The Seraph Lord

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.

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

No bell rang. No voice called. The sun didn't set — it just left.

Then the door opened.

It was the same robed man from before. He didn't speak. He simply nodded. 

Figures in robes, white at the hem, crimson at the cuffs. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They moved like shadows trained to touch pain without waking it.

Jacob was taken first — still unconscious. They rolled him onto a stretcher and wheeled him past the dead saints without ceremony. His mouth hung open. The dried blood cracked at his chin like old paint.

Farid was next. His legs had given out hours ago. Two of them lifted him under the arms. His head lolled back, mouth open in a prayerless gape. He didn't resist. I don't think he even saw them.

Tomas swore under his breath when they touched his hand. They bound it with a stiff gray cloth and kept him upright, one on either side. "It's twisted bad," one of them muttered. "Or broke." But Tomas just gritted his teeth and walked with them. He didn't let himself cry.

Leo didn't walk at all. His skin had gone chalk-white, and they lifted him gently, as if afraid he'd break. His eyes fluttered. His lips moved soundlessly. He kept murmuring something — the same five or six words — but I couldn't make them out. It might've been Scripture. It might've been his brother's name.

Nicco leaned on a wall until they took him by both arms. His humming stopped.

When they reached me, I didn't resist. One held a cloth to my nose. Another gripped my shoulder. I tasted salt and blood and something bitter. My knees buckled once, but they didn't let me fall.

We were moved like relics, like cracked things wrapped in reverence but meant to be hidden. I could barely lift my head, but I saw flashes through the haze — the flicker of torchlight against wet stone, a corridor with no end, a door like a tomb.

Then we were outside.

And I saw it.

Heaven's Gate.

Not a place. Not a fortress. A judgment.

The whole world opened up above the harbor cliffs — and what rose before us was not made for men. It was tiered like a ziggurat but taller than the hills behind it, wreathed in sea-fog and soot-colored clouds. Walls layered atop walls. Monasteries stacked like bones. The highest point vanished into smoke. And above all — the Cathedral. Blackened gold. Cross-shaped towers. Stained glass that didn't shine, only bled rust-colored light.

I thought of Jonah. Of the whale. Of being swallowed whole.

The path they took us on twisted along the inner ramparts. Cold wind pulled at our robes. I heard the sea, but I couldn't see it. The sky was the color of old wounds. On every wall, there were saints — carved, broken, faceless — their hands held up in silent warning. Their names were gone. Worn down or scrubbed off. Their eyes, if they'd had any, had been turned toward heaven. Now they faced the dirt.

The hospital — if that's what it was — had no sign, no name, no lamp above its door.

They took Jacob inside first. A nun waited for him. Her veil was dark red and stiff with salt. She signed the cross over his body without looking at his face.

Farid followed. He didn't make a sound.

I could barely stand, but I watched them carry Leo in on a wooden pallet — like an offering. He hadn't stopped mumbling.

Inside, the walls were painted bone-white. There were no windows. Only candles. Iron beds. Crosses with no Christ.

Nicco disappeared down a side hall. I saw him look back once, but his eyes didn't focus. Then they wheeled Tomas in. His hand was turning blue at the fingers.

One of them touched my chin. "Almost there," she whispered. Her voice wasn't cruel. Just distant. Like she'd spoken those same words to hundreds.

I turned my head. Looked once more at the city.

They laid me on a cot. The metal was cold. Something sharp pricked my arm. A nun wiped my face with vinegar and salt. She didn't look at me when she spoke a prayer in Old Dominionese — just moved her lips like she was reciting from memory.

Tomas was near. I heard his breathing — wet, ragged. Jacob was farther, strapped down, muttering things he never would've said when he was clean and upright.

I turned my face to the wall. I wanted to sleep, but every time I blinked, I saw the door again. The threshold. That pain — like the bones in my chest had turned to dust.

Why did it hurt like that?

Why did we fall down like animals?

Why did the light turn wrong?

I closed my eyes.

And then I wasn't in the cot anymore.

There was smoke in the air. Something burning, something old — not wood, not cloth. A scent like scorched parchment and iron nails. And in front of me: the corridor. But longer now. Stretched into something endless.

I turned — and he was already there.

The figure.

Draped in white, robes trailing like fog, faceless beneath the hood. Not tall, not short — just wrong in a way that made time feel slow around him. He carried no weapon, no book, no banner. Only silence. The kind that listened back. The kind that knew you.

He stepped forward.

"Most minds collapse," he said.

 "When they touch the warding flame."

I opened my mouth, but no sound came.

He tilted his head slightly. "You didn't know," he said. Not a question. "Of course you didn't."

The shadows around him moved. Not like firelight — more like something shifting beneath the skin of the world.

"Heaven's Gate is sealed," he said.

"By command. By curse. By rite. The spell that crowns its gates has stood for three centuries. It breaks the unfit. Fractures the mind. Shows every sin still clinging to the soul."

He looked past me — toward the memory of the other boys.

"Your friend with the broken hand. The one who can't stop laughing.

The strong one who mumbles scripture in sleep.

The one who screamed the name of his father."

He turned back.

"It wasn't sickness. It wasn't wind.

It was the ward. The flame."

I felt my mouth go dry. The pain. The light. The staggering silence. "And me?" I whispered.

He stepped closer.

"You didn't break."

"You should have. You are the youngest. The smallest. Your sins are many."

His voice lowered — not in menace, but gravity.

"But something held."

A long pause.

"You passed through a flame meant to divide spirit from bone," he said.

 "And still you knew who you were when it ended."

Something behind his hood shimmered. Not eyes — something older. The sense of being seen by a thing that does not forget.

"You were prayed for."

He turned.

Behind him, the corridor became a chapel. Collapsed roof. Altar half-burned. Boys sat in the pews, all with heads bowed, hands clasped. Blood pooled around their feet. One of them looked up — and I saw my own face.

The man in the robe walked the aisle.

"You will return here," he said. "Not in sleep. Not alone."

He paused at the altar.

"But not yet."

Then the world fell inward — smoke curling, glass shattering inward instead of out — and I woke to the sting of salt and vinegar on my skin.

The nun was gone.

The candle had burned down to a nub.

Tomas was sobbing into the blanket beside me.

And I could still feel the ward.

Still feel it inside me.

Like a line burned across the soul.

I laid still.

The dream — if it was a dream — hadn't left me. I could still feel the weight of that thing's words, like they were etched behind my ribs. Not a voice I could forget. Not a presence that left when I woke.

It said I didn't break.

It said I passed through a curse meant to shatter men.

It said I was prayed for.

But who was he to know that?

Who was he to say anything at all?

Maybe he was helping me. Maybe he was the reason I could still think straight, still move my hands, still remember my own name. Maybe he was sent to guide me — some messenger, some veiled herald of God.

But he never said God.

Not once.

No name on his lips. No cross in his hand. Just that robe, that silence, that voice like smoke beneath the altar.

And I had trusted it. Every word.

I shut my eyes, ashamed.

"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God…"

That's what John wrote.

 I had forgotten to test it.

What if it was a snare? A counterfeit?

What if the Devil wears robes too?

I turned over and pressed my head to the cot. My breath came short.

Lord, if it is You, speak again.

If it is not You, strike it dumb.

If I am being deceived, bind it.

Bind it and drag me back to truth.

Drag me back to You.

I whispered the prayer into the blanket until my voice broke.

There was no answer. Just the groaning of cots around me. The low, feverish mutterings of boys trying to forget what they'd seen. And above it all — the towers of Heaven's Gate rising beyond the windows, black and cold against the distant sea.