Apostle Baby Daddy Is A Top Shot

CHAPTER 3, THE FIRST SIGN 2

Evening draped Dominion City in molten gold. Skyscrapers flared against the dying light, and somewhere high above them, the Dominion Tower cut into the clouds like a blade.

Yeshua arrived first. The tower’s lobby was silent except for the low hum of machines and the echo of rain on glass. 

A marble sigil, the same circle of wings that burned under his skin, spread across the floor. He felt it vibrate through his boots.

A voice greeted him from the shadows of the elevator bank. “Still punctual,” Gideon said, stepping forward. “Even after everything.”

Yeshua’s jaw tightened. “You could have sent a message through someone else.”

“You wouldn’t have come.” Gideon’s smile was thin. “And we both know you needed to.”

The elevator doors opened with a soft chime. Gideon gestured upward. “The Council wants to meet their miracle.”

“I’m not a miracle.”

“Tell that to the dead man who’s breathing again.”

They rode in silence. The elevator climbed fast, too fast, its walls reflecting their uneasy faces in gold glass.

When the doors opened, they stepped into a room that felt like a cathedral built by machines: black marble floors, columns of light, a cross made of steel hovering midair.

Six figures sat around a long table. The Dominion Council. They looked more like senators than priests, rich, composed, and terrifyingly calm.

The woman at the head spoke first. “Yeshua Yael,” she said, her voice like velvet wrapped around stone. “You performed a sign yesterday.”

“I didn’t perform anything,” Yeshua replied. “I just obeyed.”

“Obedience is still power,” another councilor said. “And power without oversight becomes chaos.”

Gideon folded his arms. “He saved a man, not burned a city.”

“Yet,” the woman corrected. She rose, crossing to Yeshua. “The Dominion mark hasn’t appeared in two centuries. It doesn’t choose lightly. Do you understand what that means?”

“I understand it ruined my life once already.”

Her gaze flickered with something almost like pity. “You mistake ruin for refining.”

He looked past her at the skyline glowing through the window. “What do you want from me?”

“Control,” she said simply. “We want to help you channel what’s awakening. Otherwise, the Watcher will turn it against you, and against us all.”

Yeshua hesitated. The mark on his arm burned faintly, as if agreeing and warning at once.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you’ll stand alone when the darkness comes,” she said. “And alone men always fall.”

Behind her, the elevator chimed again. Florence stepped out, breathless, clutching the silver-marked folder. Every head turned. “Florence,” Yeshua whispered. “Why are you here?”

“She invited me,” Gideon said. “We needed a witness. Someone who can remind you of who you were before the mark.”

Florence’s eyes found his. “I came because I don’t know who you are anymore.”

The silence that followed was thicker than the air before a storm. The Councilwoman smiled faintly. “Good. Then let’s find out together.”

Outside, thunder rumbled, distant, deliberate. The glass windows trembled. Leah’s warning echoed in Yeshua’s mind: “The Watcher always hears when a Heir awakens.”

…

The temperature dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat. Frost crawled across the inside of the windows like veins of living ice. 

One of the councilors whispered a prayer; another reached for the emergency switch, but the lights died first. 

Darkness swallowed the chamber. A slow pulse, like a heartbeat too large for the room, throbbed through the walls. 

The marble floor shimmered, and the sigil beneath their feet began to turn, rings of ancient script spinning like clockwork. Florence’s voice was a tremor. “Yeshua, what’s happening?”

He didn’t answer. He already knew. “It’s here.”

A ripple of shadow rolled across the ceiling. From its center hung a shape that wasn’t fully there, human and not. Its eyes burned silver, the same hue as the Watcher’s from the cathedral.

Gideon drew a slim, silver cruciform blade from his coat. “Council, behind me!”

The shadow laughed, a sound that bent the air. “Steel and scripture. You learned nothing.”

It lunged. The blade met the darkness with a hiss, metal searing as if plunged into acid. Gideon staggered back, eyes wide. “It’s feeding on the mark!”

Yeshua stepped forward, arm blazing with gold light. “You wanted to meet your miracle? Here he is!”

He thrust his palm toward the creature. The sigil flared, circles within circles, and a wave of radiance tore through the room. 

The shadow shrieked, shattering glass, hurling sparks into the night. For a heartbeat, there was silence, then the creature spoke again, voice split across a thousand echoes. “Every sign demands another. Remember that, Heir.”

