The harbour burned for two hours after. Ordinary orange flames eating what was left of the warehouses.
Zeron sat on a rooftop three streets away and watched the fire crew's work.
Voss was alive - unconscious, power burned out, burns across both arms.
The official report would call it self-inflicted exhaustion. Nobody would look further.
He got home at 2 AM.
His mother was at the kitchen table with tea, not reading anything, not watching anything. Just sitting.
She looked at his hoodie. The scorch mark across the chest.
"Candle," he said, before she could ask.
She looked at him the way she always did - the conversation under the conversation. I know. I'm not asking. Come home safe.
"Food in the fridge," she said.
"Thanks, Mum."
He showered. Changed. Ate cold. Went to the roof.
2 AM Ashfield. The city at reduced volume.
He sat with his legs over the edge and thought about Voss's hands on his collar.
About a daughter who was eight and a son who was five who thought his abilities were wonderful.
About what it costs a person to run toward something for fourteen years.
He didn't know what he felt exactly. Something quieter than angry. Something without a clean name.
He stayed until the sky went grey. Then he set his alarm and went to sleep.
Normal morning. That was the goal.
He was almost out the door when his phone buzzed. A message from a number he didn't recognise.
He read it in the stairwell. Three words. No context. No signature.
I knew your father.
He read it twice. Put his phone away. Went to school.
11 PM. Rooftop. Good noodles this time - the place three streets over, still warm.
He had been there twenty minutes when he felt it.
[VOID SENSE - PROXIMITY ALERT: UNKNOWN ENTITY CLASS]
Something was on the roof with him. Not hostile. Not hiding. Present with the patience of something that had never once needed to rush.
It felt like standing next to a window in winter - cold from somewhere else, somewhere outside the normal temperature of the world.
He set his noodles down. Turned.
It looked like light that had decided to have a shape. Not quite human - almost, in the way that is more unsettling than completely wrong would be.
No face he could hold clearly in his mind. A warmth that wasn't warm. A presence that was not quite a presence.
It spoke. Not in sound. More like an understanding that arrived complete.
We know what you are. Lord Aethon sends this message: do nothing that draws further attention. The situation is being managed. You are being watched. That is all.
Zeron looked at it for a moment.
Then he picked up his noodles.
"Okay," he said.
He ate.
The messenger waited. The way things wait when they expect a response and haven't received one.
Zeron didn't say anything else.
Eventually the presence was simply gone - not left, just no longer there.
He sat in the silence. Finished his noodles. Had three thoughts.
One: someone in heaven knew what he was and sent a messenger instead of doing anything about it. Interesting.
Two: Lord Aethon was apparently a name. Filed.
Three: he still wasn't over the noodles from the Voss night on the first rooftop.
He went to bed.
In a realm with no physical location, a being made of cold authority received the messenger's report.
The Fracture child had been informed.
His response had been okay. Then he ate his noodles.
Lord Aethon sat with this for a very long time.
Then he called a meeting.
There were four archangels who needed their orders.
And there was a sword older than heaven that needed to be delivered.