Jerusalem, 33AD
The merciless Jerusalem sun scorched the air, turning stone to molten gold and copper. Heat shimmered between Auriel and the crowd, but nothing burned as fiercely as the brand across his back.
Sweat once evaporated on Auriel’s celestial skin, but now lingered and clung to him and his clothes as he stood rigid at the crowd’s edge, his presence veiled from mortal perception.
The scarring where his wings once stood proud stings from the contact of the heated, salty perspiration scurrying down his back. The air reeked of dust, sweat, and something darker: humanity’s capacity for cruelty.
Auriel stood curbside, in front of the onlooking crowd. He watched as Jesus stumbled in front of him. His face covered in dried blood from the throned crown he wore, sweat from the sun beating his skin and the effort of carrying the cross.
The rough-hewn cross gouged His already flayed shoulders, splinters embedding in wounds still weeping from the scourging. Roman soldiers circled like jackals, their armor glinting like teeth in the relentless sun. One soldier’s spittle landed on Christ’s cheek, mixing with blood and grime.
“King of the Jews!” a merchant bellowed, his face contorted with hatred that didn’t seem entirely his own. Something flickered behind the man’s eyes, something ancient and pleased.
Auriel’s fingers curled into fists. He could end this. One sweep of his daggers would cleave through the entire mob. One blast of celestial fury would reduce these mockers to ash. The thought burned through him, tempting, righteous. The mark on his back throbbed in answer, a searing reminder of Michael’s sentence and every command he had obeyed since exile.
A woman clutching a wide-eyed child caught his attention. Tears carved clean tracks down her dust-stained face as she whispered prayers into her son’s hair. Around her, the crowd’s auras shifted, revealing what Auriel had feared, writhing shadows with ember eyes clinging to human hosts, their talons sunk deep into mortal flesh.
The demons fed on their host’s hatred, growing stronger with each cruel taunt hurled at the stumbling Messiah. One coiled like smoke around the merchant’s throat, another perched on the high priest’s shoulders, their mouths pressed to human ears, feeding them what to say, drinking every jeer as worship.
“Father, why do You allow this?” Auriel whispers, his voice lost in the intensity of jeers. The command to stand down, to witness but not intervene, felt like a blade between his ribs.
As Jesus dragged the cross higher up the hill, Auriel tasted something unfamiliar on his tongue: doubt. He watched the world drown, stood beside Jovias and his friends as the flood swallowed giants and cities alike. He questioned the justice of the command then, and he questioned it now. But here, with every torn breath of the Son, certainty frayed.
Auriel’s knuckles blanched as the Roman centurion thrust Simon of Cyrene into the dust. The soldier’s voice barked commands with raw cruelty. “You! Carry it!” Simon lifted the splintered cross. It crashed onto his shoulders. His eyes captured the Messiah’s slick and dark blood on the beams.
Each time Jesus staggered beneath his own weight and the scorching sun and heat. Auriel felt something rupture within, a tearing deeper than sinew or bone, a rift in his very spirit. Astrid’s dawn-lit warning gnawed at him like iron chains. “God has set His will, Auriel,” he whispered. “You must not intervene.” The command strangled him, coiled about his throat like a living serpent, tightening with every faltering step of the Son and kept him at bay. As if branded again, his spine burned, compelling him to kneel without bending.
Golgotha, a skull-shaped hill of execution, saw the trek’s completion. Dice clattered on stone as the soldiers laughed, gambling for Jesus’s seamless garment. The cross landed on the earth with a thud. Auriel’s wings trembled beneath their invisible shroud as soldiers pinned Jesus down, His arms stretched wide.
Above Christ’s palm hovered the first nail, as thick as a man’s thumb. The hammer fell, and the sound of metal piercing flesh and wood echoed across the hill like thunder. Jesus’s body arched, a silent scream on His lips.
The crowd surged closer, faces contorted into masks Auriel recognized from past dealings.
“Destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days?” A woman shrieked; her voice pierced.
“Save yourself then!” Something dark moved behind her eyes, something not human.
For a heartbeat, Auriel saw the demon riding her, jaw unhinged, too wide in the spirit, eyes burning with glee, as it used her throat to mock the One it once trembled to name.
