Centuries ago, Avin was sent to Earth to help humanity survive and thrive, despite the demons who also walked its surface.
Unfortunately, Avin was not prepared for the "demons" among mankind, humans, yes, but with a natural darkness of their own.
One such human rallied many others together, beating Avin into submission and chaining him far below ground in a sealed tomb.
Time had been lost to him.
After so long, the slow growth of mildew was his only proof that time still existed at all. The scent of dust and damp was the only thing he could remember smelling anymore. The sight of these four walls consumed both his waking and dreaming nightmares.
The cold, heavy chains around him still sent shivers down his spine when he moved, to this day.
Some things never change.
With a start, he realized he heard footsteps somewhere in the dark halls outside his cell.
No one had been down here for an eon, and the ones who had left him had not been the best examples of his Father's creations.
He knew this couldn't be good, the knowledge sinking into his gut like a piece of dry ice.
The footsteps were slow, intermittent, and Avin realized two things in rapid succession.
One, it was a woman coming.
Two, she was exploring.
The metallic scraping of the chains echoed against the damp stone walls as Avin shifted his weight. For centuries, the only rhythm he knew was the steady drip of water somewhere in the distance and the suffocating silence of his own thoughts.
Now, that silence was being methodically dismantled by the uneven cadence of boots on stone.
He pressed his back against the cold, mossy wall, his tattered wings twitching beneath the heavy iron rings pinning them.
The darkness began to retreat as a flicker of light danced against the corridor's corner. It wasn't the harsh flare of the torches his captors used, but something steadier, cooler.
Then, a figure rounded the corner.
Avin's eyes, long accustomed to pitch black, stung at the sudden intrusion of light. He squinted, his breath catching in a throat that felt like it was lined with sandpaper.
He didn't see a soldier.
He saw a woman, her head crowned with a wild, tangled mess of sun-bright curls that reached down her back. The light caught the edge of her glasses and highlighted a constellation of freckles across her nose.
She looked small.
Fragile.
Not at all like the men who had dragged him down here in a frenzy of greed and fear.
"Who… is there?"
His voice was a jagged ghost of what it once was, cracking midway through. He didn't move, his wrists raw where the shackles bit into his skin.
He watched her through the gloom, his eyes narrowed.
"Did they send you to finish it? Or are you just another curious soul wandering into a grave?"
He didn't wait for an answer, his gaze fixing on those gray green eyes. He felt a flicker of something, not hope, he had buried that long ago, but a sharp, bitter caution.
"Stop where you are, human. There is nothing in this hole but rot and regret."
The girl gasped softly but sharply, ignoring his instruction and his warning as she rushed forward. She hurried to his side, already pulling pins from her hair.
The chains rattled with a heavy, rhythmic thud as Avin pulled back, his shoulders hitting the uneven stone.
He stared, his vision blurring then sharpening as the woman, Lila, pressed into his personal space.
The scent of rain and sun-warmed skin followed her, a jarring invasion of a tomb that had known only the smell of stagnant water and old bone for centuries.
He watched her hands, small and nimble, working with those tiny metal slivers against the ancient iron of his shackles.
The light from her source caught the wild, tangled mess of her blonde curls, making them glow like dying embers in the dark.
"What are you doing?" he rasped, his voice catching on the dryness of his throat.
He looked down at the top of her head, noticing the way her glasses slid slightly down her nose as she focused.
"The locks were forged by men who hated what I am. They won't yield to hairpins and good intentions."
Despite his words, he didn't pull away.
He couldn't.
The weight of the iron had anchored him for so long that his muscles barely remembered how to resist. He felt the heat radiating from her, a sharp contrast to the biting chill of the floor.
A smattering of freckles stood out on her cheeks, visible even in the dim light.
"You're a fool, Lila," he muttered.
The name felt heavy and strange on his tongue, supplied by her mind and his own nature.
He winced as a sharp edge of the metal collar bit into his neck when he tried to see her face better.
"If the guards find you here… if they see you touching a monster of the Lord…"
He trailed off, his eyes tracking the frantic, determined movement of her fingers.
A spark of something long dead, an echo of curiosity, stirred behind his intense gaze.
"Why?"
"Why risk the dark for someone who has forgotten the sun?"
His wings, tattered and grey, twitched instinctively, the motion sending a dull ache through his bound joints.
He didn't trust her.
He couldn't afford to.
But he found himself holding his breath, listening for the telltale click of the mechanism that had held him captive through the rise and fall of kingdoms.
"There's literally no one here," she muttered automatically.
Then she whipped her head up a moment later, finally clocking what the chained man had said.
"I'm sorry, did you just say MONSTER of the Lord?? THAT'S an oxymoron, if I ever heard one."
She continued to work on the pins.
A few moments later came the satisfying click from the antique padlock.
The metallic snick echoed through the chamber, a sound so alien to Avin's ears that it felt like a thunderclap.
For a heartbeat, he didn't move.
He simply stared at the iron band as it sagged, the pressure that had crushed his wrist for centuries suddenly vanishing.
He flexed his hand, a slow, agonizing movement.
The skin underneath was pale, scarred, and stained with the rust of the cuffs.
He looked up at her, his stormy eyes wide and disoriented. She was so close he could see the way her glasses caught the faint light, and the way a stray lock of her vibrant blonde curls had escaped to brush against her forehead.
"An oxymoron?" he repeated, the syllables feeling clumsy and sharp.
"They called me a herald when I arrived. Then they called me a curse, when they realized I wouldn't grant them the immortality they craved."
He watched her fingers move with practiced ease toward the second shackle.
She was so small, so deceptively fragile looking, yet she moved with a confidence that made his warnings sound like the ramblings of a madman.
"You speak as if… as if the world has changed," he whispered, his voice cracking.
He didn't pull away this time, though every instinct screamed at him to distrust the hands of a human.
"They told me I was forgotten. That the Lord had turned His gaze away because of my failure to lead his flock."
He winced as he shifted his wings, the severely damaged appendages dragging heavily against the floor.
"Why are you here, Lila? There are no treasures in this tomb. Only the bones of a soldier who stayed too long in a war he didn't understand."
