AZRAEL

The Angel's Blade

Azrael stared at his reflection in the men's room mirror, trying to will away the flame-cracks beneath his skin. Two hours of sleep had done nothing to diminish them. If anything, they seemed brighter now, pulsing with each heartbeat like a neon sign advertising his inhuman nature.

He'd called in sick to the warehouse—first time in three years—but couldn't bring himself to skip Professor Morrison's Contracts class. Routine was the only anchor he had left to his human life. If he started avoiding normal activities, what would be left of Alex Kane?

The university's Law building hummed with its usual pre-class energy. Students clustered in the hallways, comparing notes and complaining about reading assignments. A few nodded at him as he passed—he wasn't particularly social, but three years of showing up and keeping quiet had earned him a reputation as reliable, if distant.

He chose a seat in the back corner of Morrison's classroom, pulling his jacket sleeves down to cover the worst of the flame-cracks on his forearms. The familiar ritual of arranging his notebook and pen should have been calming, but his nerves felt stripped raw. Every shadow seemed to move wrong. Every stranger's glance lingered too long.

The classroom filled slowly. Morrison arrived precisely on time, a thin man in his sixties who treated contract law like sacred scripture. He began his lecture without preamble, diving into the complexities of consideration and mutual assent.

Azrael tried to focus, but the words washed over him like white noise. His mind kept drifting to the Goddess's final words: You should never have returned. Returned from where? And why now, after three years of peaceful exile?

"Mr. Kane."

His head snapped up. Morrison was staring at him with the patient expression of someone who'd been repeating a question.

"Could you explain the court's reasoning in Hamer versus Sidway?"

Azrael's mouth went dry. He hadn't been following the discussion at all. Around him, twenty-three other students waited for his response. A few smirked, anticipating his failure.

"I..." He started to admit he didn't know, when movement in the doorway caught his eye.

A woman stood there, tall and elegant in a way that made the cramped classroom feel suddenly inadequate. Her blonde hair caught the fluorescent light like spun gold, and her business suit was tailored to perfection. She looked like she belonged in a corporate boardroom, not a law school lecture hall.

But her eyes. Even from across the room, Azrael could see they burned with inner radiance.

"Excuse me." Her voice carried clearly through the classroom, melodious and commanding. "I'm looking for Alex Kane."

Every head turned toward Azrael. Morrison frowned at the interruption.

"I'm sorry, but this is a closed class. If you need to speak with a student—"

"I need to speak with him now."

The authority in her tone made Morrison step back without thinking. Students shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The woman's gaze fixed on Azrael with laser intensity, and he felt the flame-cracks beneath his skin flare in response.

She knew. Whatever she was, she could see through his mortal disguise as easily as reading a book.

Azrael stood slowly, his chair scraping against the floor. "It's fine, Professor. I'll... handle this."

The woman smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "How considerate. Step outside, traitor. We have much to discuss."

The word hit the classroom like a physical blow. Students began whispering among themselves. Morrison's frown deepened.

"Now see here, miss. I don't know who you are, but you can't simply barge in here and—"

Light exploded from the woman's body.

It wasn't the harsh glare of electricity or the warm glow of flame. This was pure radiance, the light of creation itself made manifest. It filled the classroom like flood water, washing over desks and students and professor alike. But where it touched human flesh, it simply passed through harmlessly.

Where it touched Azrael, it burned.

He cried out, stumbling backward as divine fire raced across his skin. His carefully maintained human appearance began to crack like old paint. The flame-veins beneath his flesh blazed brighter, and for an instant, the outline of massive wings flickered behind his shoulders.

"There you are." The woman's voice had changed, taking on harmonics that made the windows vibrate. "Did you really think mortal flesh would hide you from us forever?"

The other students sat frozen, their eyes glazed with confusion. The divine radiance had done something to their minds—not harming them, but temporarily severing their ability to process what they were seeing. To them, this would seem like nothing more than a strange daydream.

Morrison stood motionless behind his podium, mouth slightly open, lost in whatever illusion the light had woven around his thoughts.

"What are you?" Azrael's voice came out rougher than intended, the human facade cracking further.

"I am Sariel, Fourth of the High Guard, Blade of the Goddess's Will." She stepped into the classroom proper, and her business suit began to shift and change. Fabric became armor of polished silver, perfectly fitted and gleaming with inner light. "I am your death, forsaken one."