A high priest raised his arms, his elaborate robes catching the dying light.
“He saved others,” he called, voice carrying across the jeering masses, “but cannot save himself!”
Demonic whispers rippled through the crowd. Auriel saw them, shadow-things clinging to mortal shoulders, feeding on hatred and fear. His hands on the daggers twitched. One strike could cleave them all. One act of defiance could scatter the darkness and shatter his obedience in the same breath.
Mary kneeled below, her tears falling on stones. The sky split with lightning that illuminated the dark sky. Thunder shook the hill until pebbles danced at Auriel’s feet.
The darkness dwarfed every storm he had witnessed. As the earth convulsed, the crowd scattered like insects; even hardened Roman guards fell to their knees.
Above them all, Jesus raised His face to the roiling heavens and cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”
Auriel staggered, as if the cry tore straight through the place where his wings once joined his back. Since exile, he felt the rift between himself and heaven, and the Father and Son, which overwhelmed his immortal heart.
The words pierced Auriel like celestial steel through divine flesh. Something inside him, ancient and luminous, flickered, dimmed, then bled light. The brand along his back flared white hot, as if the cry drove straight through the place where his wings once joined his spine.
The crowd collapsed onto their knees as darkness swallowed the sun. Their prayers rose like smoke, thin and desperate. Auriel kneeled too, not in supplication but in fury, watching through narrowed eyes as possessed mortals scattered before the trembling earth. The ground beneath his knees cracked, mirroring the fracture spreading through his faith.
“Auriel!” Astrid’s voice cut through the thunder, his presence a silver thread in the darkness. “Do not interfere! It is God’s will! He commanded all His angels to stand down, to let His Son die!”
“Why?” The question tore from Auriel’s throat, not a question but a demand that echoed across realms. Silence answered him.
His fists struck the earth with enough force to shatter mortal bones. Forehead pressed to dirt that grew damp with tears and burned like liquid fire. Each drop sizzled against the ground as something inside him calcified. He watched the Flood swallow giants and kings at a single word and called it justice; now the same God was silent while His own Son bled.
The temple curtain ripped with a sound like the heavens tearing. Though he stood on Golgotha’s hill, Auriel felt the rupture shudder through creation itself, as if a veil he had once flown above was being torn from top to bottom.
Jesus’s last words, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” The words hung in the air as Jesus’ head slumped forward.
Auriel saw what he could not prevent in an endless and unbearable moment. The world seemed to tilt around that slumped crown of thorns; every battle he ever fought rendered meaningless beside this surrender he could not join.
Auriel’s grief crystallized, transformed into something harder, sharper. He rose, hands clenched until divine blood spurted between his fingers. The surrounding air wavered, distorting as if unable to contain his rage. He turned toward Jerusalem, no longer striding as a guardian but as an avenger.
His fingers found his dagger and caressed its hilt with unnatural tenderness. Something whispered through his mind; unfamiliar thoughts resonated with urgency and promise. The urge to punish, to claim, to destroy crawled through him like sweet poison. He mistook the murmur at first for his own outraged conscience, but the voice inside him had never sounded so smooth, so sure, so eager for blood.
“They killed the Son of God.” The whispers slithered against his ear, as intimate as a lover. Auriel whirled, finding only shadows. “They did it! They killed Him!” The voices grew, resonating not from the surrounding area but from within, vibrating through bone and spirit. “You can’t let them live for this! God demands it!” The name of God on that tongue rang wrong, twisted, but rage blurred the edges of the lie.
The voice’s venom coiled in Auriel’s veins, freezing the mercy that had once flowed through him like sunlight. His essence, once a cathedral of divine light, cracked along fault lines of doubt.
For three agonizing heartbeats, Auriel battled the shadows within him until the last ember of compassion guttered out. The surrounding air thickened, tasting of copper and ash. His mark burned cold instead of hot, a reversed fire that seemed to pull light out of him rather than give it.
The ground beneath Jerusalem split with hairline fractures that would one day become chasms. Above, the storm clouds retreated not in surrender but in terror, leaving behind a silence so absolute that dust hung suspended, as if the world itself held its breath. His shadow stretched far behind him, and he dissolved into the deepening dusk.
