CHAPTER 18: A LOYAL WITNESS

  The brothers would later return to this moment again and again, circling it like a wound that never quite scarred over.

  But this time, it was revisited the way Yael did it, slowly and unwillingly. Simply because his mind had finally been given time to look back when he rested in Raphael’s care.

  A witness, turned guardian.

  The day the youngest sun fell.

  The day heaven cracked loudly enough for even the quiet angels to hear.

  He saw the bridge collapse.

  It did not fall politely. It did not crumble. It tore itself apart with a scream of stone and light, the ancient span folding inward as if creation itself had flinched away from what it had made.

  The shockwave rolled through the realm, rattling marble beneath his feet, snapping banners from their moorings.

  The Eternal hosts staggered, caught mid-motion, wings flaring instinctively as the air itself buckled.

  Then came the sound that hollowed his chest.

  Helel’s roar ripped through heaven like a dying star.

  It was not anger alone. It was terror sharpened into a weapon, grief combusted into force. The sound fractured ivory pillars to their foundations, cracked radiant floors, warped light into jagged shards that flickered and bled darkness.

  Even the wind recoiled.

  Yael did not turn toward it. He could not.

  On one side of the ruined bridge, the defenders held their ground.

  Michael stood with his blade drawn, dawn itself reforged into steel. His posture was rigid, command carved into every line of him, jaw set as though he were holding the realm together by force of will alone.

  Gabriel braced beside him, hammer glowing like molten earth, stance wide and unyielding. His eyes tracked everything at once: movement, distance, damage, exits. Logistics even now. Grief tightened his mouth, but his hands did not shake.

  Azriel stood slightly behind them, quiet as dusk, a storm wrapped in restraint. His cloak stirred with unseen wind, feet planted so firmly it was as if the realm itself leaned on him for balance.

  On the other side emerged Helel.

  He walked out of fire and ruin as if he had stepped through the first sunrise of creation. Dust and embers clung to him, swirling like memory. His wings were flared wide, singed at the edges, burning in colors too violent to name.

  He looked like the last apocalypse.

  Doomsday given form.

  Yael turned away then, the weight in his chest crushing and unmanageable.

  He refused to look at the hatred twisting Helel’s features.

  Refused to look at the guilt tightening his own heart harder as he fled.

  His attention snapped back to the trembling form in his arms.

  Suryel.

  The youngest sun burned faintly against his chest, her light erratic, fevered. Her body shook with each breath, shallow and uneven, as though breathing itself required negotiation.

  Yael tightened his hold instinctively, shielding her with his wings, bundling her close as if proximity alone could keep her tethered to existence.

  “Hold on, Suryel,” Yael whispered, his voice pressed low and urgent against her hair. His words shook despite his effort. “Don’t fade away.”

  She did not respond.

  “Stay,” He added softly. “I’ve got you.”

  The promise cracked anyway.

  He guided the horse with one hand, shielded her faltering light with another, and pressed healing into the wound with a third.

  Angels, it turned out, could multitask beautifully when fear demanded it.

  They rode hard, cutting through lesser paths and forgotten ways until they reached the place Azriel had prepared. The sanctuary lay folded slightly out of time, light muted, air still, warded against sight and sound.

  When Yael dismounted, his legs nearly buckled beneath him.

  Inside, he laid Suryel down carefully, reverently, as if she were made of glass and stars. He took her hand and stayed there, unmoving, watching her chest rise and fall.

  Waiting for her to wake.

  Waiting for their brothers to arrive.

  Waiting for news that it would be safe to come home.

  Outside, a thousand suns rose and fell. Time passed in loud, meaningless ways beyond the sanctuary walls. Inside, everything held its breath.

  Yael stayed.

  Sentinel.

  Witness.

  A terrified younger brother pretending very hard to be like the older ones.

  Suryel’s breathing quickened and slowed in uneven cycles, her small movements filling the silence like fragile punctuation. Light pulsed faintly beneath her skin, a broken dawn struggling to rise.

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  Across her torso, black miasma had spread like the roots of a dead tree, grasping, invasive, hungry.

  It wanted her.

  Every time exhaustion dragged Yael under, fear yanked him back with a violent gasp. He would jolt awake, heart hammering, immediately reaching for her, checking.

  Her breathing.

  The cracks in her core.

  The trembling of her fingertips.

  The faint, precious return of warmth.

  Over.

  And over.

  And over.

  It became ritual.

  Every hour, Yael whispered to her, voice low and steady, as if words themselves could anchor a soul.

  “Suryel?” he murmured once, forehead pressed to her knuckles. “Little sun. Please wake up soon. Please.”

  The grief in his voice was raw and unshaped, the kind that had not yet learned its own name.

  Whenever the miasma crept upward toward her limbs, Yael laid a warm palm over the wound and pushed back. He forced his own light through the fractures of her core, reinforcing, supporting, lending what strength he could spare.

  Time stretched.

  The older brothers did not return.

