The Seraph Lord

Today, we woke.

Not all of us. Not fully. But enough to know we were still here, still under the black roof of Heaven's Gate. No one had come to send us back out. No orders, no drills, no sermons yet. Just silence, and the occasional scrape of a nurse's boots across stone.

They hadn't told us we could leave. So we didn't.

Tomas lay across from me, right hand splinted and black at the knuckles. I heard him trying to open and close it when he thought no one was listening. The sound it made was wet, tendinous.

Farid's nose had stopped bleeding sometime in the night. But there was still gauze packed deep into his nostrils, and dried red marked his lips like the ashes of Lent. His eyes stayed open. Not blinking. Just fixed on the ceiling like he was memorizing its cracks.

Jacob's face was tight, clenched like he hadn't let himself sleep. A tremor kept coming and going in his right arm — the one that seized up on the altar. I saw a nurse try to move it. He flinched like he'd been stabbed.

Nicco was curled on his side, muttering things I couldn't understand. His shoulder was wrapped and dark with medicine. They'd said it had nearly dislocated from how violently he was thrown down. He kept pressing his fingers together in strange patterns — like crossing himself, but wrong.

And Leo—

Leo was breathing. That was the best thing I could say.

They kept him behind a screen at the far end, where the candles were thickest. 

A nun came in and out every few hours to sponge the sweat from his face and pour broth between his lips. 

His mouth moved like he was praying, but no words came. 

His fingers twitched. Not like tremors. Like they were grasping for something.

I wanted to speak to him. To tell him he was still here. But I didn't know if that was good or bad.

The others hadn't spoken much. None of us wanted to. Whatever happened at the altar, it hadn't left us. Not really. There was something burned into us now. Not like a memory. Like a mark.

Like a line across the soul.

So I prayed.

Not aloud. Not like the priests do. Not with any power behind it.

Just barely a whisper. Just enough for Him to hear, if He still listened.

"Lord," I said, "bind up what's broken."

I looked at Tomas. At Jacob. At Farid and Nicco. Toward the flickering curtain that hid Leo from view.

"Not just in me."

I crossed myself. Slower than usual. I didn't know if the gesture still worked here — under this roof, under this silence — but I did it anyway.

"Bind us," I whispered. "Bind what's broken."

My fingers found the edge of the blanket. My thumb pressed into the cross at my neck.

"Heal them, Lord. If it's Your will."

I didn't ask for strength. Or for clarity. Or even for peace. Just that they wake tomorrow — whole, or close to it.

"And if someone has to carry it," I said, "let it be me."

Silence followed. Not hollow. Not loud. Just there. Like it had heard me.

That evening, when the ward was quiet enough to hear the wax soften on the candles, I heard the nun return to Leo.

She spoke in whispers, sponge dabbing his forehead. Her voice was gentle, but her words were the sharp kind — prayers for purification, for strength of the body after trials of the soul.

Leo stirred. A faint shift, like wind in a field.

Then he spoke.

"He was fire. And I couldn't look away."

The nun paused.

"Who?" she asked.

But Leo didn't answer. Only breathed, shallow and slow.

She asked again. This time, softer.

Leo gave a kind of laugh — or maybe a sob. It was hard to tell the difference in the dark.

"He held me," he said. "And I saw my name."

I turned my face to the wall.

He wasn't talking to her. Not really.

He was remembering something I hadn't seen.

I didn't sleep after that.

I just lay there, eyes open, listening to the stone breathe. To Leo's whispers. To the hush that followed them like dust after incense.

I thought about what he said —

He held me.

And I saw my name.

I didn't know if that meant he was chosen. Or condemned.

In the Scriptures, the Lord called His own by name. But He also wrote names in the dust before judgment. And sometimes, He erased them.

I pressed my fingers together, thumb to forefinger. Not a cross. Just the gesture I used to count my prayers.

I prayed for Leo. For all of us.

That we wouldn't be erased. That our names would still be there when this was over.

If it ever was.

That was when the air changed.

Not cold. Not warm. Just still.

Still like a sealed tomb. Still like before a bell tolls.

And then I saw him.

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 bend around him.

He carried no weapon, no book, no banner. Only silence.

The kind that listened back. The kind that knew you.

He stood beside my bed, though I hadn't heard him come. He didn't move. Didn't lean. Just watched — if that's what it was, behind that hood.

I didn't ask who he was.

 I already knew.

"The line wavers," he said.

Not out loud. Not in sound.

But the words came anyway — heavy and full, like oil poured into the cracks of my skull.

"You have seen what happens when it breaks."

I tried to speak. I wanted to ask if Leo had seen him too.

 If Farid or Jacob or Tomas had glimpsed that same white edge of silence.

