Eli woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind no birds, no distant traffic, no hum of electricity but a thick, suffocating stillness that pressed against his ears. For a long moment, he thought he was dead.
Then pain bloomed.
It spread slowly, radiating outward from his chest, his limbs, his back every place he remembered being hurt. His body felt heavy, unresponsive, like it no longer fully belonged to him. Even his muscles felt different as if they remembered something he could not yet recall.
He groaned softly.
That sound broke the silence.
He lay on a cold surface, something smooth beneath his back. Stone. His eyelids fluttered open, vision blurry, then slowly sharpened.
A room.
Small. Circular. Carved directly into rock.
Faint golden light seeped from cracks in the walls, pulsing gently in time with his heartbeat. The ember no, the fire inside his chest burned low but steady, no longer raging, no longer quiet.
Contained.
Eli swallowed.
I'm alive.
The realization didn't bring relief.
It brought dread.
By morning, the city was already whispering.
A student hadn't come home.
By noon, teachers were pretending not to notice the empty desk. Attendance lists were read aloud mechanically, voices flat, as if saying his name out loud might erase him entirely. The rumors began slowly.
"He ran away."
"He owed money."
"I heard he got jumped."
"Some say… something happened in the alley last night."
None of it mattered. No one stopped to ask if he was alive. No one would. They didn't notice the long scars behind the invisible veil of high school cruelty. They didn't care.
At school, the same boys who had shoved him into lockers now leaned against walls, laughing louder than usual.
"Told you he wouldn't last," one sneered.
Eli crossed the courtyard, backpack heavy, his hoodie covering most of his face. His shoulders ached not from physical wounds. but from the weight of being invisible, unwanted, and hated.
During class, the teacher droned on about history, but Eli barely heard it. He traced patterns on the edges of his notebook, hands shaking slightly, the ember inside him pulsing like a quiet heartbeat of defiance. He watched his classmates laugh, whisper, and point, aware that they thought he didn't notice but he always did.
Lunch was the worst.
No one sat near him. No one offered food. The cafeteria smelled of burnt noodles and cheap disinfectant. The chatter was constant, unbearable, a rhythm of exclusion that beat against his skull.
He stayed in a corner, picking at his own stale sandwich, listening to the whispers. "Did you see Cross? Where's he been?" "They say he ran off. Must be dead."
Eli swallowed hard.
He wanted to scream at them, tell them he was fine, that he was stronger than they would ever know but the words never came. Survival meant silence. Silence meant invisibility.
By the end of the day, his head throbbed, and his body ached not from pain, but from every day being a battle to simply exist.
That night, the front door stayed closed.
His foster father didn't call the police. He didn't check hospitals. He didn't even look into Eli's room.
"Less food to waste," he muttered, twisting the cap off another bottle.
The ember inside Eli flared faintly
somewhere far away as if it heard that.
He went to his room, sat on the edge of the mattress, and stared at the cracked ceiling. For years he had thought nothing could hurt him more than his foster parents' neglect, the loneliness, the constant bullying.
Now, after surviving vampires and angels, he realized the pain was not gone it had only evolved. His chest burned faintly, reminding him that even though he was alive, he was not safe. Not anywhere.
Deep beneath the streets, in a chamber far older than the buildings above it, something ancient stirred.
The air trembled as a figure rose from a throne carved of black stone.
Red eyes opened.
Around him, vampires knelt instinctively, heads bowed, bodies trembling as pressure flooded the chamber.
"A nest has gone silent," the figure said calmly.
No one answered.
"An entire cell," he continued. "Erased. Not hunted. Not captured."
His fingers tapped once against the armrest.
"Destroyed."
A vampire noble swallowed. "The fledglings say it was a human."
Silence fell.
Then laughter.
Low. Amused. Dangerous.
"A human," the Vampire Lord repeated. "And angels were seen in the area?"
"Yes, my lord."
The red eyes narrowed slightly.
"Then this is no accident."
He stood fully now, presence crushing, overwhelming. The pressure in the chamber caused weaker vampires to fall to their knees instinctively.
"Find the boy," he said simply.
And the order was absolute.
Far above Earth, beyond clouds and stars, Heaven rang with quiet alarm.
Light gathered.
Six figures knelt in a vast chamber of white stone, wings folded, armor etched with ancient law. Their expressions were identical emotionless, absolute.
Before them stood an Archangel.
"Target designation," it said. "Eli Cross. Human. Anomaly Class Seven."
A ripple passed through the chamber.
"Survived divine judgment," the Archangel continued. "Demonstrated uncontrolled divinity. Triggered vampire casualties."
One angel spoke. "Permission to erase?"
The Archangel's gaze hardened.
"Granted."
Swords of light formed in their hands simultaneously, humming softly but with the sound of finality.
"You are the Execution Squad," it said.
"You do not observe."
"You do not hesitate."
"You do not fail."
The angels vanished, descending toward the city like six falling comets of impossible light.
Eli sat up slowly, aware for the first time of every pain in his body.
It was different now. Duller. Controlled. His wounds were gone, replaced by faint golden lines beneath his skin that faded as he flexed his fingers.
He wasn't chained.
That realization sent a chill down his spine.
"Good," a voice said.
Eli spun.
A man stood near the wall tall, dark-haired, wearing simple clothes that somehow didn't look human or divine. His eyes were ancient, tired, and sharp all at once.
"You woke up before they arrived," the man continued.
Eli's heart pounded. "Who are you?"
The man smiled faintly.
"Someone who doesn't like Heaven's rules," he said. "And someone who knows you won't survive this city much longer."
The ember in Eli's chest flared.
"Because," the man added quietly, "angels are coming."
The air shifted.
Above them, far beyond stone and sky, something tore through reality.
Six presences descended.
And for the first time in his life, Eli understood something with terrifying clarity:
The city drank blood.
Heaven demanded obedience.
And he stood exactly where both would collide.
He thought of school the mocking, the isolation, the empty lunch periods, the foster home, the constant pressure to survive. He thought of every step, every corner he had run down, every alley he had hoped was empty.
And now they were coming. Angels. Vampires. Death from all sides.
He was alone, but for the first time, he realized he had a choice.
He could run.
He could hide.
Or… he could fight.
The ember in his chest pulsed, warm and alive, and he felt something strange: a whisper, like a memory of something he hadn't yet learned.
Power. You already have it.