Archive of Our Own

Zodyl ran his tongue slowly over his lips, dragging along the last traces of the smoky sauce that glazed the meat in his sandwich. The flavor unfolded in layers: first, a pleasant sting of spice; then, a thick sweetness; and finally, a trail of burnt wood that lingered like an ember deep in his throat. None of these flavors were overwhelming on their own, but together they invaded his mouth like a tattoo being carved without anesthetic.

The same sauce was slipping between the fingers of his right hand, staining them a translucent red, beautiful, in a way, glimmering with tiny specks of pepper, dried oregano, and some other local spice he couldn’t quite place.

With no hint of shame, Zodyl brought those same fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, one by one.

“Absolutely disgusting” he thought of himself.

Eating was an act of primitive submission, repulsive, yet inescapable.

The muscles in his stomach protested, twisting with a dull ache, filling him with an ambiguous sensation: belonging, control, the raw knowledge that there exists a here and a now no one can take from him. He had consumed the food. He had turned it into part of himself. And through that grotesque act, he could almost believe, for a few fleeting moments, that he was a real human being, one who breathes, sleeps, and bleeds.

Zodyl sat surrounded by rusted junk, rotting organic piles, and corroded metal that exhaled a rancid air. Every object in the room was a corpse in the process of becoming dust, and amid it all, his hulking silhouette cut through the dim light of the flickering television, harsh edges, abrupt lines, like a blunt knife. The screen flickered with static bands, casting flashes of blue, green, and white from some mindless program, warping over his skin to form hard, hollow, cold shadows.

The unmistakable growl of Cthoni’s jinki warned Zodyl that his peace was over. The stench of syrupy blood and acrid venom clawed at his throat.

Zodyl barely turned his head, watching with detached calm the heap of shredded flesh and tattered clothing that had once been Jabber.

“Boss!” Jabber bellowed, his voice dripping with some revolting excitement. “The rumors were true!”

His body lurched forward like a marionette whose strings were about to snap. It was Cthoni who, with efficient precision, stopped the fool from crashing to the ground, one hand pressed to his chest while the other hooked behind his back like a lever. Yet even from where he sat, Zodyl could tell that her patience was wearing thin; the prolonged contact with Jabber’s sweating, spasming body was grating on her nerves.

Her limit came when, in his frenzy, Jabber’s hand struck her abdomen in a clumsy flail.

It was barely a touch, a fleeting brush of skin.

Cthoni said nothing. No rebuke, no warning. She simply relaxed her muscles, and Jabber crumpled with a dull thud, like a sack of carrion dropped on the pavement for crows and worms to clean to the bone.

Still, the fall didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest.

“All of them, Boss!” he shrieked. “Every single rumor was true!”

Zodyl watched from where he stood. The taste of the sandwich still clung to his tongue, nearly as irritating as Jabber’s voice.

Cthoni turned slightly toward him, her jaw tightening in annoyance. “Shall I silence him?” she asked.

Instead of replying, Zodyl rose to his feet.

He walked slowly, each step of his boots echoing dryly through the hollow space. He stopped an arm’s length away from Jabber. The man was still writhing on the floor, panting like a dog whose collar had been pulled too tight, with so much of his own venom coursing through his veins, he might very well have an erection right now.

Zodyl tilted his head just a little, studying the grotesque caricature of life squirming before him.

“Which of all the rumors?” he asked, voice slow and measured, stripped of emotion, no hint of curiosity, no fracture of expectation.

Jabber laughed, or tried to. A violent cough tore through his chest, shaking his lungs until thick strands of blood spilled from the corners of his mouth, sliding down his chin to stain his neck. He turned slightly to one side and spat out a reddish mass that hit the floor with a wet sizzle.

The sauce from his sandwich came back to Zodyl.

“The angel…” Jabber exhaled, his throat a wreck, eyes wide and glittering with some bestial excitement. “The angel!”

A cold silence spread through the room, broken only by another fit of coughing.

“Ugh… disgusting” Jabber complained as he caught his breath, but he could not stop a grin full of bloodstained teeth. “An angel really fell from the sky. The Cleaners have him.” His words dissolved into a broken moan as he finally collapsed. “You should’ve seen him, Boss! With those wings and horns… he’s a brat, so terrifying, so fun… HA, HA, HA.”

“Brat?” Zodyl repeated, with the faintest edge of interest. The choice of that word pierced his curiosity.

“He looks barely like a teenager,” Cthoni interjected, her tone controlled, almost clinical. Her eyes did not blink when she added, “A little taller than me” she made a hand gesture, lifting it about ten centimeters above her head “but the wings make him look much larger”

“That! That!” Jabber squealed with his face pressed to the floor, convulsing with equal parts laughter and pain. “Next time I’ll make sure to pull out a couple of those pretty feathers… they’d look great in my hair!”

Cthoni blinked once. Barely a second. Then she spoke again, a weight in her throat that Zodyl did not miss.

“He’s also a giver” she said. “A rookie, by how he used his jinki…”

The pause dragged in the air. Zodyl tilted his head, watching her swallow, a motion so slight it would have gone unnoticed by anyone else.

“His jinki?” he asked, his calm razor-edged.

Cthoni nodded stiffly. “It was gloves. With the Watchman Series logo.”

The words hung there, heavy, viscous, refusing to dissipate.

Then Zodyl’s eyes widened, two bottomless wells in which, for the first time in decades, an impure spark glinted: the incoherent, raw longing to possess. The murky flame of obsession. Blood began to rush in his ears with such frenzy that the world’s sound dimmed: he no longer heard Jabber’s broken gasps, nor the worry in Cthoni’s questions, nor even the beat of his own heart.

A pure sensation of suffocation pushed him to move. He started toward the exit. He needed air. Air that wasn’t poisoned by the infected urge to dig his nails into flesh, to trace red, weeping lines until the impossible ache was gone.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

Zodyl stopped; Mishra’s weight covering him felt comforting. He didn’t even turn to look at Cthoni or Jabber when he asked:

“What is the name of this… fallen angel?”

The silence lasted barely a heartbeat. Jabber broke it with his hoarse, euphoric voice.

