The chains sang before I saw him.
A low, metallic whisper rippled through the sanctum corridor—slow, deliberate, the rhythm of something ancient that refused to be broken. The air was cold enough to bite, and each echo seemed to crawl along my skin. Two guards flanked me, eyes fixed straight ahead, their grips white on their spears. Even they wouldn't look into the shadows ahead.
The scent of iron and incense clashed, smoke curling up from silver braziers etched with prayers. Holiness here had a weight—it pressed on your lungs, on your heart. It reminded you that mercy was conditional.
They said the fallen didn't breathe. That they were made of ash and silence.
But when the cell doors creaked open, the first sound I heard wasn't silence—it was a breath. Ragged. Human. Defiant.
"Step forward, Seer Veyne," said High Seraph Malachor, his voice smooth as glass. "You asked for truth. Here it stands."
I stepped closer. The darkness parted just enough for light to catch on the chains.
He knelt at the center of the sanctum, wrists bound, head bowed. The sigils carved into the marble floor pulsed faintly beneath him, sealing his body within a ring of divine wards. But what struck me first wasn't the bindings. It was the stillness.
He wasn't pleading. He wasn't broken. He was waiting.
Kael Draven.
I knew the name—every student of the Citadel did. The Wounded Seraph. The Oathbreaker. The one who turned his blade against the Thrones. The one who led angels to their deaths in rebellion. They called him the first sinner, the unrepentant flame.
Yet standing before him, I didn't see ruin.
I saw power restrained.
He lifted his head slowly, and the light caught on his face. His eyes were grey—storm-grey—and something inside them shifted when they met mine, like lightning behind smoke. His skin was too pale, marked faintly with sigil scars that pulsed when he moved. His wings—once divine—hung in ruin. Blackened feathers clung to scorched bone, what little remained of them brushing the floor in silence.
"This," Malachor said, his smile too calm, "is your penance."
My stomach tightened. "My—penance?"
"You've walked too close to the shadow of knowledge, Seer. You crave what is forbidden. Let this creature remind you where curiosity leads."
The sanctum went quiet. The priests behind him shifted uncomfortably. I felt my pulse quicken.
"You will guard him," Malachor said. "Feed him. Watch him. Until the day of his trial."
I turned sharply toward him. "That's not a Seer's duty."
He smiled thinly. "It is now."
The guards released me with a shove. I stumbled forward, catching myself just before I crossed the ward line drawn on the marble. Kael's eyes flickered toward me again. I could feel his presence—not heat, not cold, something other.
When the sanctum emptied, I was left alone with him.
The silence between us was a living thing.
"You don't believe in their Light anymore," he said. His voice was low—rough, as though unused for centuries—but laced with something I couldn't name.
I straightened my shoulders. "You assume too much."
"I see it in your eyes." His chains clinked softly as he shifted. "The doubt. The hunger."
"You don't know me."
He tilted his head slightly, and for a second the faintest curve touched his mouth—not quite a smile. "You wear faith like armor. But armor cracks, little Seer."
I turned toward the door, every nerve screaming to leave. But his words rooted me in place.
"They'll break you," he murmured. "They break everyone who sees too much."
I forced my feet to move. "Then perhaps I'll be the exception."
As I reached the threshold, his voice followed, quieter now.
"I once said that, too."
Morning came pale and restless. The Citadel's bells tolled long before dawn, and whispers spread faster than incense smoke.
A Seer bound to a fallen—it was the kind of story the devout would hide from their children.
By midday, I'd been assigned my first task: take sustenance to the prisoner, observe, and report. Officially, I was to ensure his containment. In truth, I was being watched as closely as he was.
When I descended into the west spire's old chapel, the air changed. The place had been abandoned since the last purge—its walls still stained with soot where heretics once burned. Candles flickered in brass holders, throwing long shadows across the floor.
He was there, waiting.
This time, no guards stood by the door. Just Kael and the sound of slow, rhythmic breathing.
"You came back," he said.
"I was ordered."
"And if you weren't?"
I hesitated longer than I meant to. "Then I wouldn't have."
He laughed softly—no mirth in it. "Liar."
I set the tray on the stone before him. "Bread. Water."
He looked down at it, then back up at me. "The Light's generosity astounds me."
"I didn't come to feed you."
"No," he said, voice low, almost a whisper. "You came to see the monster they warned you about."
My pulse jumped. "You think too highly of yourself."
"Do I?" He leaned forward just enough for the candlelight to catch the faint scar that crossed his throat. "I can feel your curiosity from here."
"You imagine things," I said, turning to leave.
"Do I imagine the shadows behind your eyes, too?"
I froze. He couldn't know about the visions—those fractured flashes of wings, blood, and fire that haunted my dreams since childhood. The ones I'd spent years praying away.
"Stop talking," I said quietly.
He smiled faintly. "You see them, don't you? The Thrones, the ones above all others. You've seen what they really are."
My voice shook. "You don't know what I've seen."
His chains rattled softly, and then, quieter: "They'll tell you I fell for pride. But it wasn't pride that made me defy them."
I turned, drawn in despite myself. "Then what was it?"
His gaze found mine—steady, unflinching. "Love."
For a heartbeat, the candle flames flickered wildly, as if the word itself unsettled the air.
I couldn't speak.
Kael's expression softened—something human ghosting across it, gone as quickly as it came. "Heaven forgives many sins," he said, almost to himself. "But not that one."
I left before I could ask what he meant.
Outside, the cold wind carried the faint sound of the Citadel bells again—measured, solemn, beautiful. I looked up at the towering spires that pierced the dawn sky and felt, for the first time, how small I truly was beneath their shadow.
And beneath it all, something inside me whispered—soft and treacherous:
What if he's right?