Two armored soldiers materialized from the gloom; their armor dull as tarnished silver in the unnatural twilight. “Halt!” The taller one thrust his hand forward; fingers splayed like talons. Sweat beaded his upper lip despite the chill.
“Where do you go?” Auriel’s gaze settled on him, ancient, bottomless, and the soldier’s hand trembled visibly.
“I asked you a question, stranger!” The words emerged strangled, the bravado of a man trying to convince himself he faced just flesh and blood, not the void made manifest.
“They are His killers! His murderers!” The voice slithered through Auriel’s mind, coiling around his thoughts like a serpent. “Their kind drove the nails!”
“No,” Auriel whispered. The word breathed on his lips, but in unnatural silence, it carried. The taller soldier’s hand drifted to his sword hilt.
“Who speaks to you in the shadows?”
Copper flooded Auriel’s mouth as something ancient stirred beneath his skin. His fingers found his dagger, cold metal warming to his touch, hungry for purpose. The second soldier’s eyes widened, his own blade half-drawn in response.
“See how eagerly they reach for steel!” the voice hisses, no longer separate but woven through Auriel’s own thoughts.
“The same hands that cast lots for His garments!”
Time fractured. Auriel felt himself split, as an observer and a vessel both, as his arm arced upward, silver blade catching starlight. His cloak billowed behind him like unfurling wings, and in the soldiers’ eyes he saw his reflection: face twisted into something terrible, eyes burning with celestial fire.
The blade sang as it descended, parting flesh and bone at the first soldier’s neck with the ease of divine wrath. Blood fountained upward in an arc that seemed to hang suspended before gravity reclaimed it, every droplet catching moonlight like rubies.
The second soldier lunged with a strangled cry. Their blades met with a sound like thunder, sparks cascading between them. Auriel moved with liquid grace, his body remembering battles fought before they had meaning. His counterstrike opened the man from navel to ribs, and as the soldier stumbled backward, Auriel’s blade found the junction of neck and shoulder. Bone yielded. The man collapsed, eyes fixed on heaven, mouth forming words that would never find voice.
Something dark and sweet flooded Auriel’s veins as his lips curved upward. The sensation receded like a tide, leaving him hollow-eyed and trembling. Two bodies lay before him, blood seeping into Jerusalem’s thirsty stones. His reflection stared back from crimson pools, a stranger wearing his face, eyes lit not with heaven’s fire but with something feral and unfamiliar.
He fled into the darkness, the voice’s laughter echoing in his wake. “You did well, Auriel.” The demon’s whisper slithered beneath his skin like ice water in his veins. Something hooked behind his sternum twisted, as if invisible talons were carving a hollow space inside him.
“Be like us! Our lord will grant you anything you want.” The voice no longer seemed to come from outside but resonated from that new emptiness within his chest, each syllable vibrating against his ribs. Auriel’s fingers trembled against the cold stone as he fought the urge to answer.
A couple appeared at the mouth of the alley, the woman’s laughter bright as bells in the darkness. Auriel pressed himself against the wall, his breath suspended, sweat beading at his temples despite the night’s chill. As they passed, the man’s hand shielded the woman’s back, a small, instinctive gesture of protection that twisted like a knife in Auriel’s gut. Once, he had been the one shielding.
Murmurs rose in the hollow of his chest, like voices echoing through a long-abandoned cathedral. They overlapped, distinct yet bound in dreadful harmony.
“Join us,” they said. Even the air seemed to tighten around the words, as if the alley itself were listening.
“Be one of us, Auriel. Become Rodell, our lord. Lord of these lands and these people. We will raise you up like a god before them.” The name slid over him like a stolen cloak, Rodell, heavy, regal, wrong, pressing against the mark burned into his back as if trying to overwrite it.
The dagger slipped from his hand and struck the stones with a flat ring. Auriel pressed his palms over his face as though he could crush the voices out of existence. His fingers dug into his temples, searching for the edges of himself and finding only echo.
A man appeared at the opening at the end of the alley with two soldiers behind him.
“They come for you, Rodell,” the murmur hissed. “They come to strip you of your crown.”
The man pointed towards Auriel, his hand shaking. “That is him. That’s the man.”