“Rudo! Rudo! Rudo!” he screamed, spitting another coagulated clump of blood. “His wings are so precious! How would it feel to break his bones? What would his face do if I cut off his horns? Would his little fangs grow back if I tore them out at the root? Ha, ha, ha!”

Jabber writhed on himself for what felt like twenty very long seconds, spasms rolling through his body until joints and broken bones creaked. His laughter turned into a groan of exhaustion. And before surrendering to the deep sleep that dragged him down like a stone sinking into a bog, he murmured in a childlike, dreamy thread of voice:

“Rudo… Rudo and Zanka… oh, I want to fight them again…”

Cthoni sighed, relieved the spectacle was over.

“I’ll take him somewhere suitable to recover,” she said in a neutral tone.

But Zodyl barely heard her. His stomach was a nest of snakes: red snakes, furious and sick, unable to shed their skin, biting at each other’s tails, producing yellow bile, bitter as gall. He swallowed the acid rising up his throat and, against his will, felt the corners of his mouth curl upward.

Well… Zodyl could work with this.

<Oh divine angel, fallen from grace,

let me be the one to ease your pains.

From the pieces of your flesh I will make relics,

I will worship the blood that runs through your veins.

Let me raise an altar with your entrails.>

Luckily for him, Zodyl would not have to wait long for that encounter.

His hand had stretched out, fingers curved like claws. He had not applied force, only a calculated brush. but in the deepest part of his desire he hoped that contact would leave a mark: blue, violet, red, a tangible bruise on Rudo’s pale neck. The idea clawed at his flesh like a hungry animal.

Could a mere mortal, with the touch of his contaminated skin, defile what Heaven had already declared corrupt?

How deep could he sink his fingers into that throat before the creature, the angel, begged him to stop?

The thought thrilled him and sickened him at the same time. He had heard stories, rumors, about the silver tears of angels, sweet as wine, precious as quicksilver. Was it true? Would this be the moment to find out?

“…I am the leader of the Raiders,” Zodyl finally said, choosing each syllable with care, not allowing the sordid fascination bubbling in his chest to show on his face. The declaration was not a mere introduction but a claim, a warning, a hook, a prayer launched with surgical precision.

The wings, which until that moment had lain flat against the boy’s back, unfurled. Six goddamn enormous wings, each a fan of iridescent feathers white darkening at the tips to coal. They rose not as a foolish defensive gesture but as a brutal reminder of what Rudo was: a soul that did not belong to the earth, a sky-born existence warped into a monster.

Oh… how sweetly surprised Zodyl felt when that face, still rounded with childish fat, twisted into a savage grimace: lips drawn tight, fangs clenched, rage trembling in every line of his expression. As horrible as it was beautiful, that mask of pure hatred pierced him like a lightning bolt. If he squinted, Zodyl was sure he could see himself reflected in the golden horns.

And then the pain came.

An invisible, blind blow burned at the base of his skull, an abrupt burst that made red sparks flash behind his eyelids like embers shoved into living flesh. The pain expanded with brutal slowness, becoming a furious drum pounding inside his head. Terror slid viscous down his spine, like boiling oil licking each vertebra with cruelty, seeping into nerves and making every fiber of his skin bristle. His bones turned to lead, and his blood congealed into black tar that could barely move.

He noticed then how Rudo’s shadow stretched across the walls and floor, deforming into an incorporeal claw, a swarm of blades made of darkness. The air, a moment before a cold, cutting breath, turned solid, almost stone-like; an invisible wall surrounding him, its fractured edges like glass about to shatter.

Magnificent.

And yet, his impassive expression did not falter. Not a single muscle in his face betrayed the hole opening within him. He looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked back, hungry, expectant, and did not grant him the pleasure of feeling insignificant. Because in that ethereal face, those features cracked by the brutality of the cosmos that birthed him, he found exactly what he was searching for: a mirror in which to reflect his own HATRED.

“It’s always good to check the weather forecast,” he murmured. “That way, we can be ready for the storm”

As expected, the Cleaners reacted. Perhaps too used to living alongside horrors that would have shattered anyone else’s sanity, they launched their attack against Zodyl without hesitation. Yet that blind courage was nothing more than a move within a board he had already set.

In less than a heartbeat, Cthoni overcame her fear, unleashing her jinki and opening a portal that was nothing but a wound carved into the flesh of the world. The air trembled as if a thousand invisible bells had been torn out by the roots. And though it was annoying that the others had been dragged along, unwanted noise in a perfectly composed symphony, they were all pulled toward the same fate, helplessly swallowed into the heart of the Trash Beast.

The change was instantaneous. A damp, suffocating gloom enveloped them. The air reeked with a stench that clung to the skin, a blend of rust, ammonia, and macerated flesh. The ground seemed to throb beneath their feet. Every sound reverberated, amplified and distorted, until it blended into an organic murmur seeping from the walls themselves.

“HA! Tough luck, idiot,” spat the tattoo-covered Cleaner with a confident grin. Enjin. Zodyl recognized him instantly. “This brat comes bearing gifts.”

Zodyl didn’t bother granting him more than a passing thought. His mind was too busy treasuring the monster with gleaming eyes, whose seas of murky red blood never blinked.

The sewers that snaked like arteries through the body of the Trash Beast stirred, swelling like veins on the verge of bursting. With a muffled roar, the liquid filth erupted, spewing in torrents from the walls and the floor. Hundreds of liters of thick, boiling decay surged forth like a devastating flood, sweeping away everything in its path. A poison that seeped into the lungs and forced the body to convulse in heaving spasms. The Cleaners were swallowed by the tide, their screams drowned beneath the roar of the sludge, buried beneath an avalanche of waste.

The clamor dropped away all at once. It was as if someone had shut an invisible door and the echo of everything around them was smothered in an instant. Rudo barely registered the moment the other Raiders vanished, swallowed by portals the same way they had arrived. His senses were overwhelmed, narrowed to a tunnel with rough, fragile edges. The whole world had shrunk to a tight space, a tiny stage where no one else existed. Only him. Only this man. And between them, a dense air loaded with uncertainty.

