The Saint or Azael, as the word tasted like poison in his mind stood on the crumbling floor of the foreman's office, the shattered window framing the metallic shriek of Seraphiel's Flight of Vultures. He was weaponless, weakened, and draining the energy he could not afford to lose.
But Lyra was gone. That was the victory.
The first hunter, a fast-moving, cable-equipped mortal, breached the gap. The Saint didn't hesitate. He was an archangel forged for war, and even without his blade, his body was a perfect instrument of death.
He met the hunter's charge not with divine fire, but with the brutal, precise physics of a being who understood gravity, mass, and velocity absolutely. He sidestepped the projectile grapple, allowing the hunter's own momentum to carry him past. As the hunter's shoulder passed, the Saint slammed his palm not with force, but with a momentary pressure-wave from his contained core into the hunter's helmet.
The blow didn't shatter the armour, but it instantly scrambled the augmented nervous system within. The Aegis Hunter spasmed, his weapon clattering, before he crashed into the far wall.
The others were smarter. Three more hunters, encased in lighter, faster suits, entered from different angles, firing focused energy pulses designed to immobilise.
Too slow, the Saint judged.
He dropped, rolling serpentine across the debris-strewn floor. The pulses struck the wall where he had stood, melting the rebar. He kicked off the floor, using the remaining tension in his body to launch himself at the closest hunter.
He was in their face before they could adjust their targeting. They fought with modern martial precision; the Saint fought with the timeless certainty of a sword stroke. He avoided the killing strike, aiming for the joints, the control systems, the weaknesses of the mortal chassis.
He twisted one hunter's arm, not breaking the bone, but hyper-extending the suit's hydraulic joint until the augmented muscle screamed. The hunter dropped, howling into his comms.
A second hunter moved to flank him, but the Saint spun, intercepting the man's punch on his forearm. The celestial marks beneath the burned skin flared absorbing the kinetic energy. He slammed his elbow into the hunter's chest plate. The strike was non-lethal, but the force of a compressed archangel's punch was enough to crack the power core of the hunter's armour, rendering him helpless.
The third hunter the leader, judging by his slightly more ornate mask kept his distance, tracking the Saint's rapid movements. He was raising a rifle, sanctified against spiritual targets, aimed not at his head, but at his divine core.
A flash of absolute, murderous Rage ignited in the Saint's gut. Burn them. Purify them all.
His silver eyes pulsed, and the air thickened, ready to draw on the residual sin of the hunters and unleash the Judgment Flames. The flame was the easy way out a swift, perfect annihilation of the threat.
If I use it, I crack the core, I lose Regenesis. No Regenesis, no following Lyra.
The memory of her touch the painful, electric fusion of their contact slammed into his mind, eclipsing the bloodlust. The killer retreated. The Executioner lowered his weapon. The Saint remained, breathing heavily, forcing his silver eyes to dim. He fought for her, and that meant he had to live.
He threw the stunned, first hunter as a shield just as the leader fired. The blast struck the incapacitated hunter's armour, causing a powerful short-circuit that disabled the last attacker.
Silence fell, punctuated only by the sizzle of scorched metal and the hiss of escaping steam. Three hunters neutralised, none killed. The divine core throbbed, aching from the sheer effort of restraint. The cost of non-lethal combat was higher than a clean kill.
"Unjustly," the Saint whispered, tasting the irony. He couldn't kill these mortals unjustly. But the fate of the woman he loved depended on him keeping his murderous instincts locked away.
He knelt by the third, armoured hunter, and ripped the comms unit from his collar.
Static.
The hunter was feeding raw data back to the Cathedra.
Their priority is the Fragment. Their priority is capture.
But why the full sweep? Seraphiel knew the Hilt of Sanctus his sealed weapon was now in the hands of the smugglers Lyra was tracking. The hilt was a beacon. It was his anchor to the mortal world. If they secured it, the Saint would be truly powerless, a ghost without a focus point.
Lyra was only interested in the hilt because it led her here. She must have left it.
He accessed the brief burst of data from the downed Aegis Hand's comms a residual GPS tag. The Hilt of Sanctus had been moved. It wasn't far from the original warehouse. It was being prepared for transfer to the Cathedral's main vault near the Cathedral District Perimeter.
That meant Lyra, driven by her journalistic compulsion, was likely moving toward the same perimeter, trying to find answers about the Aegis Hand's disappearance. She was walking into the mouth of the viper.
The Saint stood, the adrenaline draining away, leaving him cold and desperately weak. He had minutes before the next wave arrived.
He walked to the load-bearing wall, the last structural support of the office. He pressed his palm against the old, cracked concrete. He didn't use the Judgment Flames. He poured every ounce of available, ambient celestial energy, the energy he had just preserved into the pressure point. He focused it all into a single, massive, directed burst of concussive power.
The concrete didn't melt; it simply pulverised, instantly collapsing the entire wing of the Foundry Block into a choking cloud of dust and debris.
The boom echoed across the Shattered City, a sound of destruction that momentarily masked the noise of the incoming Vultures. He had bought himself maybe ten minutes of chaos and confusion.
He had to move. He had to reclaim his weapon. He had to become the monster again, not to serve Heaven, but to serve the single, sacred vow he had made to the woman who now carried the key to his damnation.
He looked at the cloud of dust where Lyra had vanished. Keep running, Lyra. I'll meet you on the other side of the fire.
He turned, the silver in his eyes dim but steady, and began to stalk toward the Cathedra District Perimeter where his sealed blade waited, and where Lyra was unknowingly heading into the greatest danger.