  The weight of that absence pressed down on him until memory began replaying itself without mercy.

  Helel had returned home tired but happy, his energy spent in productive chaos. He had gone looking for Suryel when she did not greet him, checking her abode first, then the places she wandered when restless.

  She was not there.

  They asked the others. They searched.

  Days passed. Six of them.

  Yael had been retracing her steps from Helel’s quarters when he saw it. A smear across the marble floor.

  Gold.

  Black.

  Red.

  Too dark. Too wrong.

  He followed the trail, heart climbing into his throat, down a passage no one used anymore. Forgotten. Avoided.

  That was where he found her.

  Suryel lay curled in on herself like a dying ember.

  Her hair was soaked in blood, clotted and dark against pale stone. Her skin had gone ashen, lips cracked and dry, her core humming faint and dim, barely keeping pace with her breath.

  The miasma clung to her skin and hair like poison-black silk, alive with intent.

  For a moment, Yael could not breathe.

  Then the world lurched.

  He stumbled back, tripped, and then ran.

  His footsteps thundered through the halls as he burst into Azriel’s abode without ceremony, grabbing him mid-turn. Raphael followed immediately, healer’s instincts sharpened by the look on Yael’s face.

  They were dragged back to her.

  They worked until their hands shook.

  Azriel stitched time itself, anchoring moments so her existence would not unravel. Raphael stitched light, aggressive and relentless, forcing aether back where vitality resisted. Yael held her together, body and soul, refusing to let go.

  She did not wake.

  That was when the realization struck them, cold and sharp.

  If Helel saw her like this, someone would lose their head.

  Justice burned hot in him, and there would be nowhere safe for the guilty to stand. And at the time, they had no idea who the guilty even were.

  They heard raised voices outside. An argument. The wrong kind.

  Helel already knew.

  They scrambled.

  Yael went for a carriage. Azriel scooped Suryel up, slipping away through a side wall. Raphael stayed behind, buying them seconds with words and presence alone.

  An avenging angel had come for his sister.

  The memory shattered as Yael snapped awake in the sanctuary, senses flaring. Movement brushed the wards.

  Without thinking, he rolled, dagger in hand, body coiled low and ready, positioning himself instinctively between the intrusion and Suryel’s still form.

  “Yael.”

  Azriel stepped through the veil. Smoke still clung to him, the silence after battle woven into his presence. His face was carved with sorrow.

  Yael dropped the dagger and surged forward, arms wrapping around his brother. His shoulders finally loosened.

  “Az,” Yael breathed, relief breaking through. “How is Helel?”

  “He is asleep,” Azriel replied, steadying him with a hand through his hair. “Michael and Gabriel are preparing him for the Tribunal. Our time is short.”

  Yael’s eyes flicked back to Suryel. “She isn’t waking,” he whispered urgently. “I’m holding her core together but it’s breaking. I don’t know how to—”

  Azriel approached the small, sleeping sun. His expression tightened when he touched her temple, just barely. Yael saw it anyway.

  “You’ve done well,” Azriel murmured. “But her core is shattered. If she still does not wake after Raphael’s plan… then she needs time. And she needs to stay hidden.”

  “There is one place,” he continued softly. “We have discussed.”

  Yael swallowed. “Where?”

  “With humanity,” Azriel said. “Where ideas bloom. Where creativity shields. Where even we cannot always track our own.”

  He turned to Yael fully. “She will need someone to stay with her. Someone who can recognize her across forms. Across dreams. Across lives. To act as the tether to her sealed memories. Could you—”

  “I accept,” Yael said immediately.

  Azriel smiled then.

  Tired.

  Soft.

  Certain.

  And so the centuries turned.

  Yael stood in time while Suryel lived and died and lived again.

  Fragile.

  Human.

  Temporary.

  Sometimes Helel passed close.

  Too close.

  Each time, Yael bent fate like light through glass, redirecting paths, smoothing edges, nudging coincidence just enough. He hid her dreams. He made himself small when needed, immovable when not.

  Every time she fell back into the In-Between like a returning star, Yael was there.

  Waiting.

  Guiding.

  Guarding.

  “I will recognize you,” he whispered across eras. “Every time.”

  …

  “Oh. She’s asleep.”

  Yael felt the shift as Suryel slipped back into dreaming. The realm responded, colors igniting like memories.

  She appeared before him in a cityscape that mirrored the waking world.

  Suryel blinked, then smiled when she recognized his face. “Hello, Yael. You’re back!”

  The ground shook. Far away, yellow, orange, and red wings tore into the sky.

  Suryel turned toward it.

  Yael held her gaze and extended his hand. “Come,” he said gently. “We run. Until you are ready to wake.”

  She took his hand.

  Warm.

  Alive.

  Familiar.

  And they ran.

  Light and shadow.

  Brother and sister.

  Keeper and flame.

  Author’s Note:

  *Author holds Helel like in the ‘Bird Box Forced Eyes Open Meme’ and says, “For the love of God. Please take notes.”