CHAPTER TEN
Author: Dinah Bella
last update2025-12-22 12:28:12

POV: Kael

A new message arrived with the dawn.

Not a summons this time. Not a threat or a demand. Something different. Personal. The symbols burned into my consciousness with a signature that made my heart seize without understanding why.

She’s coming.

The message didn’t need to explain who “she” was. My body knew. My cells knew. Some part of me that existed below memory, below consciousness, reacted to those two words with a mixture of longing and terror that made no rational sense.

The one who held the chains while they stripped you. The one who watched you fall and did nothing. The one who loved you enough to destroy you rather than let you destroy heaven.

She’s volunteered to finish what she started.

I read the message three times. Each time, my hands shook harder.

Ava noticed. She’d stopped asking “what’s wrong” — the list had grown too long for that question to be useful anymore. Instead she watched me process, ready to help with whatever came next.

“Someone is coming,” I said.
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  • CHAPTER TEN

    POV: KaelA new message arrived with the dawn.Not a summons this time. Not a threat or a demand. Something different. Personal. The symbols burned into my consciousness with a signature that made my heart seize without understanding why.She’s coming.The message didn’t need to explain who “she” was. My body knew. My cells knew. Some part of me that existed below memory, below consciousness, reacted to those two words with a mixture of longing and terror that made no rational sense.The one who held the chains while they stripped you. The one who watched you fall and did nothing. The one who loved you enough to destroy you rather than let you destroy heaven.She’s volunteered to finish what she started.I read the message three times. Each time, my hands shook harder.Ava noticed. She’d stopped asking “what’s wrong” — the list had grown too long for that question to be useful anymore. Instead she watched me process, ready to help with whatever came next.“Someone is coming,” I said.

  • CHAPTER NINE

    POV: KaelThe summons arrived at midnight.Not through phone or computer or any human technology. It burned directly into my consciousness — cold fire searing patterns behind my eyes, words forming in a language I’d known longer than this planet had existed.By order of the Celestial Court, you are commanded to present yourself for judgment. Your awakening has been noted. Your destruction of Court servants has been recorded. Your refusal to submit compounds your original crimes.The crimes they mentioned weren’t specified. They didn’t need to be. We both knew what I’d done — I tried to hold them accountable. I tried to judge the unjudgeable. And for that sin, they unmade me.The message continued:Failure to comply will result in escalation. Mortal casualties will be considered acceptable losses. All beings connected to your current incarnation will be treated as co-conspirators.They were threatening Ava.Threatening everyone I’d touched in three years.Threatening to kill innocent p

  • CHAPTER EIGHT

    POV: KaelThe Morrison patriarch found us.Money can track anyone. Enough resources, enough determination, enough wounded pride — and there he was, standing in the motel parking lot with fresh lawyers, fresh security, fresh threats.The family wanted their embarrassment contained.I watched him through the window as he assembled his entourage. New guards, bigger than the last batch. More of them too — I counted twelve. New legal documents in the lawyers’ hands, probably committing me to something worse than a psychiatric facility. New confidence on his face, the kind that comes from believing the world works exactly the way powerful people expect it to.He didn’t know what I was.He thought I was still the charity case. The amnesiac. The man who spent three years kneeling.“Shit,” Ava said, looking over my shoulder. “How did they find us?”“Credit card probably. Or they traced the car.” I watched the patriarch adjust his tie, practicing his intimidation face. “Doesn’t matter. They’re

  • CHAPTER SEVEN

    POV: KaelThe memories came harder now.They didn’t wait for sleep anymore. They ambushed me in the shower, in the car, in the middle of conversations. One moment I was present, human, Kael. The next moment I was drowning in experiences that spanned longer than humanity had existed.We’d been driving for hours, putting distance between us and the motel, when the latest one hit.I was in the passenger seat. Ava was driving. One second I was watching the highway scroll past. The next second I was somewhere else entirely.I remembered my throne.Not a chair. Not a seat of power in the conventional sense. A singularity of compressed starlight, orbited by lesser lights that represented the domains I judged. Each light a world. Each world a civilization. Each civilization full of beings who had, at some point, answered to me.I remembered the weight of it. The responsibility. The absolute certainty that what I did mattered, that every judgment I delivered rippled through existence like ston

  • CHAPTER SIX

    We found a motel forty miles from the city. Cash only. No questions. The kind of place where people go when they don’t want to be found.Ava slept.I didn’t.Every time I closed my eyes, the memories surged — fragments of existence spanning millennia, compressed into human neurons never meant to hold such weight. I saw councils of beings that could unmake solar systems. I heard arguments in languages that predate matter. I felt the terrible certainty of knowing, always knowing, exactly what justice required.The god I used to be didn’t doubt. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t consider circumstances or intentions or the weight of individual suffering. He saw actions. He delivered consequences. Simple. Clean. Absolute.The man I’ve become is nothing like that.Three years of being human taught me things that god never learned. Mercy. Patience. The understanding that people are more than their worst moments. I’ve been weak and desperate and grateful for small kindnesses. I’ve loved someone without

  • CHAPTER FIVE

    POV: KaelWe ran.Ava drove because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking — not from fear, but from excess. There was too much energy in my body now, spilling over like water from an overfilled cup. The dashboard lights flickered when I breathed too deeply. The radio cycled through stations without being touched.“That’s creepy,” Ava said, eyeing the radio. “Can you make it stop?”“I don’t know how I’m making it start.”“Fair point.”I told her everything. The warehouse. The creature that used to be Chen Wei. The golden blood. The voice inside my skull that spoke in languages I don’t know but understood perfectly.She didn’t crash the car. Didn’t pull over and demand I get out. She just drove faster and asked questions.“How long have you felt different?”“Since last night. Maybe longer. Maybe always.”“What do the memories look like?”“Fragments. Sensations. Nothing clear.”“When you hear the voice, does it feel separate or does it feel like you?”“Both. Neither. Something in between.”She

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