It dissolved into ash, leaving a thin smell of iron and rain. The emergency lights came on, painting everyone in red. 

Half the council lay dazed, Gideon’s blade half-melted, the window wall a jagged wound overlooking the city. Florence ran to Yeshua. “You’re bleeding!”

He looked down, thin streams of light, not blood, ran from the sigil on his wrist. The glow dimmed slowly, curling back beneath his skin.

Gideon pushed himself up, breathing hard. “You saved them,” he said. “But now they’ll fear you more than the darkness.”

The councilwoman’s voice trembled. “The Watcher broke the first seal. Dominion must gather its pillars again before the others awaken.”

She turned to Yeshua. “That means you lead us.”

He shook his head. “I’m no leader. I’m barely surviving.”

“You’re the only one marked,” she replied. “Heaven has already chosen.”

Florence stared at him, conflicted, terrified, and something else she couldn’t yet name.

“Yeshua,” she whispered, “if this is what faith costs, can you afford it again?”

He met her gaze. “Faith isn’t a purchase. It’s a reckoning.”

Outside, lightning spidered across the clouds, illuminating the Tower’s broken cross. 

In its reflection, Yeshua saw the faint outline of wings unfolding behind his own shadow, gone as quickly as they appeared.

Gideon sheathed his ruined blade. “Then the reckoning begins.”

The tower’s alarms never sounded. They didn’t need to. By the time Yeshua and the others reached the lobby, emergency crews were already outside.

Lights flashing crimson against wet glass. Reporters swarmed like hornets, shouting his name, shoving cameras into the night air. “Mr Yael! Was that another miracle?” 

“Did you summon it?”

“Are you the second coming or a threat to public safety?”

He said nothing. The doors slid open, and the sea of noise parted for a moment as he stepped into the rain. It felt cleaner than the light inside, real, heavy, unfiltered.

Florence followed a few steps behind, coat thrown over her shoulders, eyes wide from everything she had seen. “They’ll tear you apart if you keep walking into the open like this,” she said.

He turned to her, rain running down his face. “I can’t hide what Heaven chose to show.”

“Then at least learn to control it before someone dies because of you.”

Her voice cracked on the last word. He almost reached for her hand, then thought better of it. “People die every day, Florence. I just gave one of them another chance.”

“That’s not faith,” she whispered. “That’s playing God.”

He didn’t answer. The silence between them felt like another storm waiting to break.

Behind them, Gideon spoke quietly into a comm-bead, his expression hard. “The Council wants him contained, not killed. Keep eyes on him.”

Yeshua heard every word. He didn’t turn around. By midnight, Dominion City burned with curiosity. 

Every news channel replayed the tower explosion; social feeds filled with slowed footage of the shadow bursting apart. Conspiracy threads multiplied, AI trick, angelic manifestation, terrorist stunt.

In a cheap apartment on the south side, two teenagers watched the loop on an old tablet. “Bro,” one murmured, “if that’s real, the world’s ending.”

“Nah,” the other said, eyes wide. “It’s just starting.”

At the cathedral, Mother Leah knelt before the cracked altar. The wax of her candles wept faster than it burned. 

When she raised her head, the mural of the Seven Pillars behind the pulpit was changing, paint flaking away to reveal new symbols beneath. “Seven Heirs,” she whispered. “Seven seals.”

Wind pushed through the broken doors, carrying with it the faint echo of a voice not her own: “The first sign has been given.”

Leah bowed her head. “Then God help the rest of them.”

Elsewhere, on the city’s highest rooftop, Yeshua stood alone. The skyline glowed beneath him, drenched in stormlight. 

He opened his hand; the faint gold of the Dominion mark shimmered like a sleeping sun. “Every sign will cost you something.”

The words from that first night returned, steady and cold. He looked down at the streets, the people, the lights, the endless noise, and knew the next cost would be greater.

Florence’s voice echoed faintly in his memory: “That’s playing God.”

He closed his fist. “Then let Him play through me.”

Lightning cracked across the horizon, and the beam of its light shaped a perfect circle in the clouds, wings unfolding around the city before fading back to darkness.

Below, unseen by him, cameras caught the image. Within minutes, it spread across every screen in the world: The Second Sign.