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The altar to the God of Truth was exactly where Demetra said that it would be, but Kaius almost walked past it without notice.
He had been expecting something grandiose and opulent with towering columns, carved stone and shimmering gold; something that would unmistakably scream, we worship Gods here.
Instead, a single flat stone inside of a tiny wooden shrine sat at the edge of the treeline where the forest thinned and gave way to a natural clearing where he could finally see the sun again. It was covered in dried leaves from the dead wood and spongy moss had attached itself to the stone, as though the forest was attempting to reclaim it.
A few old offerings sat on its surface; dried flowers long since crumbled, a cup of something evaporated down to a dark residue, and a small carved figurine of red clay that rain and time had progressively worn down into an unintelligible form.
Kai pulled the branch out of his pack and ran his fingers along feather for one last moment. The pristine white feather caught what little light filtered through the canopy and threw it back in soft iridescent fragments.
His shoulder burned and his mind was still screaming at him to rest, and yet, he felt oddly serene when he touched it.
'Ok, I guess this is my life now. Angels and Demons and overly touchy Witches and Fates...figures.' His lips quirked up into a small grin and without another moment of hesitation, he snapped the branch.
The sound of the sharp snap lingered just half a second longer than it should have, resonating through the air like the ending chime of a clear bell.
And then - nothing.
Kai waited.
He turned his head from side to side checking the treeline in both directions, he even looked up into the sky, expecting to see some shadowy figure descending down from the bright sun that filtered into the clearing.
Still nothing.
'Did I do it wrong?' He looked back down at the broken branch and turned it around in his fingers. Was he meant to rip the feather in half? Break it three times?
He looked back at the altar and huffed in frustration, dropping to his knees and even checking inside of the tiny shrine as if the Angel might have shrunk himself down to appear innocuous, "Hello! Anyone there!" He called out.
"...hello."
Kai yelped and fell backwards, sprawled out on the grass, staring wide-eyed at the formless figurine in front of the stone with his mouth agape, "H-hello?"
'Did it just talk?' Why did he just hear a beautiful voice answering him?
He poked the figurine hesitantly when it didn't answer.
And then, suddenly, he heard it again.
"What are you doing?" A curious voice asked.
But this time, Kai could sense that it was not in fact coming from the altar at all, but somewhere from the trees above him.
He scrambled to his feet and looked up in the direction of the voice.
And then he promptly staggered back once more, and very nearly fell to the ground again.
For lounging casually on his front, along the length of a thick low hanging branch, was an honest to the Gods, Angel, staring straight at him with wide eyes of a clear ocean blue.
Kai felt his brain short circuit at the sight of him - Uriel.
The brief vision he had seen inside of the pool atop the mountain of Mirai had not provided adequate preparation for coming face to face with - this.
Even the way he was watching him, with calm and uncomplicated confusion, caused a rush of heat to course through his body.
It wasn't a cold, inhuman beauty like Katesch, where some sense of a hidden predatory nature simmered underneath the surface, Uriel was something else entirely.
His body was miraculously covered in plain human attire - for which Kai thanked the Gods, because he truly believed his heart might have given out if he was shirtless. But his face alone was enough to bring a city to ruin, with soft delicate features that should have appeared feminine if not for the perfect sharp angle of his jaw that should be outlawed on principle alone.
Even his hair, long and pale of a lighter blonde than Kai's, seemed to have been interspersed with strands of liquid gold as they caught the light.
And from the centre of his back, seemingly phasing through his clothing as though they should not even exist in the mortal plane of existence, were two gigantic wings, that encompassed the entire length of his body, draping down from the tree lazily.
The feathers that he thought were just a clear, pristine white, seemed to be giving off a phosphorescent shine of pale silver as they swayed under the sunlight.
The Angel scrunched his beautiful features up in evident puzzlement as he watched Kai's face switch through every shade of flustered pink, shifting his ocean eyes around the clearing and then back down to the young human man, "Where is Demetra? I don't know you." He enquired, in that same clear, beautiful voice that he had heard in his vision.
The voice that made him want to sink down onto his knees and weep.
Kai swallowed heavily and took a shuddering breath, 'Get it together Kaius. Words. Remember words? They're pretty useful.'
"K-Kaius. Kai. Err, that's - a name. My name! I'm Kai." He stuttered awkwardly, his ears red hot and his heart thumping erratically in his chest.
'...nailed it.' He groaned, internally.
Uriel blinked down at him and then tilted his head to the side, a single, perfectly wavy strand of pale blonde hair falling softly across his cheek in a way that made Kai's knees weak, "And...Demetra?"
Kai nodded a little too hard, wincing when it sent a jolt of pain through his neck and shoulder.
Yet thankfully, that lancing shock of white pain appeared to clear some of the dreamy haze away from his head and he was finally able to remember his own language once again, "Demetra showed me how to reach you. A Fate sent me here, her name is Katesch, and you're - Uriel?" He asked.
Uriel nodded and then his brow furrowed into an endearingly human expression that juxtaposed radically with his otherworldly perfection, "Whatever for? The Fates should know that we don't meddle in human affairs."
