage, right beside his car. The smell of gasoline and asphalt replaced the clean scent of grass.
He slumped against the car door, his legs unable to hold him. A hysterical, breathless laugh escaped him. "Holy shit. That's insane. I think I must have lost my mind." He fumbled with the car handle, his hands still shaking violently, and finally yanked the door open.
He checked the backseat almost compulsively, confirming the groceries were still there, a tether to the normal world that now felt like a distant dream.
He slid into the driver's seat, the familiar feel of the steering wheel a small comfort. As he started the engine, the mundane sound was bizarrely loud in the silence.
He thought of Lucifer, alone on that endless plain with the angel whose voice could turn flesh to stone.
"I hope she comes back," he whispered to the empty car.
Back on the wind-swept plain, Lucifer stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Her gaze was locked on Zephon, who was now regenerating his severed arm. The process was silent and eerie; bone extended, muscle woven over it like living thread, skin sealing over the whole. As he worked, three more immense wings manifested from his back, joining the first. His body too began to emit a faint, rising steam, a visible sign of his escalating power.
Lucifer, in response, allowed two vast, shadowy wings to unfurl from her own shoulders, feathers seeming to drink the light around them. She levitated a few feet off the ground, looking down at Zephon from a position of deliberate superiority.
"Can you hasten your regeneration? You are beginning to bore me," she mocked, her voice cool.
Zephon's eyes, burning with cold blue fire, narrowed. The insult, the arrogance of a fallen one looking down on him, a Commandment, was an unbearable provocation. With a sound like a thunderclap contained in silk, his final two wings manifested. Six magnificent wings now spread from his back, and his power radiated outwards, pressing down on the very grass around him. He would not tolerate this disrespect.
"Let us commence our mutual annihilation," Zephon intoned, his voice gaining a resonant, harmonic quality that vibrated in the air.
"Phenomenal Singularity."
The two words were spoken not with a shout, but with a profound, gravity-shifting intent. It was a declaration of his ultimate technique, a move meant to end everything in a single, catastrophic point.
Lucifer's grin returned, wider and more feral than before. Four colossal wings of her own now stretched behind her, casting long, shifting shadows. The air crackled with opposing energies.
This is going to be fun, she thought, a thrill of ancient battle-joy coursing through her.
She would match him, move for move. She would honor his resolve by meeting it with her own.
"Phenomenal Singularity," Lucifer echoed, her voice a confident mirror to his.
The very space between them began to warp and weep.