The Foundry Block was where Lyra had learned to survive. A labyrinth of defunct factory shells and abandoned processing plants near the Limbo Streets, it carried the perpetual scent of ozone and rusted metal the scent of forgotten industry. It was the only place she felt truly safe, a place where the city's tracking systems failed to penetrate the thick, lead-lined walls.
She hunkered down in her childhood hideout, a foreman's office she had rigged with a dozen layers of electromagnetic shielding. The panic from the Aegis Hand's pursuit was fading, replaced by the cool, analytical focus of the journalist.
She set up her external monitor, projecting the image of the silver-eyed man, the Saint onto the grimy, cracked wall. He was a shadow, a spectre of impossible power. She ran every database, every myth index, and every classified military record she possessed.
No match. No face. No traceable history.
He was a digital ghost. A perfect, impossible absence in the world's records.
"You don't exist," Lyra murmured, running a hand over the cold steel of the desk. "Which means you're either an experiment, or you're exactly what you look like."
She zoomed in on the silver eyes. The sheer, raw energy in the pixel data an anomaly was enough. She ran a deep-scan filter, searching for spiritual or divine traces, something only her custom-built software could detect.
The screen flickered. The program didn't find a trace; it found a word.
It wasn't a word she had consciously read, or heard, or spoken. It flashed onto the edge of her awareness like a scorching spiritual brand, a cluster of syllables too pure, too violent to exist in a mortal language.
AZAEL.
The moment the silent name, the Unspoken Name registered in her mind, a shockwave of memory hit her, harder and faster than anything she'd felt before. She gripped the desk, her knuckles white.
She was no longer Lyra Cross in the Foundry Block. She was a woman in a linen dress, her hand gripping the edge of a well-worn leather-bound book, her eyes wide with terror and devotion as she looked up at the terrifying, winged figure who filled the doorway. His silver eyes met hers, and his presence was the axis upon which her entire world turned.
She heard a whisper in the past-life memory: "Azael... my love. They are coming for you."
A guttural, painful sound escaped her throat, and she snapped back to the present, gasping for breath. Her head throbbed. The screen had gone dark.
"Don't speak that name."
The voice was low, resonant, and right behind her.
Lyra spun around, her investigative instinct immediately overshadowed by the terrifying, familiar recognition. The Saint stood framed in the doorway, his silhouette blocking the meagre light of the Foundry Block. He was clean of the street grime now, but the faint, shimmering light of his eyes was still there. He was magnificent and terrible, a wound wearing a man's skin.
"How did you find me?" she demanded, grabbing the nearest thing a heavy, specialised data pad to use as a weapon.
"You shine," the Saint said, taking a slow, painful step toward her. His arms were bare, and she could see the sacred marks across his skin pulsing faintly beneath the scarred, burned tissue. "Your soul is a beacon. The Aegis Hand lost you, but I felt the heat of the Fragment the moment you spoke the name."
"Azael," Lyra tested the word again, the syllables feeling like blasphemy on her tongue. It was a compulsion, a challenge. "It means 'Whom God Strengthens.' You are a Fallen Angel. Heaven's Executioner."
He flinched, not from anger, but from a deeper, internal pain. The faint crack in his core seemed to resonate with the sound of his name.
"Stop," he ordered, his voice laced with the dying fragments of the Voice of Command. "Run, Lyra. Leave the city. Forget the relic, forget the names, forget me."
His silver eyes locked onto hers, burning with an intense, desperate plea. This was the Resistance he had promised himself the need to push her away, to save her by distance.
Lyra lowered the data pad, the investigative urge taking over the fear. "No. I spent two hours running for my life because your former colleagues want to put me in a cage. You are the only link to the fire in my dreams, and I don't run from the truth. Tell me why you let me burn."
"I failed," he said, the admission a brutal, raw sound. "I failed, and centuries ago, they erased me. Now, you are reborn, carrying a power that Heaven and Hell will tear this world apart to possess. You are not safe with me. I crack every time I kill. I cannot protect you forever."
"Then let me understand the fight!"
A sound, piercing and high-pitched, cut through the dense silence of the Foundry Block. It was a metallic shriek, like a hundred predatory birds tearing through the upper atmosphere. It wasn't the heavy footfalls of the Aegis Hand; this was faster, more aggressive, and had multiple targets.
"Too late," the Saint growled, his silver eyes narrowing. "Seraphiel sent the Flight of Vultures."
The air outside the window began to vibrate, and the building's old, reinforced windows rattled violently. Lyra recognised the sound: high-speed pursuit vehicles favoured by Seraphiel's more aggressive forces, augmented mortals designed for rapid extraction. They had found the trail left by the Aegis Hand.
The Saint moved with blinding speed. He closed the remaining distance between them, not to strike, but to shield her.
His hand clamped around her arm, pulling her against the cold, rock-hard plane of his chest. It was the first physical contact since the awakening, and it was a shock of mutual combustion.
A sharp, divine flame cold yet searing exploded between them. It wasn't gentle; it was violent: a sacrificial fusion of their two souls. The pain was exquisite. Lyra felt a terrifying pulse travel from his skin to hers, the heat momentarily eclipsing her fear of the incoming attackers.
In that instant of contact, the recognition deepened into an unshakable certainty. She remembered the warmth of his touch from a past life the feel of his celestial body against her mortal one. The love they shared was not sweet; it was a defiant, painful thing that broke the laws of existence.
The Saint let out a soft, tortured gasp, the effort of containing the energy of that contact making his divine core scream in protest. He had touched her. He had broken his promise of distance.
"Down!" he commanded, finally using enough force to push her violently to the floor.
A fraction of a second later, the reinforced window exploded inward, shattering not from bullets, but from sanctified, crystalline nets designed to capture, not kill. The nets hissed, seeking Lyra's unique energy signature.
The Saint was already moving, his back to her, creating a solid wall between Lyra and the incoming attack. He didn't use his flames; he used pure, physical evasion, his speed making the nets appear to move in slow motion as they shredded the air where he had just stood.
"The conduits are active! We have containment protocols on a high-value target!" a voice shouted from outside, amplified by a loudspeaker.
"Go to the secondary outflow shaft!" the Saint snapped, dragging her toward a disguised utility access door. "You know the way!"
Lyra scrambled to her feet, her body still vibrating from the shock of their contact. She felt utterly terrified, yet completely safe, sheltered by the magnificent, terrible fury of the man who had lost everything for her.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, realising he wasn't following her.
"I draw the fire," he said, turning and facing the shattered window. His silver eyes were burning brighter than the city's neon signs. "I am the monster they hunt. You are the reason they hunt."
He looked at her one last time, the sheer, sacrificial love in his eyes making her breath catch. "Do not speak the name Azael again. It kills me, Lyra. But I swear, by the grave of the God I betrayed, I will find you again."
He raised his hands a gesture that promised divine wrath and the last thing Lyra saw before plunging into the cold, dark ventilation shaft was the Executioner standing alone against a wave of Seraphiel's Vultures, the promise of spectacular, lethal violence hanging in the air.
The tension is now incredibly high! Lyra has a destination, Azael has a fight, and the core mystery is solved.