The Seraph Lord

The figure who met us wore no armor. Just a robe, ash-colored, cinched at the waist. Dominion cross on one shoulder. No name. No smile.

We were led through the gate like livestock. Past murals of flame. Past rust-colored icons and stone angels with their eyes torn out. The wind changed — colder now, with a trace of incense and oil-smoke. Something old and iron beneath it. Something that had never left.

We entered a hall without windows.

No one spoke.

The priest who led us — not the one with the rifle — kept his eyes low, like a man too holy to look at us. His hands folded inside his sleeves. Bare feet. His steps were soundless.

We followed him through a dozen archways. The walls dripped from somewhere high above. There were paintings — saints being flayed, saints being hung by the feet, saints laughing while fire ate them alive. The candles beneath them were lit. I didn't know if it was meant to comfort or warn us.

At the end, there was a room. Round, like a cistern. No benches. No altar. Just a single lectern, carved from black stone. And silence.

We were told to stand in a ring. No further instructions.

The priest stepped to the lectern and opened a book with covers of stitched leather. He did not speak at first. Only read to himself. Lips moving slow. Then finally, like a blade drawn from a sheath:

"We do not take the Word lightly," he said. "The Word weighs more than flesh. More than hunger. More than water.

To stand before it, one must learn stillness.

Stillness is the shape of obedience.

Stillness is the death of pride.

Stillness is the First Rite.

You will not move.

You will not speak.

Until the bell is rung."

Then he closed the book.

And left.

At first, it felt like a joke.

Nicco shifted his weight and gave me a look like, What now? Farid's eyes scanned the ceiling, calculating. Jacob stood like stone. Leo scratched his wrist, but when he realized I was watching, he stopped.

The doors were closed behind us. There were no windows. No sound.

The light never changed.

After an hour, Tomas muttered, "What in the holy fuck…"

Jacob hissed through his teeth.

Then a sound — soft, measured — echoed behind us. Not boots. Sandals.

The priest was already there.

I never saw him walk in.

He approached Tomas wordlessly. Took his hand. And without a change in expression, he snapped one of Tomas's fingers sideways. The sound echoed like a snapped branch in an empty chapel.

Tomas screamed and fell to one knee, holding it. But the priest only looked at him.

"Stillness," he said, "is the shape of obedience."

Then he stepped back into the shadows.

And silence returned.

None of us moved after that.

I watched the condensation on the wall roll down in threads. I counted heartbeats until I lost count. My legs began to shake. Leo sobbed quietly, breath caught in his throat. I watched the tears hang off his chin, suspended like rain from a chapel eave.

Farid muttered prayers in Coptic under his breath. But only when the priest was gone.

Jacob fainted at some point. He fell with a dull thunk and lay there facedown like a corpse. No one helped him. No one dared. We all looked straight ahead.

I thought of home.

Of the saints at the harbor with their faces worn away.

I thought of Zeke's hands gripping the boat rail.

I thought of the man in white.

How he watched without speaking. How his robe never moved in the wind. I thought of the way he looked at me when the others weren't watching — like he knew the ending already, like he'd seen it a thousand times.

I wondered if he was watching me now.

If he stood behind the wall.

If he waited to see who would break.

My back ached. My legs burned. My jaw locked shut to keep from crying. I had bitten the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste the copper of blood. I let it sit on my tongue. I wanted the pain to mean something.

Farid had gone still again. His lips barely moved — silent syllables, rhythmic, ancient. His whole body was stiff with prayer.

Leo trembled beside me, pale and blotched red around the eyes. But he didn't fall. He didn't speak. He just stared ahead at the dark wall and the cross etched into the stone. I could tell he was mouthing something too, but not a prayer — a name.

Tomas's finger was swelling, purpling at the knuckle. He held it behind his back like it didn't exist.

None of us spoke again after that.

Our bodies stopped shivering — not from warmth, but from defeat. That quiet kind of shaking that turns to stillness, like prey that knows it's already in the lion's jaw. Our fear calcified into something deeper, heavier. Not panic, not even dread — just a kind of weight, a silence that burrowed under the skin.

Jacob still lay where he fell, unmoving. Facedown in the dirt. The blood from his mouth had dried dark across his chin. He must've hit the ground hard. That was all I could think — that the impact had split something inside when he collapsed. Teeth maybe. Or tongue. Or both.

No one checked.

Nicco hummed low under his breath. Not a hymn. Not even a tune I knew. Just a single note, over and over, like a broken instrument left to rot in a chapel. I don't think he knew he was doing it.

Farid's knees buckled. He caught himself on the wall, forehead pressed to the stone. When he pulled away, he left a faint smear of red behind — I don't know if it was from his nose or the skin splitting above his brow. Maybe both.