“Now…” the other began, in a calm that tasted like poison to Rudo, an unctuous tone that worked under the skin and irritated him like obsidian dust beneath the claws. “Why don’t-”

“WHERE IS AMO?!” Rudo roared before the sentence was finished. His voice exploded like a discharge, tearing the air with a sound that was not human. He stepped forward and the floor seemed to crack under his weight; his shout burst into shards of static, a broken, painful noise that scattered like smashed porcelain.

But what he received in return was emptiness. An emptiness that fell upon him with the weight of a cold stone. The man looked at him unmoved, and behind those black eyes there was not a single flash of recognition. The name Amo sparked no ember, opened no wound of memory, evoked no shadow. It was only a shapeless sound that dissolved into the air, insignificant, irrelevant.

“Amo. Amo?” the man repeated, lifting one brow faintly, with a hint of puzzlement that angered Rudo even more. “I have no idea who Amo is.”

Rudo felt the words sink into him like red-hot iron. Ignorance is power. He knew the man was honest with the same certainty he had about the name and coordinates of every star he had made with Regto. He could hear it in the naked, unvarnished way the man pronounced the denial.

He wasn’t lying.

His wings answered before his mind did: a brief spasm ran through them, as if defeat rippled from chest to tendons. Weight overcame them and they sagged a little, hanging like six heavy ballast sacks from his back, brushing the ground. Each feather seemed to have lost strength, leaving him only frustration.

“Is it because of her that you are so angry?” the man added, and that question, spoken with the faintest, barely perceptible hint of compassion, drove even deeper than the denial itself. The tone of pity, soft but undeniable, burned him.

Rudo felt diminished, minimized, infantilized, reduced to a mass of red blood and calcium bones.

Wrong.

Unacceptable.

The man lowered his voice a fraction. “I’m sorry…”

Rudo ground his teeth until the metallic taste of gold flooded his mouth. He hated this mortal creature for that calm that felt like an insult, for the way he spoke as if something secret bound them. And yet part of him, the most wounded, loneliest part, listened with dangerous attention, like a primitive, ancient being drawn willfully toward the fire.

“I do not intend to appropriate the feelings you experience from not knowing the whereabouts of your frie… of this Amo.’”

Rudo felt a lash at the base of his lower wings. He wanted the man to shut up, to choke on his own blood, to gouge out his eyes and tongue, to have his name erased from all existing beings. Every sound this man made was an icepick driven deeper down Rudo’s esophagus.

“But I want you to know that I am not here to fight. I see it in your eyes the disgust my presence causes you, Rudo… we are not so different. I, too, share your rage.”

He heard the minute creaks of the man’s tense joints, tiny cracks like coal crushed into diamonds. It was panic, transparent, pure panic. Rudo could smell it. This mortal, this mass of flesh, was terrified, and yet he did not back down. He stood there, speaking in a steady voice, with genuine intent, without double meaning.

And Rudo did not like that.

Before he realized it, his own body took a half-step back, just enough. Like a cornered animal.

He felt shame.

“My name is Zodyl Typhon” the man introduced himself. His voice was like vulture-bee honey in Rudo’s soul. “Why don’t we finish this world together?”

The question hung in the air like a shining spear. Rudo bit his lip hard, sinking his fangs until the flesh split. A thread of that metallic gold slid from the corner of his mouth. And then the image came, vivid and solid, materializing in the depths of his mind:

Heaven collapsing.

The holy field created by the Watcher desecrated, shattered beyond repair, like glass exposed to the cold of tundras long forgotten by humankind.

Marble buildings crumbled.

Ivory streets destroyed.

Jade columns toppled.

The sea of time convulsed under relentless scourge, its trembling waves dragging away entire cycles, erasing possible futures, the collective memory brutalized into nothingness.

The cosmos itself melted into multicolored stains, like paint dripping from an abandoned canvas, fusing the stars into a single, terrible mass of energy.

Everything burns, illuminated by liquid fire, incandescent blue that hardens, leaving behind blazing stalagmites, impossible crystals that drip again and again, like suppurating wounds that never close.

The angels of the other Courts hang, throats slit while still alive, suspended by their featherless wings into the void for the rest of eternity. Their twisted, eyeless, gutless bodies sway, releasing a silent chorus of suffering. Their shadows stretch until they cover everything.

The plasma multiplies, splits into torrents, and spills into dense rivers that descend even to the Ground, laying waste to walled cities, innocent towns, the human and nonhuman remnants that dwell there. It drowns everything in its path, sweeping away all that once had a name.

What is not named does not exist.

And what does not exist holds no power over the future.

A cycle of corruption without beginning or end. A serpent devouring itself, without hope of rebirth.

Rudo savored the pulse of that desire, hot, furious, seductive. It was like plunging his hands into the burning heart of the universe. The echo of Regto’s promise resounded in his head: justice and vengeance were antonyms turned into synonyms, inexorably bound together, sealed by the golden ichor that spilled from his father’s chest and stained the workshop floor, ruining the silk garments and engraving into Rudo’s marrow, with the bones of extinct beasts, a curse worse than death.

“You’ve imagined it, haven’t you?” Zodyl’s voice broke through Rudo’s spiraling thoughts.

Rudo blinked. The images of Heaven burning dissolved in his head like smoke swept away by the wind, fragments evaporating too quickly.

He realized he was trembling.

Zodyl said nothing for a long time, watching him in thick, deliberate silence. Then, he shifted the subject.

“Tell me,” he said, in a tone almost intimate, “why did you decide to join the Cleaners?”

Rudo clenched his gloved hands into fists. His claws dug into his palms, tearing through the fabric of the bandages and scratching the leather beneath. The sound of static seeping from his throat vibrated in the air, like an invisible swarm crashing against the walls.

“Because… they promised to help me go back where I belong,” he answered, his voice distorted, broken into sparks.

Zodyl let out a sound, half cough, half sigh, that was neither mockery nor compassion. “Mmm…? And what makes you think they’ll keep that promise?”

Rudo’s upper wings twitched in an involuntary spasm. The weight of the lower ones, dragging almost entirely across the ground, pulled at him like shackles.