He reached out, his fingers hovering near her sleeve, not quite touching.
"If there is no one here, then where are the guards? The ones who used to come to ensure the chains hadn't rusted through?"
"So…" she started, then looked up at him.
"Are you a herald, or an angel? If I remember the Bible correctly, those are different roles, right?"
Avin stared at his freed wrist, the heavy iron ring hanging open like a dead jaw.
He rubbed the raw, chafed skin with his other hand, his fingers trembling. The sensation of his own blood sluggishly returning to his extremity was a pins and needles fire he hadn't felt in an age.
He leaned his head back against the stone, his stormy eyes tracking the way Lila's blonde curls bounced as she shifted to the second lock.
"A Bible?" he echoed, the word tasting of old parchment and ink.
"Is that what you call the Chronicles of the High Seat now? It seems the world has found new ways to package old stories while I've been rotting."
He let out a breath that was part scoff, part sigh, watching her nimble fingers work the metal pins.
"Angel is… a term of service. A soldier. A messenger."
"Calling me a monster was simply the easiest way for the men who put me here to sleep at night. It's easier to chain a beast than it is to admit you're imprisoning a being who only wanted to keep the shadows from your doorstep."
He watched her through the thick lenses of her glasses, noticing the intense focus in her grey green eyes.
She seemed so unaffected by the heavy, suffocating history of this room.
"You say there is no one here," he murmured, his voice gaining a bit more strength, though it remained soft.
"How can that be? This tomb was the pride of a kingdom. There were chants, sacrifices, and guards who took shifts to ensure I never saw the moon again."
"Has the surface truly forgotten the thing they feared most?"
He winced as the metal of his wings scraped the floor, the tattered feathers rustling like dry leaves.
"Be careful with those pins, Lila. If you break them, we're both trapped in the dark. And I don't think you'd find my company very comforting once your light runs out."
His gaze dropped to her hands again.
A strange, heavy silence settled between them, broken only by the scrap scrape of her improvisational tools.
"Why do you care what the book says I am?" he asked quietly.
"You're treating me like a broken toy rather than a herald of the end."
"Hun, I'm an anthropologist, working to study the ruins outside," she replied carefully.
A beat.
Then her voice softened.
"You must have been here a very long time…"
Avin's brow furrowed, the deep lines of a weary soldier etching themselves into his pale forehead.
He rolled the unfamiliar word around in his mouth, testing the weight of the syllables.
"Anthro… pologist?"
He watched the light catch the curve of her glasses as she leaned back over his remaining shackle.
The word sounded like a title, but lacked the weight of High Priest or Inquisitor.
He watched a stray honey curl dangle near her eye, tempted to reach out and tuck it back, just to see if she was real or a hallucination born of starvation.
"Ruins," he repeated, his voice dropping into a hollow whisper.
"You speak of the Citadel as though it is nothing but rubble and dust for your scholars to sift through. The stones were supposed to stand until the sky fell."
He looked at the smattering of freckles on her nose, visible now that she was inches from his face.
She wasn't wearing armor.
She didn't carry a whip.
She carried hairpins and a soft, pitying tone that felt more dangerous than the chains.
"How long, Lila?" he asked, his stormy eyes searching hers for a truth he wasn't sure he could survive.
"If the Citadel is a ruin…"
"How many lifetimes have passed while I sat in this dark?"
The second shink of the lock cut through his question.
The heavy iron band fell open, clattering against the stone floor with a finality that made his heart skip.
Avin did not immediately pull away.
He sat there, his arms resting awkwardly in his lap, the skin of his wrists mottled and blue black with old bruising. The sudden lightness of his limbs registered as an ache, a strange phantom weight still tethering him to the wall.
"You say there is no one here," he said, his gaze drifting toward the dark exit of the cell. "No guards to hear the iron fall. No one to stop a human woman from walking into the belly of the earth."
Slowly, he lifted his right hand. His fingers trembled as he reached toward her shoulder, his touch light enough that it felt like he was checking whether she would vanish under the pressure.
"Are the demons gone too?" he asked quietly. "Or did the world simply find new monsters to write about in your… Bible?"
She blinked, then sighed softly, her expression twisting as she searched for the right words.
"Anthropologists study human cultures," she said. "The Citadel was carbon dated back to 1200 AD. Hun… this is now the year 2026."
Her voice trailed off.
Avin's fingers froze against the rough fabric of Lila's sleeve.
The numbers collided with his mind like a physical blow. He did not pull back, but his entire frame seemed to shrink, the tattered remnants of his wings shivering against the damp floor.
"Twenty… twenty six?" he whispered.
His breath hitched in his chest, rattling like dry parchment.
"Twelve hundred. You speak of centuries as if they are merely dust on a shelf. To you, it is a date. To me, it was every heartbeat spent in this cold."
His gaze drifted to her glasses, noticing the way they perched on the bridge of her freckled nose. Such a strange, delicate piece of craft. He had never seen glass ground so finely before.
It was a sign of a world that had moved on without him, refining its tools while he had been forgotten in the belly of the earth.
"Anthropologist," he repeated, the word still clumsy. "You study cultures?"
His brow furrowed.
"That means… there is nothing left of the Citadel to live in. No king. No priests. No one to remember why I was even put here."
He let his hand drop from her arm, his palm striking the cold stone with a dull thud.
His stormy eyes drifted upward, searching the darkness of the ceiling as if he could see through the layers of earth to the sky he had not seen in eight hundred years.
"Is the sun still the same?" he asked suddenly, his voice small and stripped of its former bitterness. "Is it still gold, or has your… science… changed the color of the heavens too?"
He tried to push himself upright.
His muscles screamed at the sudden demand. His wings flailed weakly, catching on the jagged edges of the cell wall.
He was a creature of a forgotten age, a relic being unearthed by a woman with blonde curls and a curious heart.
"You say 2026," he said. "If you are telling the truth, then everyone who hated me… everyone who loved me…"
His voice wavered.
"They are not just dead. They are not even ghosts anymore. They are the carbon you date."
He looked back at her, a strange, hollow light in his gaze.