Kai rubbed the back of his neck, it was growing sore from staring up so far, and looking away from his face was certainly not an option, "Do you think you could come down from the tree? I can explain." He assured him.
There was a brief pause as the Angel seemed to consider his words.
Then a shifting of giant wings that sent two singular feathers floating down to the ground.
Before they could reach, Uriel had already landed in the middle of the clearing, with a soundlessness that made the hairs on the back of Kai's neck prickle.
He hadn't even seen him move.
One moment he had been lounging in the tree like that was simply the done thing for Angels, and the next he was standing in front of him, calmly.
Standing, he was taller than Kai by several inches, likely a little taller than Rameses too. He folded the wings behind him so that they draped along the ground with the habitual ease of someone adjusting a coat and regarded him, up and down the length of his body.
But it did not appear probing or uncomfortable, it was simply the eyes of someone who had found a strange curiosity out in the wild.
And then, he smiled.
Just a single, soft smile, like a friendly greeting you might give somebody that you pass in the street and vaguely recognise.
But Kai thought his heart might actually stop if his lips pulled up any further.
'Well, shit...I'm in trouble.'
He looked down at the ground and attempted to gather his thoughts for a moment when his heart raced so hard that he could hear it pounding in his ears.
He could lie, he supposed.
Stick to only the basic, bare minimum and imply that Katesch had shown him an unrelated vision, sent him on a random journey, and provide the Angel with no indication that he had already lived through his first life and met a highly premature and untimely death.
But then his gaze caught sight of the altar once more.
The God of Truth.
'...figures.'
If this was the altar that Uriel was tied to then the God he served was likely this one.
Kai was only assuming of course, he knew nothing of Angels, but it felt like a fair assumption that the God an Angel served would pass some of their power to that servant. And the God of Truth was a master of detecting lies.
And hadn't Kai just scorned Neave for this very thing? If he was going to so whole-heartedly declare his aversion towards deceit, then now was the time to follow his own convictions he supposed.
"I need your help." Kai sighed, lifting his eyes up again to meet his steady gaze, "I had an Artifact, this one." He pulled the thin chain out from underneath his shirt where it always hung, useless and dormant and held the pendant up for the Angel to see.
There was no reaction except for a nearly imperceptible widening of his eyes.
"It didn't seem to work for the fifteen years after I found it, but then, when I was fighting with a group of mercenary Demon Hunters on a planet called Asmarata, we were wiped out by a colossal Demon who burned down half the planet on its own. I was about to die, and then it just - worked. And now I'm back here again, fifteen years earlier, like a second chance, and Katesch said you could do something to help me this time around. Something that might...you know, not end in me being burned alive by a giant fucking Demon."
"Crap. Sorry for swearing." He flinched, dropping his hand down and waiting for the Angel to respond, still cringing at his own words. Maybe he should have added more detail, sugar coated it a little.
Uriel was quiet for one long moment, not in hesitation but seemingly lost in thought, the puzzled frown creeping back between his brows before he answered:
"Asmarata...did it have cloven feet and twelve fingers?" He held up a slender hand and wiggled his own fingers at Kai.
He narrowed his eyes, "...yes." He replied, his voice deathly quiet and filled with suspicion.
The Angel, cringed - outwardly, shamelessly, a sheepish lopsided grin appearing on his beautiful features, "Right...oops. Sorry about that."
Kai opened and closed his mouth for a moment, struggling once again to form a coherent thought, but this time for an entirely different reason, "Explain, please."
Uriel flinched restlessly in a strangely human manner, like a child that had just been caught in blurting out a bad word that he should not have said, and his wings quivered.
He shifted his gaze up to the treeline and away from Kai's suddenly cold, accusatory expression, "So, you see, the thing about that is...well, I thought you humans had wiped them out already. That's what the Artifacts were meant for. And, err...this Demon you met...he might have started out as one of us."
"One of - wait." Kai held up his hand, his head was pounding and the exhaustion from the past, however many days he had been here already, must have muddled his thoughts, because he absolutely did not just hear that an Angel had been turned into a Demon.
"Say that last part again. But - slower. Or maybe with more words, I don't know." He rubbed his head in frustration.
A part of him thought the Angel would decline to expand on what he had said, but bizarrely, as though he just couldn't help but answer truthfully to anything that was asked of him, he continued:
"Demons come from blighted life forms, you humans called it the Demon plague, correct?"
Kai nodded solemnly.
"Right. Well. Angels are life forms too. In the same way that the soul of an animal or a human can become corrupted and transform into what we refer to as Demons, so can an Angel's. It is extremely rare of course. But after it happened once, on Asmarata, the rest of us were pulled away from your plane and we were no longer permitted to interfere with human life." He explained, clearly, and with no room for doubt.
Kai couldn't even pretend that he had misheard when his beautiful, soothing voice carried across the clearing with such clarity.
From those first turbulent years when the Demon plague swept through the planets within their system, they understood that humans could be corrupted by the blight, their souls highly susceptible to its corruption. But Angels…
'I feel like this is information I was never meant to know.'
**