“They want to use you,” Zodyl continued, with the calm precision of a surgeon who knows exactly where to cut. “They’ll wait for you to trust them completely. And when they no longer need you—when you’ve given them everything you are… they’ll leave you hollow.”

Rudo hated him. But he couldn’t move. His feet were nailed to the ground, as though invisible roots had trapped him there. He trembled, mortified, like a child wounded by the father who dared raise his hand against him. Mortified, like a newborn angel wounded by a member of his Court, the one meant to care for him, to love him, to protect him.

Zodyl, this man, this mortal creature of pulsing flesh that would one day rot, who should not be capable of standing against terror, against the horror of facing a monster like Rudo, did not lie.

Rudo didn’t want to believe him.

“Millennia ago,” the Raider continued, approaching slowly but steadily, “when the first creatures were cast out of Heaven, they believed they could start a new life down here.”

His voice became a whisper that slithered through Rudo’s bones.

“The humans who found them, awed by these beings of fire, gold, and brimstone, welcomed them with open arms. They built them temples. Painted frescoes in their honor. Composed songs and practiced dances that mimicked the movement of their wings. They worshiped them with the naivete of livestock long domesticated.”

Zodyl’s tone dropped even lower.

“But humans, unlike cattle, cannot bear for long what they do not understand. In their endless grief at their own insignificance beside divinity, they soon rose against them. They took the gifts those heavenly beings had given and used them to destroy them. They tore them apart. Flayed their skin until their muscles lay bare. Turned their bones into relics to summon false gods. They slit their throats and drank their blood, believing they would find the elixir of absolute wisdom. They opened their bellies and devoured their entrails, thinking it would make them immortal”

The silence that followed was a deep, unfathomable pit. An anonymous grave.

An invisible pain cut through Rudo’s throat as he tried to speak. His voice emerged as a cracked thread:

“The Cleaners don’t… they don’t-”

“Don’t what?” Zodyl interrupted, his tone cruelly soft, leaning even closer until Rudo was forced to lift his face.

The weight of the horns pulled his neck backward, each vertebra protesting with a muted crack. The Raider’s eyes shone with that kind of light belonging to the living dead, to those who fear nothing because they have lost everything.

“Do you think I lie? Do you think the Cleaners are different? That they are truly your friends?” His voice slid like rusty hypodermic needles wrapped in velvet.

Zodyl sighed.

“Don’t be stupid, Rudo. A creature like you should have witnessed countless times how humans have shown themselves to be nothing more than humans: weak, selfish, reckless, foolish. They killed the planet, poisoned the waters, turned the air into venom. Tell me, what value do you think the Cleaners can give to a broken, exiled, corrupted angel like you? Isn’t it perhaps the fear, the horror you provoke, that forces them to smile at you, to tolerate you? They are your hostages if you think about it. And personally…” Zodyl tilted his head slightly, letting an ambiguous smirk curve his lips. “…I pity them.”

The air became thick, viscous, like hot, bubbling tar. Each inhalation shredded his throat. Rudo couldn’t breathe. His wings trembled, wanting to spread and envelop him, but they didn’t respond.

“The beings of your kind were called by different names: Tennin, Peri, Harpies, Valkyries, Angels…” Zodyl recited the names like a mantra learned by force. “Beautiful creatures fallen from grace, who, for trusting the wrong humans, ended up violated. Their bodies outraged, tortured, desecrated until they begged for death. And yet, even death was not granted to them in a dignified way.”

Rudo tasted the bitter tang of gold mixed with ash. His vision filled with blotches.

Zodyl did not lie.

Rudo did not want to believe him.

“If you set your mind to it…” the Raider’s voice dropped to a whisper, “I’m sure you could find remains of your kin being used as relics in the altars of some temples. Eyes, hair, skin, claws, teeth, tongues, bones… entire wings displayed atop the pulpit.”

Rudo’s stomach twisted violently. Nausea gripped him.

Zodyl did not lie.

Rudo did not want to believe him.

“Oh…” Zodyl murmured suddenly, stepping back just slightly. “Time flies when one drifts.” His lips pressed into a straight line. “Seems the Cleaners were stronger than I thought.”

A new portal opened beneath both of them, like a round, suppurating wound in the skin of the world. The air tore with a dry snap, and before Rudo could react, reality itself swallowed them, stealing his breath and any notion of up or down.

When the fall ended, the impact slammed him brutally back into pain. A sharp whip of agony shot across his shoulder blades as he hit the ground on his back, right where the joints of his wings connected to the spine. The scream that escaped his throat became a restrained moan, transformed into a deep, hoarse roar.

“Shit!” he muttered, gritting his fangs. He tried to rise, but every movement felt like driving burning thorns into his muscles. “You… the one who makes the holes! Could you stop throwing me around like a damned sack of trash?”

He forced himself to stand unsteadily, breathing with fury, while Zodyl landed just a few steps away. But unlike Rudo, he rose with elegance, accustomed to this kind of journey.

Son of a bitch.

Rudo spat saliva mixed with golden blood onto the blackened ground and growled: “Nice speech and all, but at no point did you explain what the hell we’re doing here.”

Zodyl lifted his gaze. The gray smoke saturating the area hardened his features; his expression was clear: a mask of absolute weariness.

“You haven’t even answered my first question.” He advanced slowly, his boots echoing against the soft, pulsing ground. “Or are you such a wild creature that cannot comprehend simple, primitive human language?”

“Shut up!” Rudo roared, his wings snapping erect. Anger coursed through his veins again. “I hate mortals like you!”

Zodyl stared at him for a long moment without blinking, as if observing a particularly strange insect trapped in resin. Then, with icy calm, he let out:

“I wish someone less impulsive had fallen from Heaven.”

He turned his face and began walking, unhurried, toward a structure that was neither rock nor flesh, yet pulsed as if it were both. Rudo watched him, bewildered, and the only word that came to mind to describe it was heart. A colossal heart, lodged in the midst of that repulsive scene.