"Why did you come down here, Lila?" he asked. "To see a ghost? Or did you expect to find a monster still waiting to bite?"
"I didn't know what to expect," she replied honestly. "I'd only just arrived and was trying to map out the labyrinth of this tomb. I certainly never expected to find anyone alive down here."
As she spoke, she pulled a small rectangle of metal and glass from her back pocket.
"I don't think the sky has changed," she said gently. "But you tell me."
She presented the device to him, glass side bright and facing out. A photograph was already loaded.
"South America. Papua New Guinea. Rural China," she continued. "I don't think the sky has changed, but you tell me."
She demonstrated with her thumb.
"Swipe your finger from one side of the screen to the other to look through the reel."
Avin stared at the small, glowing slab in her palm, his body tensing as if he expected it to explode or burn him.
The light it emitted was crisp and cold, unnatural compared to the flickering tallow candles of his memory. The weight of the year she had spoken still pressed on his chest, heavier than the iron she had just removed.
"A study of human cultures…" he murmured.
He looked from the device to her face, the lenses of her glasses reflecting the digital glow in twin pale squares.
"You treat my home, my prison, as a curiosity. A bone to be picked over by someone with a title I cannot even pronounce."
As she held the device closer, Avin's breath hitched.
He saw vibrant greens of jungles and the impossible blue of distant oceans, all contained within a fragment of glass no larger than his hand.
He had flown over kingdoms. He had seen the horizon from the clouds.
Those memories were now gray and frayed.
This was a window into a world that should have forgotten him entirely.
"This is sorcery," he whispered, fear laced with a desperate, aching wonder. "How did you trap the spirit of the sky in a pebble?"
His fingers hovered inches above the glass, trembling and grimy.
"You want me to… slide?"
He mimicked her motion, his index finger descending slowly toward the surface. He hesitated just before making contact, the warmth radiating from Lila's hand making the chill of his own skin feel sharper.
"If I touch this, will it vanish?" he asked. "Will it show me that the sun is gone, and only this ghost of it remains?"
He forced his hand forward.
The tip of his finger met the smooth, cool surface of the screen.
He gasped as the image obeyed his touch, shifting aside to reveal a new landscape. The sensation was slick, devoid of the texture he expected from paper or stone.
It was proof of a future he had no place in.
"Lila," he said, his voice dropping to something close to a plea. "If the sky is still there… why did no one come?"
"Eight hundred years of sunsets, and not one person remembered the messenger in the dark until you stumbled upon me."
She guided his finger gently across the screen, her skin warm, her grip steady.
"See?" she said. "It's called a cell phone."
"We invented so many things once the table of natural elements was large enough, and understood enough. We've catalogued most of the animals on earth, and as many in the sea as we can reach."
She paused, choosing her words.
"We try to be good stewards of the planet. We're still not very good at not fighting amongst ourselves yet. But at least the biggest countries aren't sending armies into every minor conflict anymore. Alliances are nearly global. There are only a few holdouts."
Avin let out a shaky breath as his fingertip glided across the glass.
The jungle vanished, replaced by a crystalline mountain range draped in mist.
The surface felt wrong, too perfect, too cold, yet the life within it was more vivid than any tapestry he had ever seen in a king's hall.
"Natural elements," he repeated softly. "We thought the world was made of salt, stars, and the breath of the Creator."
"You speak of tables and numbers. You have mapped the skin of the world while I was left to count the drips of water from that ceiling."
He studied his scarred hand, then the glowing screen.
He was careful not to press too hard.
"Global alliances," he murmured, a dry, humorless sound catching in his throat. "In my time, a man would kill his brother over a border defined by a single stream."
"You say you are not good at peace yet, but you do not send armies to every quarrel. It sounds… quieter."
He glanced at her.
"Or perhaps humans have simply found more efficient ways to be cruel."
She was no longer just a girl to him.
She was a representative of a civilization that had outgrown its gods.
"You study us like dirt beneath your fingernails," he said quietly. "You call this place 1200 AD, but to me it was the day I was betrayed."
"Does your book of cultures mention why they kept me alive?" he asked. "Why they didn't just kill the monster when they had the chance?"
He shifted, the tattered remnants of his wings dragging across the floor like dry husks. The absence of the chains left a hollow ache in his joints.
"Show me more," he whispered. "Show me what else you have done to the world while I was sitting in the dark."
"If the animals are catalogued, is there a name for me in your 2026?"
"Or am I just a curiosity for your… carbon dating?"
She hesitated, then smiled softly.
"I should have asked you that sooner," she said. "What is your name, hun?"
"I'm Lila."
She paused, then added gently, "And if you'll tolerate a personal question… can you be killed by anything other than Yahweh himself, or angelic steel?"
The mention of those names struck him like a blade.
Avin leaned back against the wall, his chest hollowing as he drew a shallow, rasping breath. The air felt thinner now, as if the weight of eight centuries had suddenly settled fully on his lungs.
"Yahweh," he whispered.
The name vibrated with resonance, making the dust in the air tremble.
"It has been so long since I heard the Voice. Or felt the gaze of the Throne."
"If He wished me dead, I would have been cinders before the first stone of your Citadel was laid."
He glanced at his scarred wrists, then at his tattered wings.
"And angelic steel," he said quietly. "That is for soldiers who still have something worth fighting for."
He watched her smile.
It was soft and genuine, entirely out of place in a room that had known only cruelty.
The warmth of it was more disorienting than the glow of her device.
"Lila," he repeated, testing the vowels. "It is a short name. Curvy. It lacks the sharp edges of the names I once knew."
"It sounds like something that belongs to the earth. To the blonde clay of the hills."
He studied her face, the way her lenses magnified the green in her eyes.
She was a scholar of humans.
To her, he was a living fossil.
To him, she was a window into a future that should not exist.
"My name is Avin," he said. "I was a Guardian of the Threshold."
"I was sent to ensure the darkness did not swallow the cities of men."
He glanced around the damp, lightless cell.
"I suppose I was not very good at my task, if your carbon says I have been here since the world was young."
He tried to shift again.
His legs buckled.
His fingers scraped against the stone as he caught himself.
