The moment Mike and Uriel breached the threshold of the Ninth Heaven, the air itself thickened as if it had congealed into a weight too heavy for mortals, or even angels to breathe. The brilliance of this realm was unlike any of the eight others, but the brilliance was not what struck Uriel first. No, what struck her was the darkness, darkness hidden beneath radiance, like a storm shrouded behind a perfect blue sky, a presence so vast it made her knees tremble.
Her wings faltered. She had never known her own grace, her very essence to recoil in such naked fear. It was not a matter of choice. The circulation of her grace, usually as natural as the beat of her heart, now stuttered, faltered, and finally seized as if chains unseen had bound her from within.
A bead of cold sweat slid down her temple. Her breath came shallow. 'What abomination has Mike aligned himself with?'
Her thoughts raced, frantic, accusatory. 'What was so binding, so damning, that he would subject himself and me to this? Was his promise to me back then, that broken child, truly worth bartering with forces so grotesque that my very soul recoils?'
She tried to will her grace forward, to push past the suffocating oppression, but her own core aspect, the very seat of her function, shrank back like a lamb before a lion. She felt as if her wings would shatter from the inside out if she dared resist. And then the realization came, sharp and merciless: this was her own fault.
Her mind flashed back to that moment when she, in her sorrow, she had demanded of Michael things that should never have been asked. That promise he made, the chain he clasped upon himself, had begun with her words her desire to save Lucifer. She trembled from head to toe, not only from fear but from the 'realization' of the cost her brother had borne. She had set this path in motion.
Mike caught her waist before she collapsed outright. His touch was firm, almost casual, but she could feel the strain in the way his arm tightened around her. "You'll not fall here, sister," he said simply, and with a motion both tender and startling, he swept her into his arms as one would a bride. His wings folded close, cutting the storm winds, and he carried her deeper into the Ninth Heaven.
She wanted to resist. She wanted to scream. But her strength was ashes in her chest. For the first time since her descent among men, she felt crippled, unable even to lift herself. Her humiliation mingled with fear until she bit her lip so hard blood welled on her tongue.
And then, she felt it.
That aura. That impossible, unforgettable fragrance of Grace. It struck her like sunlight breaking through a storm, even if its light was twisted, sinister, corrupted by shadows no tongue could name. The beauty within it, though, was unmistakable. Him. It could only be him.
Her breath caught. Though darkness clung to his essence, though blood and shadow dripped like oil through his radiance, no corruption, no depravity could mask the glory that burned at his core. Even in ruin, he was still the Morning Star.
Her blood sang. Her wings unfurled with sudden violence, casting off the paralysis that bound her. With a single flap, she cleaved the skies of the Ninth Heaven, crossing hundreds of kilometers in the span of a heartbeat. Luca braced himself, his arms widening as if he had known this moment was inevitable.
And then Uriel collided with him, burying herself in his embrace. She wept. She sobbed so hard it was as if her centuries of silence had been shattered in an instant. Her tears soaked the tatters of his robe, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
Yet the oppression did not vanish. No, the source of it still lingered, standing not far away, watching with an indifference that stung sharper than any blade.
Simon.
It was not that he willed to suppress her. No power flared from him deliberately, no command of grace targeted her. It was simply what he was. Uriel's sensitivity, honed sharp as glass during her centuries alongside the Buddha, made her attuned to cores, the deep seats of function within angels and mortals alike. And Simon's core was… wrong, or maybe wrong was not the word to use but to put it delicately one would say it should not be possible for a core function to be so… well the was no words she could conjure Not weak. Not chaotic. Simply superior.
Her own essence recoiled not from attack, but from the sheer recognition of its own inadequacy. Their aspects were similar, too similar: judgment, wisdom, truth. But Simon's judgment dwarfed hers, his wisdom like a blade honed to an edge she could not even conceptualize. Her own light felt as if it might shatter, her identity splinter into dust, if she dared let her grace move in the presence of his awakening.
Her tears shifted. They were no longer just for Luca, no longer just for Mike. They were for herself. For the bitter realization that all she had labored for, all the refinement and control she had cultivated beside Buddha, was nothing more than a fragile mirror that cracked at the first breath of a true storm.
Raphael's eyes lingered on her as she clung to Luca. For a moment, his relief was almost palpable, until something passed across his face like a cloud over the sun. His jaw tightened. His hand twitched at his side. And then he frowned, his expression soured by a memory he had not wished to stir.
It was not only her grace he remembered. It was her face.
How beautiful she had always been. Too beautiful.
"Brother," a voice cut through the silence, sharp as a blade. It was Gabriel. "You have the look you had when you first laid eyes on Lilith. Surely you have not designs upon your own sister?"
The words fell like thunder, and silence answered.
Raphael flinched, his lips parting, then closing, unable to form defense. His eyes burned with shame.
"He likely erased it from his mind," another voice added, smooth, deliberate. Mike's.
They all turned. Mike had appeared out of thin air, as though the very fabric of the Ninth Heaven parted at his will. His expression was unreadable, a mask carved from stone. His eyes lingered on each of them in turn, the weight of his judgment heavier than the aura that still pressed against Uriel's core.
For a long, unbearable moment, no one spoke.
The Ninth Heaven itself seemed to hold its breath.
And in that silence, Uriel felt it again, that crawling dread, the truth her core had already begun to whisper. Simon was not simply awakening. He had already awakened. What she felt was not suppression but the echo of her own impending obsolescence but was she?
And Mike, the brother who had once walked the meadows of Heaven, who had wept for mortals and carried promises too heavy for any angel to bear, had bound himself to that awakening.
Through it all, Uriel had not once dared to lift her gaze toward Simon. Perhaps it was fear, or perhaps it was simply the comfort she clung to in Luca's arms. For had she looked, had she truly seen, she would have recognized him at once, though in those former days she had known him by another name.
Raphael, meanwhile, found himself dragged down the corridors of his own disgrace. The mere mention of Lilith was enough to unearth a shame he had long tried to bury, pulling him into a memory lane steeped in shadows, a lane he had no wish to walk again.