But my mouth didn't open. My throat stayed dry. I wasn't paralyzed — just… held.

"Not all who are spared are saved."

The candles across the hall flared, as if touched by wind. But nothing stirred.

He leaned closer now. The robe brushed the stone beside me.

I felt the heat of tears behind my eyes and didn't know why.

"He called your name," the figure whispered.

The words landed like ash — soft, but searing.

Something in me twisted. Not fear. Not hope. Just the awful stillness of knowing I'd been seen..

I felt it again — the moment in the dark, his voice trembling: He held me. And I saw my name.

I stared up at the figure. My throat burned.

"…Are you from God?" I asked.

It came out quieter than I meant it to. Like a secret I'd kept too long.

"Or the Devil?"

The figure didn't answer. Not at first.

Only the sound of breath — not his, not mine, but something between us. Like the silence breathed too.

Then he spoke.

"The tree of knowledge bore fruit. But so did the tree of life. And both were rooted in the same garden."

I stared.

He turned his head — or seemed to — toward the far wall, where the faint outline of a cross was carved above a shuttered window.

"You ask from which fire I come. But all fire burns."

"What was written still stands. What is written… waits."

I dared to speak.

"Can it be changed?"

My voice felt like it didn't belong in that room. Too small. Too human.

The figure tilted his head, just slightly.

Not yes. Not no. Just… acknowledgement.

"The Word does not bend," he said. "But the hand that carries it may fall. Or rise."

I didn't understand. Not fully. But it clung to me.

I thought of Zeke.

Of the dream.

Of Leo in the dark, whispering that someone held him.

I thought of Thalia, smiling in my arms before the world broke.

"If I fail…" I began, but the words stopped in my mouth.

The figure stepped forward, close enough that I felt his presence like heat from a fire that hadn't yet burned me.

"The line does not end with you," he said. "But it passes through you."

His voice was lower now. More human. Like a confession meant only for me.

"You must not be clean. You must not be strong. You must only stand."

I swallowed, hard. 

"What does that mean?" I asked.

The figure didn't move.

"It means the ground is already cursed," he said, "And the blood has already soaked through."

He turned his head slightly, as if listening to something I couldn't hear.

"You will not win," he added.

"But you will remain."

I felt my chest tighten. The words weren't cruel — but they weren't kind either.

"And the others?" I asked. My voice cracked. 

The figure said nothing for a long time.

Then.

"Pray for them," he said. "The Name is written once. But the soul is written daily."

And then the world around us folded inward. Not with sound — with reversal. Like breath pulled into cold lungs. The stones beneath me turned black. The candles guttered, then flared to ash.

I was no longer in the room.

I stood behind the figure, though I hadn't moved.

Ahead.

A soldier.

My height. My size.

Clad in cracked trench gear, stitched with holy symbols — the kind that flaked and bled rust at the edges. His face was shadowed by the brim of his helmet.

 A lantern swung in his hand, flame sputtering behind thick glass.

He stepped forward.

Each footfall lit a stretch of ground no longer solid.

It was a mountain of bodies — stacked, tangled, torn.

Not all of them human.

Some had too many limbs. Some wore old armor. Some had faces that screamed with fangs where eyes should be.

 Some wore crosses.

Some wore nothing at all.

All of them were dead.

The soldier's boots pressed into the pile, sinking a little with each step. The lantern wavered.

Then — a sound.

A choke of breath. A human voice.

From the wreckage below him, a hand reached out. Trembling. Bloodied.

A comrade.

Still alive.

The soldier knelt. The wounded man stared up at him, jaw broken, one eye missing. He mumbled a prayer. The words didn't finish.

The lantern was set down.

The rifle came up.

No hesitation. No hate.

Just mercy.

One shot.

The man's head dropped back, still.

The soldier stood, hands shaking. But not from fear. From knowledge.

The knowledge that this would not be the last.

Then the pile beneath him shifted.

A groan like old wood. Like a cathedral beam collapsing under rot.

The bodies began to take him. Hands — cold and many — clutched at his boots, his legs. He went down to one knee. 

The lantern slipped from his grasp.

It struck a metal helm and shattered.

Flame.

It rushed out like breath. Like oil-fed judgment.

Around the soldier, shapes began to rise.

Figures — not all monstrous.

Some looked like men.

Some like saints, defaced.

Some like nothing made by God.

The fire circled them all.

The soldier rose.

He reached to his belt. His hand trembled. Pulled one last bullet from a pouch.

Slid it into the chamber.

Clack.

Click.

Shhhhk.

He exhaled.

And stepped forward.

Into the fire.

Into the dark.

And every shadow moved to meet him.