"You talk of alliances and global peace," he said. "You talk of mapping the world."
"But if you have catalogued everything… what do you do with the things that do not fit into your tables?"
"What do you do with a messenger whose message was lost eight hundred years ago?"
"I have an idea," she said.
There was an edge in her voice that made his heart pound.
She stepped toward the place where he had been chained and lifted the iron links, holding them like a focus.
Then she screwed her eyes shut.
Tight.
And screamed at the top of her lungs.
"ARCHANGEL MICHAEL!"
"You are needed, and this is not a human emergency!"
"I have found one of your own, and he has been locked up by mortals for eight centuries!"
"He was lost."
"And now he is FOUND."
"A prodigal son."
She paused, then took a breath that shook more than it seemed like it should.
"I have my eyes tightly closed," she said, "but I cannot cover my ears, so PLEASE… don't use your Big Voice™, when you arrive, okay?"
She spoke with the absolute certainty of the wise.
Or the insane.
He was not sure which.
Avin's battered body, already heavy with centuries of still pain, stiffened even further as the words left her lips.
Archangel Michael.
The name echoed in the damp air of his tomb, sharper than any blow. His breath hitched in his throat, raw and ancient. He looked at Lila, her eyes screwed shut, her blonde curls a tangled halo as she shouted into the desolate silence.
It was a desperate, foolish plea.
And yet.
It mentioned Michael.
His commander.
His kin.
"Prodigal son?" Avin muttered, the irony a bitter ash on his tongue.
Eight hundred years he had languished here, forgotten and reviled, and now a human, barely a speck in the vast expanse of time he had endured, called out for redemption.
A flicker of light, stark and sudden, danced through the darkness, not from Lila's small device, but from something vast, almost primal. It pulsed beyond the stone walls, a pressure against the ears that was not sound, but a feeling. It prickled his wings, the tattered membranes stirring with an old, almost forgotten energy.
Avin's gaze swept the cell, no longer questioning Lila's actions, but searching for a response.
He stared at the ancient, unyielding rock around them, a tremor moving through him that had nothing to do with cold or exhaustion. The stale air in the chamber began to hum, faint at first, then growing into a low, sonorous thrum that vibrated deep within his chest. The distinct smell of ozone mixed with clean, damp earth filled his nostrils.
He pushed himself off the cold wall, rising on unsteady legs, his eyes scanning the inky blackness beyond the threshold.
"No," Avin rasped, looking past Lila and into the darkness. "Not a Big Voice."
"Not for this little corner of the world."
The hum escalated, a single pure note resonating in Avin's bones until his teeth ached. The dust motes dancing in the beam from Lila's device froze, suspended in the air as if time itself had ground to a halt.
The oppressive dampness of the tomb was suddenly scoured away by a wave of clean, cold air, smelling of lightning and high altitude snow.
Avin's eyes widened, his gaze locked on the dark archway of the cell.
He felt a pressure, a palpable weight of ancient power that made the very stones of his prison seem fragile. The light did not just enter the room.
It poured in.
A silent, golden flood that washed the shadows from every corner, chasing them into the cracks until they were gone.
In the center of that blinding radiance, a form coalesced.
It was not an arrival of flesh and bone, but a gathering of will and light.
Taller than any man, broad shouldered, and exuding an aura of absolute command, he stood with wings the color of a dawn sky folded neatly behind his back. His hair was the color of spun gold, and his eyes were the blue of a glacier's heart, ancient and unfathomably deep.
He wore no armor.
Yet he was the most formidable warrior Avin had ever seen.
Avin's legs gave out.
He did not fall in a heap. He sank to his knees in a single, fluid motion, his head bowing instinctively. His tattered wings spread limply on the floor, a pathetic offering of surrender. The chains he had worn for centuries lay between him and the newcomer, a testament to his long captivity.
He could not speak.
His throat was tight with a storm of shame, awe, and a desperate, terrifying hope.
This was the General.
The Prince of the Host.
Michael.
The Archangel's gaze swept the room, something unreadable flickering in his icy eyes as they took in the chains, the grime, the raw wounds on Avin's wrists.
Then, his attention shifted, falling upon the small human woman standing with her eyes still squeezed shut, her hands gripping the iron links.
"You have a voice that carries further than you know, little one," Michael said.
His voice was not the booming thunder Avin had expected from Lila's plea. It was calm, resonant, and imbued with a quiet authority that made the air itself feel solid.
"You called into the dark," he continued, "and the Light answered."
"Look upon me."
Lila's eyes snapped open at the command.
She blinked against the golden radiance, her mouth slightly agape as she took in the being before her.
Lila slipped her hand into Michael's and offered, "I'm not sure how this works, but… if catching him up needs an element of the human experience, I would be honored, if you pulled from me."
The instant Lila's fingers slipped into his, warmth bloomed from Michael's hand, spreading up her arm like a current of sunlit water. It was not hot or intrusive. It was a feeling of profound, absolute stillness, a quiet hum that vibrated in her very bones.
His grip was firm but gentle, the calluses on his palm a surprising, tangible proof of his ancient reality.
Michael looked down at their joined hands, his glacial blue eyes observing the contrast between her small, freckled hand and his own.
A flicker of something akin to approval passed through his gaze, ancient and profound.
"That is not how this works, Lila," he said.
His voice was a low, resonant melody that seemed to soothe the very stones of the tomb.
"Experience is not a cup from which another can drink. It is etched into the soul, not written on a scroll to be passed along."
"What I will take is not your life's story, but the context of it. A framework. So that when he sees the world again, it is not an onslaught of madness, but a new language he has a primer for."
He tightened his grip slightly, a silent reassurance.
"It will not harm you," he added. "You might feel a disquiet. Like recalling a dream you cannot quite grasp upon waking."
"Nothing more."
Michael then turned his attention fully to Avin, who was still kneeling, his gaze fixed on the Archangel's offered hand as if it were a brand of fire.
"This human offers you a bridge, soldier," Michael stated, his voice ringing with quiet authority.
"She offers a lens through which to see the centuries you have lost. It is a gift of staggering generosity."
"Do not dishonor it by remaining in the dirt."
