1440
Michael had seen plagues before. Hunger, rot, fever those were all familiar to him. This, however, was something else entirely.
He had come to the outskirts of Avignon, a walled city still scarred by old wars and uneasy faith, not because of rumors among mortals, but because of losses among his own. Fourteen werewolves. Dead. Not wounded, not weakened but just outright dead. Immortals, extinguished without warning. Although their immortal was only towards aging and added regeneration… for now at least.
That alone would have drawn him across half a continent.
The reports from the surviving wolves had only sharpened the urgency. Villages emptied overnight. Corpses with a black, viscous substance leaking from ears and mouths moving about. The stench of sulphur clinging to homes, to soil, to the air itself. His fallen wolves had been worse with patches of flesh burned as if from the inside out, eyes scorched to ruin, tar-like ichor seeping from every orifice as though their bodies had tried, and failed, to contain something molten.
Now he stood within the town itself. The first thing Michael noticed was the smell.
It crawled into the lungs. The smoke, rot, and something acrid beneath it, something that did not belong to the living world. A pyre burned in the square, bodies stacked carelessly atop one another, flames licking hungrily at human shapes already half-ruined. The crowd stood at a distance, faces drawn tight, hands clenched around rosaries and half-remembered prayers.
Michael watched the fire for a long moment before stepping closer, blending into the gathered villagers as though he belonged there.
He turned to a man beside him. The man looked thin, hollow-eyed, smelling of sweat and fear, "What is this about?" Michael asked calmly.
The man looked him up and down, eyes narrowing.
"Oh, you don't know, boy?" he said in a thick Provençal accent. "Then you must be new here." He nodded toward the pyre with a jerky motion of his chin.
"This," he said, voice low, "this is the Devil's work."
Michael raised an eyebrow and the man sighed, rubbing his face with trembling fingers. "They fell ill," he muttered. "But not like any sickness I've ever seen. It was as if something touched them. Marked them."
He leaned closer, lowering his voice further. "Demons, my boy. Touched by demons of the flame."
"Demons?" Michael echoed.
"Yes," the man insisted quickly, as though afraid the word itself might hear him. "Summoned, most likely. By hedge-speakers. Nature-calling women." His mouth twisted in disgust. "You know the kind."
'Witches?' Michael thought.
The man continued, words spilling faster now. "They went mad. Rabid. Tore into neighbors, kin, anyone near them. And that black filth, thick as pitch came pouring from their ears, their noses, their mouths… even their eyes."
Michael's gaze drifted back to the pyre as the man spoke.
"There's talk," the villager added hesitantly, "that more of these… things… are near the old manor outside the walls. On the eastern road. But no one's seen them. And no one's brave or foolish enough to go looking."
The flames shifted and Michael's eyes narrowed. Among the burning dead, he saw her.
One of his wolves, Her eyes were burned clean out of their sockets, dark hollows staring into nothing. Charred patches marred her skin in unnatural patterns, not the work of fire alone, but something deeper, something that had reached inward and scorched the soul itself.
Michael closed his eyes and the world dimmed.
He reached out not with magic as witches knew it, but with something else. The pyre flickered, and for the briefest moment, the flames flashed blue.
He felt it then, or rather he felt the absence.
No lingering souls. No echoes. No restless death clinging to flesh.
They were all gone, utterly consumed.
Only one being meddled with life and death so completely. Only one could burn a soul until nothing remained. Only one left sulphur in his wake and fire in his signature.
Michael opened his eyes.
The flames reflected in them. His presence sharpened, the air around him subtly warping as the heat pressed outward as though the world itself sensed what stood among it.
"Arcadius," he muttered with a blank expression.
He turned away from the pyre, his gaze lifted, locking onto the direction of the distant outskirts of the town and toward the old manor the villager whispered about.
Michael took a step towards it, then another and then he was moving, his form cutting through the streets with purpose, the weight of ancient wrath coiling quietly beneath his calm exterior as he headed toward whatever dared to wear Hell's scent on mortal soil.
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Present Day
The car slowed as the road narrowed, asphalt giving way to cracked concrete and weeds that clawed up from the edges like grasping fingers. Headlights washed over a huge abandoned house at the bend of the road, three stories tall with dark and hollow windows, its silhouette crooked against the night sky like a broken tooth.
The engine cut.
A boy and a girl climbed out laughing, their breath fogging in the cool night air.
"Okay," the girl said, folding her arms as she stared at the structure, "is this really a good idea? Why is there a creepy abandoned house just here?"
The boy grinned, trying too hard to look confident. "Relax. Benson said it's a great spot. No cops, no people, nothing."
"That's literally the problem," she muttered.
He stepped closer, cupped her face, and kissed her long enough to make her laugh despite herself. "See? Perfect."
They started toward the house.
A sound echoed from somewhere ahead. A low scrape of wood on stone.
She stopped suddenly as the sound rolled out. "Did you hear that?"
He glanced around. "Hear what?"
"That."
"It's nothing," he said quickly, leaning in to kiss her again.
Above them, barely visible against the roofline, a silhouette of a human shape standing impossibly still and watching the two.
Another sound came out sounding closer this time. The girl pulled back. "No, seriously, what was that?"
The boy frowned. "Probably a raccoon or something."
Then they saw movement near the corner of the house. A figure stepped partially into the moonlight. "What the fuck?" the boy blurted. "Hey! Who's there?"
No answer.
He swallowed and moved forward despite himself. "Hello?"
A low growl rolled out of the shadows.
The girl grabbed his arm. "Nelson Don't—"
"Hey, dude," he called, forcing a laugh as he edged closer. "You alright?" The figure stepped fully into view.
It was a middle-aged man, clothes stained dark and they noticed his posture looked wrong, too stiff, too slack at once. His head twitched slightly, like it was struggling to stay upright.
The girl exhaled shakily. "Babe, come back NOW!."
He turned his head. "It's okay. Just some—"
He then froze.
There on the roof of the huge housed was a second shape of another man, standing in the darkness above them, eyes glowing a deep, predatory red.
His blood ran cold, he spun back but the middle-aged man was gone. "W-what the hell—" he whispered, backing away.
Then out of nowhere something lunged at him. A blur of movement and a shriek tearing from the girl's throat as a shape slammed into him, knocking him to the ground.
Fingernails scraped at his chest, black sludge spilling from the man… no, this creature's ears and mouth as its face split into something inhuman.
Then, a hand punched clean through its chest and flames erupted instantly, white-hot and roaring, swallowing the thing whole. It screamed once a sound like burning metal before collapsing into ash and cinders at the feet of a tall man wreathed in fading fire.
The teenagers stared in shock at what just happened.
The new person looked like a teenager just like them. He looked down at them, calm as a summer afternoon. "Well?" he said mildly. "What are you waiting for?"
They didn't need a second invitation as Nelson screamed and ran to meet his girlfriend, tripping over once as he bolted back toward the car, tires screeching moments later as they fled into the night.
Michael watched them go, with a gentle expression. "Smart choice," he murmured.
He turned to the house fully.
The air around it was thick with death, corruption, infernal residue coiling inside like a nest of serpents. His eyes still glowed faintly as he stepped up to the front door.
He then proceeded to knock politely on the door.
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