“The fact that you haven’t flown back to Heaven means something is keeping you from passing through the veil of clouds.” Zodyl slipped his hand under his coat and pulled out a pair of boots. Amo’s boots. He held them aloft for a moment before tossing them toward the living heart. “Allow me to show you how to fix that”

The throbbing organ shuddered with a deep tremor. Cracks opened across its surface, oozing a dark, viscous liquid, and from those wounds sprouted tendrils of gray-green flesh. The tentacles stretched with hunger, grasping the boots and holding them in place as if absorbing them. Each movement was accompanied by a wet, tearing sound, like decayed flesh being ripped under scavenger jaws while simultaneously fusing together.

Zodyl did not take his eyes off the spectacle.

“Rudo… your gloves, these boots, and my coat belong to the Watchman Series.”

Rudo’s heart stopped for a moment.

Wrong.

Profane.

Sacrilege.

In all the time he had lived in the Abyss, (unless he had mentioned it before), he had never heard a mortal utter the creator’s name; he was certain they shouldn’t even know it. And though this Watchman was not The Watcher, the sound of each phoneme forming it oscillated, warm, sweet, in his eardrums, like the taste of a lullaby sung by Regto.

“Watchman… Series?” he asked cautiously. His curiosity was genuine.

Zodyl narrowed his eyes. “Mmmm… they are objects that belonged to a single person. Living relics, imbued with energy greater than any jinki that has existed or ever will exist.” He paused. “I ask you, Rudo… How must someone live to create jinkis like these? What price must they pay? Those who have used them after the original owner have gone mad, stripped of reason, plunged into absolute despair.”

Rudo lowered his gaze to his leather-clad hands over the bandages.

“But these gloves,” he murmured softly, “I’ve had them for a long time. I never lost my mind.”

Zodyl raised an eyebrow. “That’s because we are anomalies.” He looked down at the ground. “We lack the essential parts that make up a normal living being.”

Rudo’s wings trembled. Ughhh, he was already sick of the involuntary tics that betrayed his nervousness.

Marginalized by a family tie he never asked for. There was no way the trace of disgust, contempt, hatred, rage, and so many other lacerating words that angels, (young and old alike), spat at him could be erased by his father’s unconditional love… all angels are equal, but some are more equal than others.

I’m sorry.

“Why do you look so dejected?” Zodyl asked. For the first time, his tone sharpened, more hostile, letting a crack show in his composure. “It is that very lack of humanity that allows us to control such immense power. Although in your case…” he tilted his head, his shadow warping against the pulsing ground, “…I’m curious to know what could be missing from a creature born perfect.”

Perfect?

Rudo let out a growl from deep in his throat. “You don’t have the slightest fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

Zodyl barely glanced at him. A dense silence fell between them.

Suddenly, a roar tore through the world. It was so deep and grave it seemed less like sound than movement, a tremor passing from the ground into the bones. The walls of the space shuddered, and the light flickered like a flame about to go out.

“Don’t fuck with me. We’re inside…” Rudo managed to say through gritted teeth, just before everything twisted.

The entire world tilted ninety degrees. Gravity collapsed to one side, and Rudo barely managed to cling to a solid formation jutting out from the viscous ground. The skin of the world was coated in dust and echoes. A thunderous crash reverberated as a body slammed into the surface.

The girl from the Children team… What was her name?

“Guita!”

“I see you’ve noticed.” Zodyl’s voice came from another solid formation, distant and steady, as if nothing could affect him. He stood balanced amid the chaos. “This enormous Beast will ride these storm winds and reach Heaven.”

Rudo gritted his teeth. Guita didn’t move.

“Perhaps you expect me to pray to you? To chant a prayer in your name?” Zodyl leaned forward, his figure outlined against a light flickering like perpetual lightning. “With me, you will achieve your goal and bring your painful story to an end. The Cleaners have nothing to offer you.”

The man’s voice was confident. Harsh as a lover’s punch.

“Come on, Rudo… rid yourself of the filth around you.”

The Beast’s roar continued to grow in the distance.

Zodyl was not lying.

Oh… Foolish him. How could Rudo forget?

Regto had taught him that reality is relative.

Rudo let out a low, guttural growl, a sound charged with electricity. “You like to hear yourself talk. And what bothers you most is that I refuse to give you reason.”

He managed to hold onto the formation with both hands, levering himself up with his arms until he stood. His wings were tense, folded obediently against his back.

“But humans have always been like this: weak, selfish, reckless, foolish… yet kind, compassionate, curious, willing to sacrifice everything. As a species, they struggle to learn from mistakes, and yet they still survive to this day.” His voice scraped the air, each syllable crackling with static. “Zodyl Typhon…” His irises ignited into two turbulent red circles, ablaze with absolute comprehension. “You’ve forgotten that, like all mortal creatures who inhabit this world, dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

The six wings spread wide, extending in a threatening arc, while his horns flashed golden light like a pair of twisted beacons.

“And I, who witnessed the birth of the human species, will be there to see you merge with nothingness.”

Rudo sensed the change in Zodyl’s rhythm: the man’s eyes narrowed slightly, and though his body remained rigid, his breathing betrayed him. Rudo smelled his fear, tasted his terror, felt the suppressed panic of the man under that mask of calm on his own skin.

Rudo liked it.

“You say I cannot trust the Cleaners…” he growled. “But nothing you’ve done or said so far gives me reason to trust you.” Rudo closed his eyes for a moment, arranging his words in a language even the most primitive creature could understand. “Even today, the Cleaners fear me. Logical, isn’t it? I’m the monster lurking under the bed, in dark corners, in nightmares. And yet, even with all the trouble I’ve caused them… and what I surely will cause just by existing…” He raised his face, letting the glow of the light carve his silhouette. “…they accepted me as one of their own.”

Rudo felt a dull spark under his skin, a murmur of distant voices speaking in a tongue made of multiple dead languages layered atop one another.

The Watcher.

“The Cleaners welcomed me.” He ran his tongue along the edge of his fangs, savoring the metallic taste from biting them earlier. “They are my friends… the family I have chosen to protect.”

Zodyl growled.

“Then go to hell, idiot!” Rudo shouted, flipping him the middle finger.

“You speak of protecting them,” Zodyl let out a short, bitter laugh, almost a death rattle. “And where are they to protect you?”