Avin's breath shuddered out of him, ragged and painful.
His hand, trembling violently, lifted from the grimy floor. The movement was agonizingly slow, as if a great weight still pressed down upon him. His fingers, pale and scarred, finally closed around Michael's.
The moment their hands clasped, the golden light in the chamber pulsed, flaring out in a silent, brilliant wave.
It was not a harsh light.
It was warm, living radiance that felt like hope made tangible.
Avin cried out, a sharp, broken gasp as the light surged into him.
His head snapped back, eyes screwed shut. His entire body went rigid, muscles locking as eight hundred years of human history, the wars, the inventions, the shifting continents of belief and science, rushed through his mind not as memories, but as raw data.
The scent of gunpowder.
The hum of electricity.
The roar of an engine.
The cold logic of an algorithm.
All of it flooding the sensory deprivation of his long confinement.
Through it all, Lila felt a peculiar sensation through Michael's hand, a faint, ghostly echo of the transfer.
It was not images or sound, but a fleeting sense of loss. A momentary blankness where familiar concepts resided. The intuitive understanding of her cellphone. The reflexive knowledge of what a "country" was in the modern sense. The casual acceptance of a world connected by invisible signals.
For a single, breathless second, these things felt distant and alien to her.
Then they snapped back into place.
Michael's grip remained an unshakeable anchor for them both.
He stood as a conduit between the ancient soldier and the modern woman, his expression serene and focused, guiding the torrent of information with immense, silent control. The light began to soften, its intensity receding back into Michael's form, leaving the air tasting of ozone and faint, forgotten sunlight.
Avin collapsed forward, his strength gone.
Michael caught him effortlessly, supporting his weight. Avin's breathing was harsh and frantic, his eyes wide and unfocused, filled with the ghosts of a world he had never seen.
"It is done," Michael said softly, his gaze on the trembling angel.
"The foundation is laid. The rest, he must learn himself."
He looked at Lila then, his eyes holding a depth of gratitude words could not convey.
He released her hand.
"He is no longer a relic, Anthropologist," Michael said. "He is now simply a stranger in a strange land."
"And a stranger needs a guide."
Michael gently lowered Avin to a sitting position, propping him against the cold stone wall. The angel's tattered wings fluttered weakly, and his head lolled to the side, his stormy eyes clouded with confusion, but no longer with the hollow despair of a prisoner.
For the first time, a flicker of something new was there.
Comprehension.
"He knows what a cellphone is now," Michael stated, a subtle hint of wonder in his own voice. "He understands the concept of 2026."
"But he does not understand kindness."
"Not from your kind."
"That," he said quietly, "you will have to teach him."
Lila grinned.
"Okay that was COOL," she said. "You basically photocopied me, huh? Not all of me, obviously. But the things you needed. That's so neat."
Her excitement softened, taking on a more serious, empathic expression.
"And I would be honored to host him for a while, yes," she continued. "Is he strong enough to hide his wings?"
"Unfortunately, we haven't really made it into respecting other sentient species yet. I don't want him being turned into a science experiment again."
"He needs protection. Obfuscation."
Michael's gaze softened as he listened to her, a deep, ancient understanding in his glacier blue eyes. He seemed to appreciate her modern, casual assessment of his actions, finding a strange sort of beauty in its simplicity.
"Photocopied," he repeated, the word a soft echo in the quiet chamber.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.
"It is an apt, if crude, description for the process, Lila. Not your memories, not your soul, but the foundational axioms of your reality."
"A map," he continued, "so he is not lost in the new terrain of this time."
"It is neat, yes."
His expression grew more serious as she spoke of protection.
His gaze shifted to Avin, still leaning heavily against the wall. The angel's eyes were closed, his face a mask of exhaustion as he processed the torrent of information that had been poured into his mind. His tattered wings, grey and fragile, trembled with each ragged breath.
They seemed too large and too real for the confined space.
"He is weak," Michael stated, his voice low and somber.
"The atrophy of centuries is not merely of the muscle, but of the will. Hiding his wings requires a conscious folding of space, a manipulation of perception."
"In his current state, it would be like asking a man who has not walked in a year to run a marathon."
The Archangel took a step toward Avin, his presence a comforting warmth in the cold tomb. He reached out and gently traced the edge of one of Avin's battered wings.
The moment he touched the tattered feathers, soft golden light bloomed, mending tears and smoothing ruffled plumage. The grey faded, replaced by the pristine, luminous white of a storm cloud touched by the sun.
Avin gasped softly, his eyes fluttering open.
The wild confusion had receded, replaced by dazed but clear understanding. He looked down at himself, then at the healed, resplendent wings, and then back at Michael with pure, unadulterated awe.
"Your concern is wise, Anthropologist," Michael said, turning his gaze back to Lila.
"The world has traded its fear of monsters for an insatiable curiosity, and often the dissection table is the final destination for things it does not understand."
"He will need more than just a place to stay."
"He will need a cloak for his nature."
Without breaking his gaze from her, Michael laid his hand flat on Avin's shoulder.
The golden light intensified, flowing from his palm into Avin's frame. Avin's whole body tensed, and then, with a shimmering distortion of the air, the magnificent wings folded inward and vanished.
They did not retract or fold neatly.
They simply ceased to be visible, leaving behind the unobtrusive silhouette of a weary man in tattered clothes.
"I have done what I can," Michael said, his voice carrying a note of finality.
"I have sealed their presence from mortal sight. For now."
"It is a dam, not a redirection of the river. It will hold as long as his own will does not fail him, or as long as he does not draw upon his nature."
He looked at Avin pointedly.
"You are, for all intents and purposes, human."
"Until you choose not to be."
"Do you understand, soldier?"
Avin, still stunned, nodded slowly.
He pushed himself away from the wall, movements clumsy but deliberate. He looked at Lila, at her bright blonde hair and the small, reassuring smile she offered him, the information from the photocopy giving context to her expression.
"I… understand," he said, his voice still hoarse, but clearer now.
"Thank you, Lila."
"For the photocopy."
She smiled gently up at him.