Steel scraped as the soldiers drew their blades. “Halt!” one barked. Their eyes caught the dagger on the ground, wet with blood. “You killed the Roman guards. You’re under arrest.”
Auriel looked at the blade. He thought of running, but the voices swelled and bound his feet. “Rodell. Lord of these lands. Kill them.” The words did not sound like suggestions anymore; they felt like commands, crawling under his skin and wrapping around his bones.
He stooped and lifted the dagger. Heaviness gathered in the alley, as though the light itself recoiled from him. The soldiers slowed. Their eyes widened. Later, they might have said they saw his features darken, or that his eyes gleamed like a predator’s. But terror molded their vision, not flesh. The informer broke, stumbling backward into the street.
“Roman soldiers,” Auriel said, his voice low and ragged, more grave-soil than man. “You killed the Son of God. Now I kill you in the name of my lord.” Auriel did not say which lord; the omission tasted bitter but true.
Some fragile part of him cried out, I am not in control. But the power coursing through him felt unmistakable, like the echo of wings, like the fire he once carried when he still bore heaven’s name. It thrilled him even as it horrified him, a blasphemous imitation of the strength that had once come only at the Throne’s command.
He moved. In the blink of an eye, the strike ended. Two bodies dropped to the stones, lifeless. Onlookers scattered, their cries clattering against the walls. More soldiers came running; none lasted longer than a heartbeat. Each fall of a body rang inside him like a warped amen.
The chorus exalted him. “Lord Rodell. Our triumphant lord.”
Their praise was honey and ash. His chest swelled, his pride rising like incense. For a heartbeat, he almost believed the title fit, as if slaughter could be a kind of coronation.
Then a child stepped into the alley, small, unarmed, eyes wide with horror at the blood and the broken men.
“There is another,” the voices whispered with glee. “One last sacrifice. His life will seal your kingdom. Kill him, and your disciples will kneel before you.”
Auriel gripped the dagger, staring at the boy. For a moment, the haze receded, and he saw himself reflected in those terrified eyes, not a man, not a demon, but a fallen thing caught between. The brand along his spine throbbed, a phantom ache where wings had once unfurled to shield the weak.
“My lord!” the voices shrieked. “Do not falter!”
“Enough.” His command cracked the air. The boy flinched. Auriel’s face trembled back into its human shape, though shadows clung at the edges. He thrust the sword aside and pointed down the alley.
“Go!” he commanded, and the child ran, sobbing, into the light.
Auriel stood amid the corpses, the voices seething in his skull like a storm with no horizon. And beneath them, faint but undeniable, was another memory, the hymn of angels he had abandoned, still singing somewhere far above him.
Fragments stirred within him. A sky without end, burning with a brilliance no shadow could stain. A name whispered by countless tongues, not “Rodell,” but “Auriel,” the one heaven gave him, still echoing. He remembered the weight of light in his hands, daggers that never drank innocent blood, and the way creation itself once rejoiced when he unsheathed them. Now his grip tightened around a blade sticky with mortal death.
The voices inside hissed louder, as if to drown it out. “Forget it. That light is gone. You are one of us now. You belong to us, Rodell!”
But the hymn clung to him, not a call of forgiveness, not yet, but a reminder. It was not hope so much as refusal, thin, stubborn, refusing to die no matter how many times the demons tried to smother it.
Auriel pressed the heel of his hand against his temple, dagger trembling in the other. For a breath, he thought he saw feathers, torn, blackened, falling at his feet, dissolving into the dirt. He lunged for them, an instinct predating exile, before recalling nothing remained to seize.
He closed his eyes. The chant of demons roared. The song of angels wept. And Auriel stood between them, no longer able to tell which one was his.
The hymn lingered, a thread of sound stretched thin, almost breaking. Auriel’s breath came ragged, the sword heavy in his grip. Blood pooled around his boots, and the air tasted of iron.
Shouts. More soldiers surged into the alley, shields raised, blades flashing in the dim light.
The voices shrieked, ecstatic, “Strike them down! Show them you are Rodell, lord of these lands! Kill them all!”
“…Blessed is the Lamb who was slain…” still whispered, faint and unrelenting, in the hymn. The two songs collided inside him, praise twisted into curse, curse fraying at the edges of praise.
