The receptacle drifted in a heavy silence, suspended between two worlds. Kael's blood glowed within it with an unbearable brilliance, a blend of golden light and abyssal shadow, each drop seeming to carry within it a whispered warning.
Azrael raised his hand. Death, so close, needed no words to manifest.
Then a sharp, unexpected snap cleaved the silence of the sanctuary.
A silhouette materialized between him and the receptacle, snatching it before Azrael's gesture could even reach it. He moved with the nonchalance of someone who had never needed to hurry, as if time itself waited patiently for him to finish his sentences.
"Very rude, Azrael. To destroy such a pretty gift, when I have only just arrived."
His presence slightly warped the space around him, not through violence, but through a simple incompatibility with the laws that governed everything else. Deep, almost vegetal green hair framed a face of peaceful, almost bored beauty. His lavender eyes swept over the scene—the ruins, Malakiel's body dissolving into dust, Azrael himself—with the curiosity of a collector examining a piece he hadn't seen before.
Beelzebub.
"I didn't think I would see you again," Azrael said, his voice betraying neither surprise nor fear.
"You say that every time," the demon replied with a faint, almost tender smile. "And yet, here we are. It's almost touching, this regularity."
He twirled the receptacle between his fingers, examining Kael's blood the way one examines a rare wine.
"You are only at twenty percent of your capacity, you know. I can feel it from here—that fissure in your essence, this body too small to contain you. Eliminating you would almost be a lack of respect toward what you truly represent."
"Then why don't you do it?" Azrael asked.
"Because it would be disappointing. One does not break a chrysalis just because they can."
He slipped the receptacle against his chest, where it vanished beneath the folds of his clothing, as if it had never existed.
"Besides, I need it. This blood—this sacrificial essence—is the only key left to open what must be opened. It would be a waste to leave it lying around here, coagulating in the rubble, when so many of my own are still waiting, sealed, in the Abyss."
Azrael tensed imperceptibly.
"You will not leave with it."
"You are in a poor position to negotiate," Beelzebub replied, amused, gesturing with his chin at the exhausted body housing him. "Twenty percent, Azrael. Twenty. And I am in a generous mood today, which will not last."
It was at that moment that a voice echoed from the still-torn sky of the sanctuary, heavy and steady like a judgment that needs no repeating.
"Beelzebub."
Barachiel appeared, his wings spread wide, lightning softly crackling along his arms. Behind him, a score of archangels materialized in formation, their auras overlapping into a wall of silent light.
Beelzebub looked up at him with renewed, almost playful interest.
"Barachiel. Well, well. It seems Heaven has finally woken up. And with a full squadron, no less."
He swept his gaze over the lined-up archangels, then turned back to Barachiel with a smirk.
"Do you really need this many people to face me?"
Barachiel didn't answer immediately. With a brief wave of his hand, he signaled the squadron, and the archangels immediately scattered into the ruins, without a word, to bring aid to the survivors still trapped beneath the rubble.
"No," he finally said, once silence had returned between the two of them. "I am more than enough."
A few days earlier, in the hanging gardens of Eden, Barachiel had asked Michael the same question, almost word for word—except that time, it had been out of annoyance, not provocation.
"Why me?" he had asked, arms crossed, his gaze hard. "Send Raguel with a real contingent. Or ask the Exarch of the Cherubim to send his own, if this is serious. I have to deal with two generals and an overexcited Nightmare while you just stand here with your arms crossed?"
Michael hadn't reacted to his tone. He had continued to observe the horizon of Eden, hands behind his back, as if weighing every word before letting it out.
"The barrier that held back Raguel and his squad before I forced the passage myself was not the work of a mere Scourge," he had finally said. "A seal of that magnitude, capable of blocking an entire region against celestial intervention... that bears the signature of an Anathema. And not a minor one."
"Beelzebub," Barachiel had guessed.
"That is what I fear, yes."
"Then why don't you go yourself?" Barachiel had insisted, almost angry this time. "You could handle him, whereas I won't be able to fight with those kids around. Why send me, with Liah and Seven barely out of training, against something like that?"
Michael had finally turned toward him, and for the first time in the conversation, something akin to a heavy weight had crossed his golden gaze.
"Because the Emperor entrusted me with a mission. It awaits me at the Sepulcher of the Watchers, where the ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ sleep. I cannot ignore it, Barachiel. Not even for Eryndor."
Barachiel hadn't needed to know more. The mere name of the place, the simple admission that a mission from the Emperor took precedence over the crisis in Eryndor, was enough to gauge the magnitude of what was playing out elsewhere, far from everyone's eyes.
"Then I'll go," he had said, his anger subsiding as quickly as it had flared.
"Be careful with Beelzebub," Michael had added, already turned back toward his own horizon. "He is stronger than before. Much stronger. Do not underestimate him just because he prefers talking over striking."
Barachiel hadn't forgotten those words, and now, facing Beelzebub's tranquil smile amidst the ruins of Eryndor, they still resonated within him like a warning he hadn't had the time to truly digest.
"How is Baal?" Barachiel asked, almost absently, to test the waters.
Beelzebub let out a short laugh, genuinely amused this time.
"Still as rigid as ever. He says hello, by the way—well, in a manner of speaking. He still thinks you should be ashamed of the incident during the First War."
"The storm was not directed at my own camp," Barachiel defended himself, a flash of very real annoyance in his voice this time.
"That's what you've been repeating for centuries, and yet no one has ever believed you," Beelzebub replied, delighted to needle him. "Well, then."
His gaze slipped to his chest, where the receptacle rested, invisible beneath his clothes.
"I have what I came for. Fighting today, over a scattered squadron and a Seraph—forgive me, a Primordial Archangel—reduced to twenty percent of his true self, would be a poor calculation. Even for me."
"You are not leaving with the receptacle," Barachiel repeated, his spear appearing in his hand in a crackle of pure electricity.
The weapon was long, tapered, forged from a blue-white metal that always seemed on the verge of melting into pure light—one of the rare divine weapons ever entrusted directly by God to one of His children. Vindex Caeli. The Avenger of Heaven. All along its length ran ancient engravings that illuminated to the rhythm of its wielder's heartbeat.
Beelzebub observed the weapon with genuine admiration, almost misplaced in such a moment.
"Still as beautiful as ever, that one. But no, Barachiel. I am leaving with it."
He took a step back, the space around him already folding to swallow him.
"Too many dead for too little gain, today. I prefer to keep my curiosity intact rather than satisfy it too quickly. It would be a shame to burn through the story before its best chapter."
He turned toward Azrael one last time, his smile widening.
"We will meet again. I look forward to seeing what this boy will become, once he is done carrying you like a burden."
Then he vanished, as silently as he had appeared, taking with him the key to an Abyss that no one, that night, had the strength left to keep from opening someday.
Barachiel remained motionless for a long moment, his spear still in hand, his gaze fixed on the empty space where the demon had stood.
"Shit," he finally breathed.
Azrael leaned into the body he still occupied, observing it for a moment with something that resembled weariness. Then, he gently returned this body to the one it truly belonged to.
Seven collapsed, swept away by the accumulated fatigue and pain of an entire battle he would never remember having lived.