"Of course, hun," she said. "And hey, we can pick a church to go to each week, so that you can still worship, okay? Until you can get back up to Heaven on your own."
Her smile widened, brightening her eyes.
"Although I do hope you'll still visit, once that happens."
The Archangel Michael's gaze, as ancient as starlight, rested on Lila.
For the briefest of moments, the serene mask of command faltered, replaced by a flicker of something profoundly gentle, almost paternal.
He observed the easy way she offered sanctuary, the casual mention of weekly worship as if it were a trip to a market, and the earnest hope that this fallen soldier might one day visit.
"The temples of man have changed," Michael stated, his voice a low, resonant hum that seemed to comfort the weary stones around them.
"They are often more wood and glass than stone and prayer now. He may not find the same echoes of the High Seat there."
"But he will find your kindness."
"In this age, that may be a more potent form of worship."
Michael turned his attention back to Avin.
The Guardian stood swaying slightly, his human appearing form lost and achingly vulnerable in the tattered, grime stained remnants of his ancient clothing. The concepts of church and visit were now familiar thanks to the photocopy.
The genuine, open hearted offer from the woman who had freed him was not.
Avin looked at her, stormy eyes wide with confusion that was no longer about technology, but emotion.
"You would… take me to a house of your God?" he whispered. "Knowing what I am?"
"They cast me out of the light. They built this tomb to keep me from it."
"She is not they," Michael corrected, firm but not unkind.
"Do not paint her with the sins of men whose bones have long since turned to the dust you stand upon."
The Archangel took a final step back, the golden light around him beginning to condense, to withdraw into himself. The oppressive gloom of the tomb started to creep back in from the corners of the room, held at bay only by the sheer force of his presence.
"My time here is done. The call has been answered, the soldier found. His path forward is now his own to walk."
Michael's gaze settled on Lila one last time, a silent and profound acknowledgment passing between them.
"Guide him well, Anthropologist. Show him a humanity worthy of the faith he has not yet lost."
Then, to Avin, his final command was simple, yet it held the weight of worlds.
"Live, Avin. Learn. Remember what it is you were sent to protect."
Without a sound, without a stir of air, the golden light folded in on itself and vanished.
Michael was gone.
The sudden, absolute silence and darkness that slammed back into the chamber was a physical blow. The air grew heavy and cold again, the smell of mildew and damp earth rushing back in to fill the void.
The only light and warmth remaining came from the small, glowing screen of Lila's cellphone, still held in her hand.
Avin flinched as the divine presence disappeared, a low sound of loss escaping his throat. He staggered, one hand bracing against the wall as if the sudden absence of Michael's strength had left him unable to stand.
He looked around the suffocating darkness of his prison, then at Lila, the small, solid point of light and life in the oppressive black.
"He's… gone," Avin breathed, his voice trembling.
He looked down at his own hands, then at his body, feeling the strange, new emptiness where his wings should be.
"I am… alone with you."
The statement was not an accusation or a threat.
It was a simple, terrifying fact.
He was untethered from everything he had ever known, left in the care of a small, freckled human in a world that was no longer his. He took a hesitant, clumsy step toward her, drawn to the light of her phone like a moth.
"If you need a stone temple, we can fly to Jerusalem."
She held her hand out for his, and once he was in reach, she handed him her phone with her other hand.
"You can explore it, if you'd like. We can get you one of your own, too."
The darkness was a living thing, thick and suffocating. It pressed in on Avin from all sides, a familiar weight he had forgotten how much he loathed until the golden light had briefly chased it away.
The smell of rot filled his lungs again.
Only the small, steady glow from Lila's hand, and the reassuring warmth of her presence, kept him from sinking back into the despair that had been his only companion for centuries.
The word fly slid into his new lexicon with startling ease.
He saw an image, crisp and clear from the photocopy, of a massive winged metal craft soaring through the clouds. It was a crude, loud imitation of what he could once do, yet it was undeniably miraculous.
Jerusalem.
The name itself was a prayer, a place of pilgrimage and power even in his time. The thought of it, of standing under the same sun in that holy city, was both comfort and terror.
He took another shaky step toward her, his bare feet recoiling from the slime slick floor. He felt stripped, naked without the comforting weight of his wings or the familiar bite of his chains.
When she held out her hand, he stared at it for a long moment.
Small.
Freckled.
Utterly human.
It was not a hand raised to strike him or bind him.
It was an offer.
Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out and let his grimy, trembling fingers touch hers.
Her skin was warm and soft.
The simple, solid contact was grounding, a tether in the overwhelming darkness. His gaze followed her other hand as she offered the glowing slab of glass and metal.
"My own?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
He carefully took the phone, his large, scarred hand dwarfing the device. It felt impossibly light, yet it contained worlds. He held it like a holy relic, his thumb hovering over the smooth, dark screen.
The idea of possessing such a thing, of having his own personal window to this bewildering new era, was beyond comprehension.
He looked from the phone back to her face, her features illuminated in the soft light from the screen he now held.
Her smile was a small, steady beacon in the vast emptiness of his new reality.
"I… would not know where to begin," he admitted, voice low and raw with emotion.
"To see the world. To not be in this… hole."
He looked around the cell, his prison, one last time, the memories of silent millennia crashing down on him.
His grip tightened on her hand, a reflexive, desperate anchor.
"Yes," he said, a sliver of strength finding his voice.
"Please. Get me out of here, Lila."
"Let's start by getting you under the open sky again," she said gently.
She reached over and activated the flashlight on the phone.
She had noticed his body language shift when the light went away, because of course she had.
The sudden beam of light that erupted from the small device was sharp and clean, cutting through the oppressive darkness with focused intensity. Avin flinched, not from pain this time, but from sheer surprise.
The cone of white light sliced through the tomb's gloom, illuminating a clear path from their feet to the dark archway of the cell. It was steadier than fire, brighter than any torch, and completely devoid of heat or smoke.
The photocopy provided context, flashlight, but the reality of it, held so casually in his hand, was still a marvel.
"The open sky," Avin repeated, the words tasting of hope and terror in equal measure.