At that very moment, the floor exploded.

Alright… Enjin is fine.

Or at least, that’s what he keeps repeating, taking deep breaths, even though each inhale burns his lungs as if he were sucking smoke straight from a car exhaust. The air smells of ozone, metal, and burnt trash, a mix that scratches his throat and leaves a disgusting taste on his tongue. He forces himself to stay in control, to not let his thoughts spiral. He needs to focus on the facts, organizing them in his mind like a shopping list, impersonal, without emotional weight, the report he’ll hand to Semiu in a couple of hours:

The Raiders escaped. The blonde woman electrocuting them almost bald. They were close to death for nearly passing through the cloud barrier. The opening in one of the Beast’s walls forming a vacuum tube. Rudo breaking Enjin’sh fingers to free himself and fly away. Guita cushioning the fall with her jinki. Reinforcements just arrived. Rudo is nowhere to be found. Zanka was the only one seriously injured. The Trash Beast reduced to a pile of smoking scrap and twisted metal pieces.

Enjin takes a few steps away from the group of Cleaners. Umbreaker is tucked under his coat. He looks at the sky for a moment. Rudo still hasn’t appeared.

The thought sticks like a splinter under his nails.

Enjin’s body is still numb from the electricity of the blonde woman’s last attack (who, luckily, was swallowed by the air current before she could finish them all off). His muscles twitch involuntarily, his mouth tastes thick and metallic with blood, and a high-pitched, persistent ringing fills his left ear. He can barely make out the screams and footsteps around him; everything sounds distant, muffled, as if underwater.

But otherwise, he’s fine.

At least, he’s still in one piece.

One more scrap.

Then the memory hits him full force, unannounced, and the helplessness steals his breath. He had stretched out his right hand, desperate, just a reflex, the instant he noticed what the boy was about to do. Rudo had looked toward the opening in the Beast’s wall (a crack opened by the projectile from his damned, shiny nail cannon), and something in his eyes gave him the premonition.

Enjin looks at his hand.

The hand he had tried to use to hold Rudo.

Shit.

The sight isn’t encouraging: joint tattoos ruined by torn skin, streaked with tiny metal shards, covered in a sticky mix of sweat, blood, and dust. The fingers, swollen and twisted at impossible angles, throb with every heartbeat. The pain is an animal breathing in his forearm. He tries to flex them, and a sharp burning shoots up to his elbow, making him curse under his breath. He guesses three of the five are broken.

Maybe…

Maybe Enjin isn’t entirely fine.

Because one thing is losing sight of a comrade, a friend, in the chaos, among flashes of energy, screams, and the trash and debris of the job. That can happen to anyone; it has happened to him before, too many times. But another, very different thing is having held his hand, small compared to his own, feeling the roughness of the leather, a gentle squeeze of understanding… and yet, the person -angel- at the other end chooses to let go of their own free will.

Fuck.

Air moves in and out of his lungs with difficulty. He lets out a long sigh, tired, defeated, the weight of silence pressing down on his shoulders. He’s stepped far enough away that no one can hear him thinking out loud, and it’s better that way, because if he’s honest with himself, he can no longer pretend that what tastes like bile in his throat, mixed with dust, smoke, and burnt electricity, is anything other than frustration.

Frustration at Rudo for leaving without looking back.

Frustration at himself for not being able to stop him.

And it’s stupid. Ridiculous to feel this way. Because the boy never hid what he wanted. He has been transparent, brutally honest, from the beginning. His desire to return to Heaven was there, etched in the way he would sneak up to the base roof at night and stare at the clouds for hours, in the way he drew constellation after constellation and was very selective about who he gifted them to, in the way he expressed himself, so reserved or open, when someone asked about his home.

Still…

The last image he has of him doesn’t fade: huge, red eyes burning, bright with that impossible mix of turbulent desire and blind hope. Just before breaking Enjin’s bones, he looked at him as if forgiving him, or as if he never had to. It was a small gesture, almost imperceptible, but enough to burn into memory. A spark of childish desire had softened Rudo’s face, and the sound his wings made as they unfolded (violent, tense, slicing the air) was like a butcher’s knife being sharpened with precision. Terrible and awe-inspiring at once.

Like a bird that, after too long under human care, shakes its feathers and rises without hesitation, Rudo didn’t falter. To him, that opening wasn’t a wound in the Trash Beast; it was a door. A way out toward the only thing he had wanted since falling: to exact his revenge, to destroy the world.

Fuck.

But Enjin wasn’t ready to let him go… he never was.

Fuck.

“Enjin?” Gris’s voice reached him from behind, carried by the wind and the creaking metal.

Enjin didn’t turn. He stood still, rigid, his heart pounding in his throat. He heard Gris’s footsteps approaching: the familiar sound of heavy boots sinking into the decomposed surface, the snap of glass and metal fragments under the soles. He said nothing, not even when the man stopped beside him.

A heavy, warm arm rested over his shoulders. The gesture, familiar and brief, was enough for Enjin to notice how cold his own skin had become from sweat.

“The others… told me what happened,” Gris murmured, not looking at him directly. His voice was lost for a moment amid the whistling wind. “How are you feeling?”

Horrible.

The word crossed his mind with the clarity of a blade, but he didn’t say it aloud. A knot formed in his throat that wouldn’t dissolve even by swallowing air. For a long minute, only the sound of creaking metal, the storm calming, and the distant echoes of the others filled the silence. Enjin felt that if he spoke, something inside him would break completely, and he wasn’t sure he could put himself back together afterward.

“Perfect,” he finally said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The gesture hurt; the corners of his mouth were tight and dry. He moistened his lips with his tongue, tasting dust and blood. “He got what he wanted, right? And we’ll finally return to our normal routine.”

Gris arched an eyebrow, unconvinced. He glanced at him sideways, with that tired look of someone who knows his partner lies too well.

Gris hummed thoughtfully. “Riyo and Zanka said something similar… but neither looked particularly happy.”

They remained silent. The wind blew through the metal remains of the Beast, eliciting snaps and moans from the twisted structures. For a moment, the entire landscape seemed to sigh with them.

