AZRAEL

The coffee maker sputtered its death rattle at 3 AM, same as every night.

Azrael—though he'd been going by Alex Kane for the past three years—didn't bother looking up from his textbook. Contract Law, Third Edition. The pages blurred together under the flickering fluorescent light of his studio apartment, words swimming like they were drowning in the cheap ink. He'd read the same paragraph four times now, something about consideration and mutual assent, but his mind kept drifting.

The dreams again. Always the dreams.

He rubbed his eyes and reached for the mug beside his elbow, finding it empty except for a ring of bitter grounds. The night shift at the warehouse paid enough to cover rent and ramen, barely. Law school during the day was supposed to be his ticket out of this gray existence, but tonight the weight of it all pressed down like a concrete slab.

His reflection caught in the black window across from his desk—sharp jawline, dark hair falling across tired eyes, the kind of lean build that came from skipping meals rather than hitting the gym. Nothing special. Nothing that would make anyone look twice on the street.

Certainly nothing that would explain the nightmares.

Azrael pushed back from the desk and walked to the kitchenette, stepping over the pile of work clothes he'd shed hours ago. The fabric still reeked of cardboard and industrial cleaner. He filled the mug with tap water and drank it warm, watching the city sprawl beyond his window. Eidolon never truly slept—traffic lights blinked their eternal rhythm, sirens wailed in the distance, and somewhere in the Glass Crown district, office lights burned like fallen stars.

The dream fragments drifted back, uninvited.

Wings. Always wings.

Massive, powerful things wreathed in fire that didn't burn. He'd soar above clouds that looked like spun silver, the wind carrying voices that sang in harmonies no human throat could manage. And then came the fall—not tumbling, but being torn downward by chains of light, his wings igniting like paper as something beautiful and terrible watched from a throne of radiance.

He'd wake gasping, sheets soaked in sweat, with the phantom sensation of flames licking his shoulder blades.

"Just stress," he muttered to the empty apartment. "Too much coffee, not enough sleep."

The rational explanation never quite fit, though. The dreams felt too vivid, too consistent. And sometimes, when he was particularly exhausted, he swore he could feel something stirring beneath his skin. Something that wanted to burn.

The alarm clock's red digits glowed 3:17 AM. He had to be at the warehouse in four hours, then straight to contracts class after that. The cycle would repeat tomorrow, and the day after, stretching into a future as gray as Eidolon's perpetual overcast.

Azrael returned to his desk and tried to focus on mutual consideration again. The words might as well have been hieroglyphics.

By 3:45, he gave up. He'd grab two hours of sleep and hope the professor didn't call on him tomorrow. He closed the textbook and reached for the desk lamp switch.

That's when the first shadow moved.

It was subtle—just a darkness shifting outside his peripheral vision, like smoke given form. When he turned to look directly, nothing was there except the familiar sight of his neighbor's fire escape. But the sensation lingered, a prickle between his shoulder blades that made him think of those phantom wings.

Azrael shook his head. Stress and sleep deprivation were making him paranoid. He clicked off the lamp and navigated through the darkness to his bed, a mattress on the floor that had seen better decades.

The dreams came immediately.

This time, he stood in a vast hall of white stone, pillars stretching toward a ceiling lost in radiance. Figures moved around him—tall, luminous beings with wings that caught light like prisms. They spoke in that singing language, but now he could almost understand fragments:

"...the rebellion spreads..."

"...his flame burns too bright..."

"...she will not tolerate defiance..."

One figure approached, and Azrael's sleeping mind recoiled. Beautiful beyond description, with golden hair and armor that seemed forged from starlight itself. But the eyes were cold, calculating. When it spoke, the voice carried absolute authority.

"You were mine, Azrael. You will be mine again."

The figure raised a blade of pure light, and—

Azrael jolted awake, heart hammering. The bedside clock read 6:23 AM. Outside his window, Eidolon was painted in the gray half-light of dawn, and he could hear Mrs. Chen starting her morning routine in the apartment below.

Normal. Everything was normal.

He showered in lukewarm water, dressed in yesterday's jeans and a shirt that wasn't quite clean, and grabbed a protein bar that tasted like cardboard. The warehouse shift would be eight hours of mind-numbing inventory work, followed by three hours of Professor Morrison's monotone voice explaining the finer points of legal precedent.

Ordinary. Struggling. Exactly what his life was supposed to be.

The walk to work took him through Ashmarket, the oldest district in Eidolon. Here, Victorian brownstones crouched between modern storefronts like elderly relatives at a family reunion. The morning crowd was sparse—early commuters clutching coffee cups like lifelines, a few homeless individuals huddled in doorways, the occasional jogger defying the city's smog.

Azrael had made this walk hundreds of times. He knew every crack in the sidewalk, every graffiti tag on the brick walls, every shortcut through the narrow alleys that would save him three minutes.

So when the shadows began moving wrong, he noticed.

It started small. A darkness beneath a fire escape that stretched too far. An alley mouth that seemed deeper than it should be, as if the walls extended back into nothingness. Street lights flickering in sequence, like something was passing beneath them.

Following him.

Azrael picked up his pace, telling himself it was paranoia. The dreams were bleeding into his waking hours, that was all. Stress manifesting as visual tricks. But the sensation of being watched intensified, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he could have sworn he saw something large and wrong-shaped duck behind a parked car.

The warehouse district was still six blocks away. The streets here were emptier, lined with shuttered businesses and construction sites wrapped in chain-link. Not the place you wanted to be when something was hunting you.

Hunting. Where had that thought come from?

A growl echoed from the alley to his left—low, rumbling, nothing that any earthly animal could make. The sound seemed to bypass his ears entirely, resonating in his bones like a tuning fork struck against his spine.

Azrael broke into a run.

He'd made it three blocks when the thing burst from a storm drain directly in front of him.

The word "shadow" was inadequate. This was darkness given weight and hunger, flowing upward like oil mixed with smoke. It towered over him, easily nine feet tall, with appendages that might have been arms or tentacles writhing around a core of absolute black. Where it touched the pavement, the concrete hissed and steamed.

But it was the eyes that froze him in place. Burning coals set deep in that writhing mass, ancient and malevolent and fixed on him with the intensity of a predator that had finally cornered its prey.

When it spoke, the voice was the sound of grinding stone and dying screams.

"The mortal world becomes you."