Auriel staggered back, his chest tight. His pride urged him to fight, but something deeper, some remnant, pulled him instead toward flight. With a strangled cry, he turned and ran, shoving through the oncoming soldiers. They shouted, stumbling after him, but no one could match his speed.
Through the narrow streets he fled, the chorus of demons raging in his skull. Townsfolk scattered as he tore past; their voices rose fragmented.
“They crucified Him!”
“The Nazarene, hung between thieves.”
“His mother wept at the cross.”
Each word cut him, each voice striking like an arrow into his memory of heaven. The hymn grew clearer as he ran. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty…” The demonic chorus howled to drown it out, but for the first time since the hill of skulls, Auriel realized he was still running toward that sound, not away from it.
He burst out of the street and into the open field beyond the city wall. At the hill’s crest, he saw the men lowering a broken body from a Roman cross. The crowd murmured and wailed. A woman clutched the pale form, her tears falling on torn flesh.
Auriel stumbled. His dagger clattered from his hand. For an instant, the world blurred, the light dimmed, and the hymn he had known for ages roared in his ears like thunder. “The Son… slain, yet victorious.”
The voices inside him howled in fury. “Do not look! He is nothing! His death is your crown, your freedom!”
But Auriel could not tear his gaze away. His chest burned with a grief he could not name. He wanted to weep, but no tears came, only the ache of what he lost when he had fallen. The mark on his back seared, as if remembering the touch of the very hand that now hung limp in Mary’s arms.
He turned, fleeing again, past the crowds, past the body, into the wilderness. The cries of men faded behind him. The voices followed, gnawing and relentless, but so too did the hymn, faint and persistent, refusing to let him go.
Auriel ran into the dark, caught between two songs; one of damnation, one of a kingdom he once called home.
The city lights fell behind him, swallowed by the growing dark. Auriel stumbled through dry brush and stony soil, his lungs heaving, his feet carrying him with a speed he did not command. The voices pursued him, no longer whispers but a tide crashing against his mind.
“You ran, Rodell. You should have stayed; should have taken their lives! Those soldiers, that child. They were yours to claim!”
The air thickened. Shapes moved in the shadows at the edge of his vision, or in his own memory. He saw wings vast and broken, dragging across the ground. Their feathers smoldered, black at the tips, each step leaving a scar of ash on the earth.
“Mine…” he thought. “Once mine.”
“…Worthy is the Lamb who was killed…” The hymn still breathed at the edge of hearing, quiet but steady, as though the heavens themselves pitied him.
He staggered, clutching his head. “Enough!” His cry echoed in the wilderness, answered only by the scuttling of unseen creatures. He pressed his palm to his temple and saw, behind his eyes, visions that were not his own. In a field of fire, angels fell like sparks from a dying star. A golden city above, radiant and unreachable. Before his exile, a hand of light reached him. He remembered the warmth of that touch and how cold his skin felt now beneath demonic breath.
The voices clawed at the memory. “Lies! Empty dreams! You are not His, Auriel. You never were. You are Rodell now. Lord of these lands. Our chosen.”
The hymn pierced sharper, like a blade of light cutting through their chorus. For a heartbeat, he saw again the Host he had abandoned; countless ranks robed in brilliance, their song lifting the vault of heaven itself. His name, his true name, was among theirs. Then, his name fell silent as the roll struck it.
He dropped to his knees, fists in the dirt, a strangled cry ripping from his throat. The earth seemed to quake beneath him. His sword lay nearby, its blade catching no moonlight, darker than steel should be.
Shadows rose from the surrounding rocks, faceless, their mouths echoing the chorus: “Rodell. Rodell. Rodell.”
He recoiled, crawling back. “I am… Auriel.” His voice cracked. The name was like broken glass on his tongue.
“No!” the shadows shrieked. “That name is dust. He no longer claims you. You are no longer in exile. No longer are you Auriel. You belong to us!”
And yet the hymn swelled. Just a fragment, only a single line, but enough to make his heart lurch, “Even in death, the Lamb is life.”
Auriel clutched at his chest as though something inside him might break free. The shadows hissed and writhed, but they did not vanish. They lingered, circling, patient as jackals.