Enjin exhaled slowly, and his body finally gave in. The muscles tense from adrenaline released suddenly, leaving him empty. He leaned slightly toward Gris, feeling exhaustion hit him all at once, like the brutal weight of an avalanche.

“I feel pathetic,” he murmured in a hoarse, barely audible voice. “And the worst part is I know exactly why.”

The words dissolved into the air, carried by the dust. A sense of emptiness gnawed at his insides, an invisible monster tearing him apart and spilling stomach acid; needles pierced beneath his skin, oozing ineffective soothing. His eyes burned. Smoke, he told himself. Just smoke.

Gris remained still, his arm still over Enjin’s shoulders. His breathing was deep and slow, as if weighing every word before releasing it.

“Mmmm…” he reflected, his tone grave, without judgment. “I don’t think it’s pathetic that you’ve grown attached to him.”

Enjin laughed. A short, broken, joyless laugh, almost a snort. “Attached, you say. As if he had been a puppy and not a damned monster ripped from nightmares.”

Gris tilted his head slightly, observing him in profile. “And does that change anything?”

“Of course it changes things,” Enjin growled. “He… he wasn’t even human. He was something that could have killed us at any moment. Look, he broke the bones in my hand to get me to let go. What kind of idiot gets attached to someone like that?”

“You,” Gris replied without hesitation. His voice wasn’t soft, but firm, steady, like a rock in the middle of a violent current. “You just said it, he wasn’t even human, and yet you decided to pick him up from where you found him. Because, deep down, beneath the horns, wings, fangs, and his shitty attitude, you saw a child who needed help.”

Enjin clicked his tongue, trying to suppress something he didn’t know whether it was anger or sadness. “A child capable of giving us headaches,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Gris conceded with a slight nod, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the mountains of trash stretched as far as the eye could see. “Now you call him a monster because you’re upset… but he’s still a child. A very scared child, who had no reason to believe any of your words, yet still trusted you.”

The words sank into Enjin’s chest with the icy edge of an ice pick. He felt the pressure behind his eyes, a burning heat threatening to spill over. He blinked several times, frowning, as if that could keep him together.

A knot formed in his throat. “I’m going to miss him,” he finally murmured, in a low voice, almost like confessing a crime. He didn’t dare look at Gris; his words came out broken, hanging in the air with the fragility of a spiderweb.

Gris glanced at him sideways, expression softened by old, shared fatigue. “Me too…” he said in a sigh. “In fact, I think all the Cleaners- Wow…”

Enjin straightened, exhaustion forgotten for a moment. His heart, which had just relaxed for the first time, began pounding again.

Rudo has worked hard, extremely hard, not to hurt the Cleaners… nor humans in general. He knows (because he witnessed the first hominids begin to walk upright, develop language, and barely survive the harsh demands of a constantly changing planet) that they are weak animals.

Easy to break.

Easy to frighten.

Easy to subdue.

And that is precisely why, every time he hurts them, even by accident, something inside him cracks. It hurts him as if his own wings were being torn… again.

That is why now he only wants to dig into his chest until he reaches the heart, the lungs, the stomach, and rip them out with his hands. Because this time was different. This time he did it on purpose.

He hurt Enjin.

And even though he repeats, over and over, that the bastard wouldn’t let go and he had to chase after the Master’s boots! the words aren’t enough to calm the voices screaming monster, monster, monster… demon… Surebrec… Perhaps if he were smarter, more rational, more… human, he would have thought of a less violent way to get out of that situation.

Where is the speech he spat at Zodyl about the Cleaners being family… strange word, he thinks, of ambiguous meaning, with different connotations across cultures and time… that he chose to protect.

Silver tears, dense, heavy as mercury, slide from the corners of his eyes, streak down his cheeks smudged with dirt, and dissolve into the wind. His grip on the boots is the only thing keeping him tethered to the present. Below him, an immense barrier of clouds stretches -like a gray, yellow, and green ocean, sick with pollution- a frontier he had long believed impassable. And above, there exists only an immeasurable void, a vault unlike any he knows, a horizon without sun or moon, only a vague, infinite brightness that seems to devour everything.

His soul screams in anger, despair, fear because there are no stars.

And there, suspended between up and down, between the mortal world and whatever that strange, unreachable ceiling is, he understands an unbearable truth: even now, with his wings spread and the wind caressing his feathers, returning to Heaven remains impossible.

Rudo lets out a low growl, biting his lip with his fangs, frustrated. Of course the Watcher, capricious bastard, wouldn’t make it easy.

His six wings unfold fully: vast, magnificent, white with blackened tips, dirty from the battle’s aftermath. Each feather carries traces of soot, ash, and dried golden and red blood. When he spreads them, the air vibrates around him as if the world itself recognizes, with fear or reverence, what he truly is. He glides through the currents with the innate grace of one born to dominate the sky, yet even so, the flight doesn’t ease the weight on his chest.

The thought of returning to the Cleaners, of looking Enjin in the eyes, churns his stomach. The memory of fragile calcium bones breaking, that dull, wet crack, scratches him like a cruel echo. He knows he’ll hear it even in sleep, woven between the beats of his heart, mixing with the unsettling dreams of his childhood.

He lazily turns a few times in the air. There is nothing as far as the eye can see: only the abyss above and below, a horizon without edges. His golden horns catch a light that doesn’t belong to any known star or visible satellite. It’s a cold, almost vaporous glow, bathing his face and transforming him into a soul suspended between two worlds, between birth and extinction.

For a moment, he feels he could end it all… stillness, tranquility, nothingness, and everything. But he doesn’t. Because something, tiny and stubborn, still tethers him to flesh, to pain, and to memory. He lowers his gaze to the boots pressed against his chest. He studies them carefully, almost tenderly. The emblem of three linked circles stands out clearly. The same symbol on his gloves. The same one he saw on the back of Zodyl’s coat.

“Watchman Series.” The words still sound strange on his tongue: rough, ancient, as if spoken an eternity ago. Painful, yet oddly comforting.