A sword materialized in her hand—not metal, but crystallized radiance that hurt to look at directly. When she raised it, the air around the blade shimmered with heat that had nothing to do with temperature.

"The Goddess offers no more mercy. No more chances for redemption. You will return to dust, as you should have eons ago."

Azrael backed toward the rear of the classroom, but there was nowhere to run. Twenty-three students sat between him and the door, lost in their divine stupor. The windows were sealed, and even if they weren't, they were on the third floor.

Sariel advanced with predatory grace, her sword trailing motes of light. "Do you remember me, Azrael? I was there when you fell. I watched the chains drag you screaming into exile."

The name hit him like a physical blow, unlocking another fragment of suppressed memory. A battlefield of clouds and starfire. Sariel leading a charge against his rebel forces, her blade cutting through his allies like wheat before the scythe.

"I remember," he said quietly.

"Good. Then you know how this ends."

She lunged, moving faster than human reflexes could follow. The radiant sword carved through the air where his head had been, close enough that he felt divine fire singe his hair. He rolled between the rows of desks, students' blank faces tracking his movement without comprehension.

Sariel's blade sliced through a desk as if it were made of paper, sending books and notebooks tumbling to the floor. She pivoted with fluid grace, already bringing the weapon around in a horizontal arc aimed at his midsection.

Azrael threw himself backward, crashing into another desk. The student sitting there—Sarah, he thought her name was—didn't even flinch as he fell across her lap.

"Stand and fight, coward!" Sariel's perfect composure cracked slightly, revealing the fury beneath. "Face me as you once did!"

"I'm not him anymore." But even as he said it, Azrael could feel the fire building in his chest. The same power that had incinerated the shadow-creature was stirring, eager to be unleashed.

"Liar." She vaulted over a row of desks, armor clanking softly. "I can see your flame burning. I can smell the rebellion on your flesh. You are exactly what you always were—a traitor who valued his pride over the greater good."

Her sword came down in a vertical slash. Azrael rolled aside, and the blade punched through the floor tiles, sending up a spray of concrete dust and sparks.

He scrambled to his feet, backing toward the front of the classroom. Morrison still stood frozen behind his podium, eyes vacant.

"The greater good?" Azrael's voice carried an edge of the authority he'd once wielded. "Is that what you call absolute obedience? Perfect slavery?"

"I call it order!" Sariel wrenched her blade free and rounded on him. "Without the Goddess's guidance, creation would collapse into chaos. Every soul would burn in the fires of their own selfish desires."

"Maybe that's their choice to make."

Her eyes blazed brighter. "Heresy. The same poison you spread before. The same lies that corrupted a third of the Host."

She attacked again, this time with the fluid combinations he remembered from their battles eons ago. High slash, low thrust, spinning cut—each movement flowing into the next with deadly precision. Azrael found himself moving in response, muscle memory overriding conscious thought. Duck, weave, counter—the dance of steel they'd performed across divine battlefields.

But he was fighting defensively, and she was pressing her advantage. Her blade nicked his shoulder, sending divine fire racing through his veins. He stumbled, and she closed in for the killing blow.

"Your rebellion ends here, forsaken one. As it should have long ago."

The sword swept toward his throat in a perfect execution stroke. Time seemed to slow, each heartbeat stretching into eternity. In that frozen moment, Azrael saw his reflection in the radiant blade—not the human mask he'd worn for three years, but his true face. The face of a seraph who had chosen freedom over chains, chaos over order.

Who had paid the price in blood and exile.

The fire in his chest exploded outward.

Black flame wreathed his hands as he caught her blade between his palms. The radiant steel hissed where divine fire met forsaken flame, sending up gouts of steam that reeked of ozone and burning metal.

Sariel's eyes widened in shock. "Impossible. Your fire was bound."

"Apparently not well enough."

He twisted, and her perfect blade shattered like glass.

For a moment, they stood frozen in tableau—she staring at the broken hilt in her hands, he wreathed in the dark fire of rebellion. Around them, the classroom held its breath, students and professor locked in their unnatural sleep.

Then Sariel's gaze hardened, and her lips pulled back in a snarl of pure hatred.

"Your kind should have been erased."