My legs had gone cold from the knees down. Numb, like they didn't belong to me anymore. I thought I might fall next, but the fear of movement held me upright — or something worse than fear. Devotion, maybe. The kind that kills you slow.

My jaw had locked shut hours ago. I'd bitten the inside of my cheek so hard it tore. The copper tang of blood coated my tongue. I let it sit there. Swallowed it. I wanted the pain to mean something.

Somewhere far off — or maybe just outside my body — I was crying. Not loud. Not even visibly. Just this silent unraveling behind the eyes, like a dam cracking under the weight of water that would never stop rising.

I could barely hear anything now. Just the sound of blood rushing in my ears. The priest never came back. The light never changed. My mind began to drift. Not into sleep — sleep would've been mercy. This was something else. Something like breaking.

Leo trembled beside me. His hands were clenched so tight I saw the skin split across one knuckle. He stared at the far wall like it was a window, like if he looked hard enough, someone he loved might appear in it. His lips moved. I don't think it was a prayer. A name, maybe. Or a plea.

Farid had gone rigid again. Whispering in a language older than war. Not for us. Not for show. Just for God — or whatever pieces of Him might still listen in places like this.

Tomas had stopped cradling his hand. He just stood there now, swaying slightly, like a tree that hadn't realized it was dead yet. His eyes looked glassy. Detached.

I thought about laying down. Thought about letting the silence take me too, like Jacob. But something inside me — maybe stubbornness, maybe grace — said: Not yet.

We stood like statues of suffering, half-conscious, fully forsaken.

And they let it go on until nightfall.

We stood like statues of suffering, half-conscious, fully forsaken.

The walls breathed. I swear they did. The mortar pulsed like veins beneath the wet stone. The air grew thick with the scent of frankincense and rot.

Somewhere behind me, I heard a voice. Soft. Familiar.

It said my name.

Salem.

I didn't turn. I couldn't. But the sound burrowed behind my eyes like a needle pushed too far.

Salem.

The man in white stood at the edge of the circle.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't real. I knew that.

But he watched me the way he always did — head slightly tilted, hands folded before him like he'd just prayed for my soul and knew it was already lost. His robe didn't move, not even in the breathless air. No shadow clung to his feet. No sound marked his presence.

He stepped closer. The others didn't see. They didn't blink.

He leaned down, close enough for me to smell dust and myrrh on his robes. His lips didn't move, but I heard the words anyway.

"You are already broken, little prophet."

I shook. Inside, not outside. My body was still. My mind was unraveling.

A second figure stood behind him now — faceless, mouth sewn shut. Its limbs were twisted backward, hands reaching for its own throat in some silent, eternal prayer. Blood pooled at its feet but never spread. Just pooled. Waiting.

I shut my eyes.

I opened them again.

The room was the same.

But now the saints in the murals were watching me. Their eyeless sockets turned toward mine. Their mouths were open in shapes of mockery, of laughter. I could feel it — the soundless cackling behind the stone.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to kneel. I wanted to run.

But I didn't move.

Because that would be disobedience.

And disobedience meant pain.

The floor fell away.

Not in sound or stone, but in certainty. The room bent inward, then outward, like breath reversing in a dead man's chest. Light poured through cracks in the ceiling that weren't there a moment ago — light too white, too holy, the kind that doesn't warm but peels. I felt it sear across my cheeks like an unseen hand.

The man in white lifted his palm.

Behind him, wings unfolded — but they were not his. They erupted from the back of the faceless figure. Six of them. Each one wrong. Each one bent and featherless, made of bone and ash and scripture. Etchings ran across them in a language I didn't know but somehow understood: the line is broken, the vow is dead, the child must pay.

The sound came next — not with ears, but behind the ribs. A groaning like trees twisting in winter, like cathedrals collapsing underwater. I heard a bell toll thirteen times, and with each toll, someone fell:

Zeke, mouth full of blood.

Mother, eyes open but blind.

Dinah, crawling toward me, arms too thin.

Thalia, curled in the shape of a cradle.

Jonas, nailed to a wall of smoke.

And then —

Me.

I saw myself, naked and pale, with a brand burned into my back: Isaiah 28:13. I didn't know the verse. I didn't need to. The words whispered themselves into my spine:

Precept upon precept, line upon line… that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken.

The man in white stepped forward and touched my chest.

Not hard. Not violent. Just a tap.

I fell. Through the stone. Through the earth. Through the bones of saints long dead. I fell and fell and—

I woke.

Still standing. Still in the room. Still in the silence.

Blood had trickled from my nose. My legs were shaking. My tongue felt too big in my mouth.

No one had moved.

The saints on the wall looked away again. The light was gone.

But the smell of dust and myrrh still clung to me like oil.