He lurched, sword in hand, but not to fight. He stumbled deeper into the wilderness; the hymn chasing him like a faint star, the chorus of demons snarling like wolves at his back.
The night stretched on. Rocks tore his feet, thorn branches lashed his arms, but he did not slow. The farther he fled, the more the wilderness seemed to wrap around him, trees contorting, stones looming like sentinels, the ground whispering his stolen name.
Auriel kept running, torn between two songs. The voices that promised him a kingdom of blood, and the memory of a kingdom he could no longer enter.
And in the silence between their cries, he wondered which would claim him first.
Auriel stumbled deeper into the wilderness, shadows nipping at his heels, voices clawing inside his skull. The night pressed close, suffocating. Then, the air broke.
A tremor rippled through the ground as if creation itself braced. A light tore open the darkness, fierce and blinding, and a figure descended like a hammer falling from heaven. The wilderness fell silent. Even the voices fled. Astrid.
His armor burned like molten bronze, his face half-veiled by storm. Wings of searing fire arched high above him, and the echo of countless hosts lingered in his presence. Auriel dropped to his knees before he willed himself to, his body remembering the posture of heaven though his heart resisted.
“Auriel.” Astrid’s voice rolled like thunder over mountains, irresistible, absolute. “You will meet your brethren in a land across the seas, a kingdom to be known as España. In the year of our Lord 1637, on the seventh day of the seventh month, you will begin your journey. You will not flee this destiny.”
Auriel lifted his face, streaked with dirt and blood. His voice was hoarse, trembling with rage. “No! I am done with men! Their cruelty was something I saw. I watched Him die! I will not serve nor protect those who butchered the Son of God.”
Astrid’s eyes burned like lightning. His next words fell with the weight of judgment and promise together. “It was not man who took Him. It was the will of the Most High. The Lamb gave His life, and His death redeemed the heavens. His cross is not His defeat. It is the throne of His victory.”
Auriel recoiled, his body shaking, his dagger rattling in the dust. “I cannot bear it! Once I sang His name, I carried His fire… now I am filth, a thing of blood. Speak not to me of His triumph!”
Astrid strode closer. His shadow and light swallowed the wilderness, pressing Auriel into the dirt until he struggled to breathe.
“You received time. You were bound to this by Michael. Know this, the Lord wrote this day. On the seventh day of the seventh month, 1637, you will stand with your brethren. The Lord has decreed this. You may drown yourself in blood or bury yourself in dust, but that day will still rise to meet you.”
The air cracked with the force of his final word. Then Astrid lifted, ascending in fire and storm, until night closed in once more.
Auriel collapsed, gasping, his body trembling beneath the weight that lingered after the messenger’s departure. The muted voices slithered back and muttered curses. And etched in Auriel’s mind, burning like a brand, was the date: July 7, 1637.
He pressed his forehead to the earth, torn between hatred and fear. Not of demons. Not of men. But of himself. Of his friends. When that day comes, which name would he answer to? Rodell or Auriel?
Auriel stood and walked into the darkness. As he wandered through the desert, the voices crept into his head. One side called him Rodell. The other, Auriel. And somewhere far above, the hymn he could not silence marked the date.
In the ages that followed, Auriel’s shadow stretched across centuries like a wound that would not heal. Through plague-ravaged villages in Byzantium, he stalked on wings that dripped shadow, his breath mingled with the miasma until the first victim’s lungs filled and bubbled crimson.
Crusader knights glimpsed his reflection in their polished shields, not their own faces but his, lips curled in a mirror of their own righteous snarls, before they plunged blood-slick swords into women who begged in languages they refused to understand. In Salem, children woke screaming, their small fingers pointed to corners where frost formed in midsummer, describing eyes like holes where God forgot to put stars.
The voices, no longer foreign but woven through the fabric of his thoughts, didn’t whisper justice anymore; they became his own voice, raw and jagged.
“They deserve this.” His hand would tremble on the hilt of his dagger, caught between the compulsion to strike and the memory of what mercy had once felt like on his tongue. In the suspended moment of decision and action, Auriel sometimes tasted salt, tears, or blood; he could no longer tell the difference.