"Uriel was supposed to help unseal my Grace, but in her attempts to impress those two, she went too far with her seals. Now she is stuck in the mortal realms with no way out. At this rate, things will be complicated and delayed," Raphael said quietly, his voice a thread of sound almost lost to the stillness around them.
The words lingered in the air like the final toll of a distant bell. Neither Luca nor Michael moved at first. Their eyes found the ground, the birds in the sky, anywhere but each other. It was not the weight of Raphael's news that kept them silent, it was the fact that every syllable was a mirror they didn't want to look into.
The words hung in the air like a cold mist that no one dared to breathe.
It was unknown how Raphael knew Uriel's situation. His Grace had been sealed long before she had chosen her path, before she'd even begun chasing after her so-called elder brothers. And yet his statement rang with the kind of certainty that could not be reasoned with.
Michael swallowed hard, the old ache in his chest awakening Mike and Luca both continuing to stare off into the distance in opposite directions once, as if the very mention of her name scraped against old wounds. Neither wanted to meet the other's eyes, not out of guilt, not exactly, but out of an unspoken truth that lay between them: they had failed her.
Uriel had wanted so much to be like Mike and Lucifer. In the golden days before the Fall, she would follow them everywhere, a quiet shadow one day, a fearless challenger the next. Her laughter had rung through the marble halls of the Second Heaven, light and sharp as crystal bells. She copied their sword forms, mimicked their stances in council, even learned the way Mike narrowed his eyes when something displeased him. It had been endearing at first, though both brothers had been too preoccupied to notice just how much she sought their approval.
Mike remembered those days with a mixture of fondness and regret
The training fields of the Fourth Heaven shimmered in the light of a thousand blades. Michael had been running drills with Gabriel, their swords clashing in bursts of flame and light. And then, there she was. Uriel, barely taller than her own blade, charging in without invitation.
"Gabriel!" she'd shouted, pointing the tip of her sword at him. "I challenge you!"
Gabriel's eyebrow had lifted, the faintest smile tugging his mouth. "Do you, little sister, didn't we do this already yesterday?"
"I'm not little!" she snapped. Then she had looked sidelong at Michael, eyes practically begging him to watch. To approve.
Michael had only shaken his head. "Uriel, this isn't the time…"
But she was already moving, lunging forward, her footwork sloppy but fast. The fight had lasted less than a minute. Gabriel had disarmed her with a twist of his wrist, the sword clattering to the ground.
She'd scrambled to her feet, cheeks flushed with the humiliation of defeat, but when Michael's attention returned to Gabriel, he didn't notice the way her smile dimmed. Not then.
Raphael was still speaking now, but his words were like a hum behind Michael's memories. Luca stood, arms crossed, his face unreadable but his eyes distant. 'Why can't this heretic choose his words, there is too much pain already and you decide to open old wounds? Damn you, maybe we should let you die of old age, 'Luca cursed in his mind not sparing Mike a glance
As Luca cursed silently, memories long repressed surfaced in Mike's head and heart
Michael had never seen her run so fast. Bare feet against the marble floors, her hair unbound, the golden strands whipping behind her like a comet's tail.
"Michael!" she'd called, skidding to a halt outside his chambers. She didn't even knock before bursting in.
Her eyes were wild, brimming with tears she didn't bother to hide. "You have to stop them. You have to free him. Please, Michael, you have to."
"Urie…"
"They can't take him away," she choked, clutching at his sleeve. "Not Lucifer. Not my brother."
It was the desperation in her voice that undid him. The girl who had always carried herself with the fire of a hundred suns was suddenly so small, so fragile, trembling in the dark.
He'd agreed before he could think. Of course he had. Because saying no would have meant watching her break apart in front of him. And he wasn't ready for that.
When Raphael fell silent, the quiet between the four of them thickened until it was almost unbearable. Michael finally looked at Luca.
"She hasn't been the same since you…" He stopped himself, the words catching. Since you fell. Since they tore you away.
Luca's gaze flicked toward him, but only for a heartbeat. "I know."
"You don't." Michael's tone was sharper than intended, but the grief beneath it bled through. "You didn't see her after. Not really. She stopped fighting Gabriel. Stopped laughing. She didn't even walk the same way. It was like… someone had drained the living Grace out of her."
Luca closed his eyes. And for once, the mask slipped.
They had been in the Seventh Heaven, gathering for one of the rare feasts. Uriel had sat between Mike and Gab, her hands resting on the table as she listened to the hum of voices around her. She had leaned toward Michael to whisper a joke about one of the younger sentinels, her grin wide, her laughter soft.
And then Lucifer had walked in.
Her entire face had lit up. It was the kind of joy that could make the stars themselves jealous. She had started to rise, to greet him…
And then the heralds had arrived. The air had turned cold.
When the sentence was read, when the binding chains of light wrapped around him, Michael had looked to her first.
She wasn't smiling anymore.
"She begged me to help you," Michael murmured, his voice fraying. "And I couldn't. Not really. Not in the way she wanted."
"She chose her path, and I had chosen mine, I hoped she would break for a while but bounce back eventually, which she did" Luca said, but it lacked conviction.
"No," Michael replied. "She chose you. And when she lost you, she lost herself."
Neither of them spoke after that. Simon watched in silence half listening to Raphael and half looking if in the far distance, he could see her...
Somewhere far below, the mortal world stretched endlessly, where Uriel now wandered, trapped by her own mistake.
Michael wondered if she hated them now. Or worse, if she didn't feel anything at all.