He had seen glimpses of it on the tiny screen, but the memory of the real thing was a faded tapestry, its colors bled out by centuries of darkness. The thought of feeling the sun on his skin, of breathing air that had not been filtered through a thousand tons of rock and soil, made his heart hammer against his ribs with a new, frantic rhythm.
He steadied himself, his grip on Lila's hand firm, grounding.
He was a soldier.
A Guardian.
He was not meant to cower in the dark.
Taking a deep breath that was more dust than air, he took his first willing step out of the cell that had been his entire world.
The corridor beyond was just as treacherous, a slick, uneven surface of hewn stone coated in a fine layer of grime. The flashlight beam danced ahead of them, revealing a narrow, winding passage that sloped gently upward.
Water dripped from the low ceiling, the sound echoing in profound silence.
"This is the way you came?" Avin asked, voice low.
His eyes, now accustomed to the artificial light, darted into the shadows that hugged the edges of the beam, a habit ingrained from a lifetime of watching for unseen threats.
He noticed old, rusted sconces on the walls, their purpose long forgotten.
"How did you get past the wards?" he asked.
"The doors were sealed with the blood of archons and the sigils of the first king. No mortal was meant to pass."
He glanced at her, her bright blonde curls seeming to capture and hold the light. She walked with a confident, sure footed ease that was utterly alien to this place of death and decay.
The photocopy told him about explosives and modern tools, but it did not explain the simple, unbelievable fact that she was just here.
She nodded. "There's been earthquakes, and the sands erode. Things aren't as well structured as you're imagining, anymore."
"Earthquakes," Avin repeated, the photocopy providing a visceral image of the ground shaking, of stone cracking under immense pressure.
"And sand."
He looked at the walls, really looked at them, and saw what she meant. He had seen them as impenetrable barriers, but now, in the focused beam of the light, he saw the fine tracery of cracks, the mortar crumbled to dust in places, and the fine layer of sand that coated everything.
A testament to the slow, patient grinding of time.
"So it was not a key, or a spell, or a great army that broke the seal," he murmured, disbelief and strange, hollow irony in his voice.
"It was just the world turning."
"The rock breathing."
A dry, humorless chuckle scraped his throat.
"They bound me with their strongest magic and their deepest hate, and in the end, they were defeated by gravity and the weather."
"There is a lesson in that, I think."
As they continued up the sloping passage, the air began to change. The suffocating, stagnant smell of mildew and old stone thinned, replaced by something faint and clean.
Open space.
Dry, sun baked sand.
Avin's steps quickened, his grip on Lila's hand unconsciously tightening. He could feel a subtle shift in air pressure, a whisper of a breeze that was utterly alien to his prison.
The tunnel opened abruptly into a larger, cavernous chamber.
Here, the destruction she spoke of was obvious. A massive section of the ceiling had collapsed, creating a steep, treacherous slope of rubble and sand that reached up toward a sliver of impossible, brilliant blue.
The sky.
Avin froze, breath catching in his throat.
He dropped Lila's hand and stumbled forward a few steps, gaze locked on that patch of searing, vibrant color. It was more intense, more real than any image on her tiny screen.
Tears welled in his eyes, blurring the sight.
It was real.
It was still there.
He scrambled up the pile of fallen rock and sand, movements clumsy and desperate. His bare feet slipped on loose scree, his hands scraped against sharp edges of broken stone, but he did not feel it.
All his being was focused on reaching that light.
Finally, he crested the slope, pushing his head and shoulders through the jagged opening into open air.
The sudden, direct heat of the sun was a physical blow.
He cried out, shielding his eyes with his arm as the sheer, overwhelming brilliance washed over him. He breathed deeply, and for the first time in eight hundred years, he coughed not on dust, but on air thick with the scent of hot sand and a thousand tiny, living things he had no names for.
He was out.
He was free.
And he was weeping, kneeling in the sand at the edge of the hole that had been his grave, under the vast, open, and utterly terrifying expanse of the 21st century sky.
Lila climbed out behind him and laid her hands comfortingly on his shoulders.
"See?" she said. "Not too different."
"The stars have shifted, but we haven't managed to kill your Father's creation."
The warmth of her hands was a startling, solid comfort against the overwhelming assault on his senses. The sun was a physical weight, the air a tangible substance, the vastness of the blue sky a dizzying void.
Avin kept his face buried in the crook of his arm, trembling, not from cold, but from sheer, unadulterated sensory overload.
Her voice cut through the roaring in his ears.
"The stars moved. But we haven't managed to kill your Father's creation."
He lowered his arm slowly, blinking through tears streaming down his face. The world was a blinding watercolor of sand gold and sky blue. He squinted, trying to focus on the horizon, a sharp, clean line he had not seen in an age.
"The stars," he whispered, voice hoarse.
"They move every night. I used to chart them."
He shook his head, disbelief made physical.
"You mean their positions in the heavens themselves have changed. You speak of celestial mechanics as casually as you speak of the weather."
He pushed himself up to sit, turning to look at her. The sun caught the vibrant blonde of her hair, making it blaze. Her glasses reflected the brilliant sky, hiding her eyes, but he could feel her steady, compassionate gaze.
She was so small, so mortal, yet she stood under this infinite sky without a trace of fear.
"You say you haven't killed it," he said, gesturing vaguely at the sprawling landscape around them.
"But you have tamed it."
"You've mapped it, catalogued it, built your cellphones and your flying metal beasts. You've unpuzzled the fabric of the world, taken it apart to see how it works."
"I see it in you, in the photocopy."
"You have built a world without the need for wonder," he said, and the word caught in his throat.
"Or fear."
He looked down at his own hands, filthy and scarred, then at the clean, soft fabric of her clothes.
"You don't need Guardians anymore, do you, Lila?"
"You have your anthropologists and your alliances to keep the shadows at bay."
He met her gaze, stormy eyes filled with profound and aching uncertainty.
"What is my purpose," he asked, "in a world that believes it has already won?"
He looked out at the vast, empty desert, the silence of which was now filled with the phantom screams of millions.
"You're right," he said, his voice flat and heavy. "You do still need us. The darkness didn't vanish. It just stopped using claws and fangs and put on a uniform. It learned to fill out paperwork."
