AZRAEL

The Flame Ignites

Terror locked Azrael's muscles. The shadow-thing loomed over him, tendrils of darkness writhing like living smoke. Up close, he could see details that made his mind recoil—fragments of bone and metal embedded in its writhing mass, faces that appeared and dissolved in the roiling black, mouths that opened and screamed without sound.

"What—" he started to say, but the creature lunged.

A pseudopod of concentrated darkness slammed into his chest, lifting him off his feet and hurling him into the brick wall of an abandoned storefront. The impact drove the air from his lungs. Stars exploded across his vision as he crumpled to the sidewalk, tasting copper.

The thing advanced with deliberate slowness, savoring his terror. Those burning eyes never left his face.

"Three years we searched," it hissed, voice like nails on slate. "Three years since you crawled away to hide among the cattle. Did you think mortal flesh would mask what you are?"

Azrael tried to stand. His legs wouldn't obey. Blood ran down the back of his skull where it had struck the brick. The creature's presence pressed against him like a physical weight, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he gasped.

The shadow-thing laughed—a sound like breaking glass mixed with screaming wind.

"Still playing human? Even now?" Another tentacle whipped out, wrapping around his throat and lifting him until his feet dangled above the cracked pavement. "Look at me, fallen one. See what you've become."

The burning eyes flared brighter, and suddenly Azrael could see his reflection in their depths. But it wasn't his face looking back. The features were the same, but the eyes blazed with inner fire, and behind his shoulders...

Wings. Massive, powerful wings of ash and flame.

"No." The word came out as a whisper.

"Yes." The creature's grip tightened. "The Demon King grows impatient. Your exile ends now."

Darkness crept in from the edges of Azrael's vision. The thing was crushing his windpipe, and his lungs burned for air. This was how he would die—strangled in an empty street by a nightmare that called him by a name he'd never heard before.

But as consciousness began to slip away, something stirred deep in his chest. A warmth that started small, like a pilot light, then began to grow.

The dreams rushed back—not fragmented now, but crystal clear. Standing in halls of white stone. Voices raised in harmonious rebellion. A throne of light, and a figure upon it whose beauty was matched only by her terrible wrath. The sensation of falling, of wings catching fire as divine chains dragged him down into exile.

And a name. His name.

Azrael.

The warmth in his chest exploded outward.

Fire erupted from his skin—not the orange flames of Earth, but something deeper, darker. Black fire edged with silver light, burning cold as winter and hot as a forge all at once. The shadow-creature shrieked and released him, its pseudopod dissolving where the flames touched it.

Azrael hit the ground in a crouch, no longer afraid. The fire coursed through his veins like molten metal, and he could feel something vast and terrible unfolding behind his shoulders. When he looked down, his hands were wreathed in that impossible flame, casting no shadow but making the air itself shimmer with heat.

"Impossible," the creature hissed, backing away for the first time. "Your fire was bound. The chains—"

"Are broken." Azrael's voice had changed, deeper now, carrying harmonics that made the windows of nearby buildings vibrate. He stood slowly, feeling power flow through muscles that remembered eons of war. "Did you really think three years of mortal flesh could chain a seraph's flame?"

Wings unfurled behind him—vast spans of ash-gray feathers shot through with veins of that strange fire. They spread until they nearly touched the walls on either side of the street, beautiful and terrible as a storm front.

The shadow-creature lunged again, desperation replacing its earlier confidence. Azrael didn't move. He simply willed the fire to consume.

The black flame roared outward in a torrent, swallowing the creature entirely. Where darkness met fire, reality screamed. The pavement cracked and melted. Windows exploded outward in glittering cascades. The very air ignited, turning the narrow street into a furnace that would have reduced any mortal to ash in heartbeats.

When the flames died, nothing remained of the creature but a smoking crater where it had stood. The surrounding buildings bore scorch marks that formed patterns almost like runes—symbols in a language older than human civilization.

Azrael stood in the center of the destruction, wings still spread, breathing hard. The fire had felt good. Natural. Like remembering how to walk after years of being crippled.

But as the adrenaline faded, horror crept in. What had he done? What was he? The power flowing through him was vast enough to level city blocks, and he'd used it without thought, without control. If anyone had been nearby...

He forced the wings to fold back into whatever space they occupied when dormant. The fire died to embers beneath his skin, but he could still feel it waiting, eager to burn again.

The street was silent except for the settling of debris and the distant wail of sirens. Someone had called the fire department, or maybe the police. He needed to leave before they arrived with questions he couldn't answer.

Azrael turned to go, then froze.

On the rooftop across from him, silhouetted against the gray morning sky, a figure stood watching. Tall, draped in a cloak that seemed to be cut from shadow itself. The distance was too great to make out details, but somehow he knew those hidden eyes were fixed on him with intense focus.

When the figure spoke, the voice carried clearly across the space between them, as if whispered directly in his ear.

"So... the Forsaken Flame lives."