He wonders how Regto managed…

And there it is again, the murmur of the creator. An impossible polyphony: death and life intertwined, the sound of beginning and end, civilizations rising and falling. The voices of hundreds of dead languages merge into a single melody vibrating inside his head, a song Rudo doesn’t understand (his father would), but recognizes as important, essential, inevitable.

A vision passes before his eyes: a cycle of day and night contained in a single blink. First light. Then darkness. Then silence.

“Oh…” The sound slips from his lips, faint, incredulous.

Rudo has never prayed to the Watcher.

Perhaps he never will.

Unlike the other angels, Regto didn’t believe in prayers, and that Rudo learned, but now, with the revelation burning in his mind and the pulse of the universe vibrating under his skin, he can’t hold back. A simple, honest word escapes his throat. A word spoken in the painful language of angels, where every syllable is a flame that burns as much as it heals:

“Thank you”

The air vibrates around him, responding with a deep murmur that could be mistaken for the world itself sighing. And for the first time in a long while, Rudo feels something resembling peace.

A fragile, fleeting peace, but real.

Then he folds his wings. His body leans forward, chest sinking, and he begins the descent. A steep, sharp, direct dive, without fear. The air condenses around him, cutting and cold. The thick, viscous clouds envelope him briefly, as if trying to hold him back, but he passes through them with almost brutal ease. The pure white dissolves, and the world below emerges with a sour stench and (hard to admit) familiarity.

The Ground hits him like a blow. Dense. Harmful. The air tastes of iron and rot; his skin burns with every suspended particle. Yet that pain anchors him, brings him back to his body, to the weight of flesh and the gravity angels forgot centuries ago. His bones are platinum, his blood golden ichor, fire and plasma his essence, but at the end of eternity, when the last door closes, the last celebration ends, the last child laughs for the first time, all will return to the same starting point.

We are all pieces the Watcher plays with.

His eyes open, shining with a divine glow. He surveys the devastated terrain below: mountains of twisted metal, smoking cables, oil puddles reflecting light like reptilian blood. Everything is covered in a layer of dust and debris that the wind doesn’t bother to move.

And there, amid that dying landscape, the Trash Beast lies defeated, a mere pile of garbage. A titan reduced to ruins, its shell open, mechanical jaws turned to rubble. Rudo still feels the weight of its removed core, faintly beating in the pocket of his uniform, like a heart refusing to die.

He descends a bit more. The sound of his wings cuts the air like the edge of a scythe. Among the smoke and debris, he spots two human figures apart from the rest: tiny, frozen for a moment, as if witnessing a miracle. Ha, ha, ha. Enjin, leaning against Gris.

Enjin.

Rudo hovers a few meters above, watching. His wings beat slowly, almost cautiously, stirring a whirlwind of dust. A pang strikes his chest, pulling him toward them. But guilt… fear… the memory of Enjin’s fingers cracking under his strength hold him back.

Rudo closes his eyes and exhales.

“I’m going to kill you,” he hears Enjin say, hoarse, voice heavy with exhaustion.

Gris lets out a brief, incredulous laugh, breaking the tension like a stone in a pond. “Don’t believe him. A moment ago he almost cried because he thought you’d left without saying goodbye.”

Oh.

Oh.

Rudo’s heart jumps awkwardly, like a glass dagger buried to the hilt. He bites his lower lip so hard he tastes the metallic gold between his fangs. Shame coils in his chest like a newborn animal abandoned, curled against its mother, who lies dead from a hunter’s precise shot to the forehead.

His feet touch the ground at last.

And then exhaustion hits him like a hungry beast. He collapses before the men, knees sinking into the mud. His head hangs heavy, the horns pulling on his neck with a pain he feels he deserves. He can’t lift his gaze. Doesn’t dare. He only knows he made Enjin worry about him, and that feels wrong, undesirable. A mistake in the order of things.

What right does Rudo have to burst into his life, to disrupt his certainties, to drag him into existential doubts about the limits of humanity, into the fear of knowing oneself insignificant in the order of the world, into that irrational affection neither of them knows how to name?

The world blurs. He barely remembers what happens next. He only perceives movement, someone approaching. Strong arms surround him, lifting him with a gentleness that doesn’t match Enjin’s bravado. His face fits into the hollow between the man’s neck and shoulder; he smells cigarette smoke, tattoo ink, sweat, hot metal, and something he recognizes: concern and…

fear, but not the fear he’s used to inciting, rather one like what Regto felt when disappearing for a long time without warning.

His horns hit something by accident, he hears a curse muttered. His wings drag awkwardly and painfully on the ground, leaving a trail of dust and white fluff.

That is the least of his problems.

“Your hand…” he tries to protest. His voice comes out distorted, an electric, vibrating murmur, neither human nor pleasant. But he has no energy to correct it, nor to stop the tears threatening to fall.

Enjin clicks his tongue. “Nothing Eishia can’t fix,” he says lightly. But his breathing is labored, and the pulse in his neck beats strongly under Rudo’s cheek.

Rudo curls up, trying to disappear inside himself. His six wings fold over his body, no longer dragging, enveloping him, as if he could shield himself from the world, or from words.

“I’m sorry,” he growls, throat tight, voice barely a whisper. Gold rises to his cheeks, tinting them with a feverish glow.

For a moment, Enjin says nothing. He just holds him while walking with tense arms. Then he sighs.

“I know, idiot” if Enjin is bothered by the warm silver tears soaking his shirt, he doesn’t say so. “Rest.”

A rasping, sandpaper-like squeal escapes Rudo’s throat.

Enjin frowns, but his voice remains steady. “Words,” he asks.

Rudo blinks, dazed.

“It’s nothing,” he corrects himself with difficulty. From the corner of his eye, he sees Gris walking ahead, carrying Amo's boots with a distracted gesture, as if the scene were no more than another day at work.

“Anything you want to say…” Enjin pauses to adjust the boy’s weight in his arms, “…I’m sure it can wait until you recover. You did a great job.”

Enjin isn’t lying.

Rudo chooses to believe him.

Because in Enjin’s dry, tired, yet firm voice, there’s something that feels like certainty. He closes his eyes. Lets himself be carried. The rhythmic movement of the steps lulls him, and before he can resist, sleep takes over.