He finally stood, his body still weak but his resolve hardening into a familiar shape. The despair burned away, replaced by the cold, clear anger of a soldier who had just been shown the battlefield.
"You have unpuzzled the atom but not the hatred in your own hearts," he said, looking down at her. "You can fly to the moon, but you cannot walk safely in your own cities after dark. You have not won. You have just… escalated."
He took a deep breath, the desert air gritty and real in his lungs.
"All right, Lila. Anthropologist. Show me more. I need to understand the face of the enemy in the year 2026."
She nodded.
"Now pull up your files for the current genocide in Gaza, being perpetrated by Yahweh's Chosen."
Avin stood under the vast, uncaring blue of the sky, the horror of his internal library still fresh in his mind. The desert wind whipped hot sand across his skin, but he barely noticed. The sun beat down on his bare shoulders, and still he felt cold.
"Yahweh's Chosen."
The words struck him like a physical blow.
In his time, the phrase had been a term of honor, a covenant bound in blood and promise. A people he had been sent, in part, to protect.
His mind obeyed her without protest.
He pulled up the file.
It was not a single image, not a clean report. It was a flood.
Cities reduced to rubble. Apartment blocks pancaked into dust. Streets filled with people carrying what little remained of their lives in plastic bags. Children with eyes far too old for their bodies, coated in the gray powder of what used to be their homes.
Bombardments. Blockades. Starvation used as a weapon.
And always the justification. Security. Retaliation. Necessity. A logic that fed on itself until it became indistinguishable from cruelty.
But it was the name that broke him.
"Yahweh's Chosen."
Avin staggered back a step, one hand rising to his chest as if to ward off a blow.
"No," he whispered. "No, that cannot be right."
He looked at Lila, disbelief giving way to dawning horror.
"They… His people… are doing this?" The words tore free of him. "The ones given the Law. The ones led from bondage. They are the ones perpetrating this slaughter?"
"Gaza," he said, the name heavy with ghosts.
He shook his head violently.
"It's a lie," he insisted, even as the data burned itself into him. "A deception of the enemy. The Father would not permit this. He would not sanctify His name over fields of dead children."
But the file did not yield.
Reports. Testimonies. Footage. Resolutions ignored.
Human fact.
The Guardian who understood evil warred with the believer who understood covenant. The contradiction tore at him, threatening to split him in two.
"How," he demanded, desperate now, "could they forget? How could the children of a promise become this?"
"They need you more than ever, Avin," she said quietly.
Her words landed not as comfort, but as indictment.
"Need me for what?" His voice cracked. "To fight them? To raise my hand against the very people I was sworn to protect? The descendants of the Covenant?"
He spread his arms wide beneath the empty sky.
"Is that my purpose now? To become a monster in truth? To turn my blade on His Chosen because they have become this?"
The library inside him showed the thread clearly now. Pogroms. Ghettos. Camps. A history of persecution curdling into the heart of the persecutor.
The irony was unbearable.
"The demons I fought were simple," he choked, a violent shudder tearing through him. "Their malice was honest. Clean."
"But this," he whispered, "this is a light rotted from within. How do you fight a shadow wearing your brother's face?"
He dropped to his knees in the hot sand.
"They don't need a Guardian," he said, hollow. "They need… I don't know what they need. A prophet? A curse? Another flood?"
At last, he looked at her again.
"Tell me what you see, Anthropologist," he pleaded. "You who catalogues the bones and beliefs of humanity. When you look at your world, at Gaza, what is it you believe I am needed to do?"
She shook her head gently.
"No, love. Not to fight them. That is Michael's duty."
"Yours is to guard the threshold against darkness," she said. "And when you can't drive it out by force, you guide people back to the Light instead. Darkness cannot survive inside Yahweh's Light."
Avin looked up at her, stormy eyes locking onto hers.
"Guide them," he repeated softly. "Not with a sword, but with…"
The thought faltered, unfamiliar and frightening.
The soldier in him had been forged for vigilance and steel. Not shepherding. Not mercy.
The library offered context now. Counselors. Aid workers. Ordinary people sitting with grief instead of fleeing it. Hands offered instead of fists raised.
Like hers.
"The darkness I fought had a shape," he said, rising slowly. "It could be seen and cut down."
"But this corruption lives inside them. It speaks their language. Wears their laws. Uses their scripture."
He stepped closer, desperation softening into something heavier, steadier.
"You speak as if Light is simple," he said. "Like lighting a candle."
"But what if the room is already full of fire? What if they love the heat of their hatred more than the warmth of truth?"
"You have faith," he said quietly. "After everything I've seen, I don't understand how."
"Starve the fire," she said patiently. "Don't give it oxygen."
"But didn't Jesus teach that love was the greatest virtue?" she continued. "It's also the best weapon. Love starves false fire."
The name struck deeper than data.
Jesus.
Not just history. Not just theology.
Sacrifice. Radical love. A strategy that had shaken Heaven itself.
"He taught that," Avin said quietly. "He lived it. He died for it."
Understanding settled into him with terrifying clarity.
"To turn the other cheek was not weakness," he murmured. "It was warfare."
He looked at his hands, hands meant for swords.
Could they learn to build?
"To comfort?"
"You believe the weapon still works," he said, meeting her gaze. "Even now."
The storm in his eyes stilled, not into peace, but into focus.
"All right, Lila," he said, voice steady for the first time. "I don't know if I have any love left that time hasn't burned away."
"But you do."
He straightened, posture shifting into something old and new at once.
"Then teach me," he said simply. "Teach me how to fight your way."
She smiled gently.
"Look up pride parades."
His mind, still reeling from the industrial scale slaughter of one war and the religiously justified cruelty of another, braced for a new horror. He had just vowed to learn how to fight with love, and her first lesson was a command to look up "pride parades." The term was meaningless to him, a jumble of words, yet the gentle smile she wore suggested this was not another catalogue of human depravity.
He closed his eyes, hesitantly accessing the mental library she had gifted him.
The first image that flooded his senses was an explosion of color. Not the gray of concrete dust or the sickening brown of blood, but a brilliant, riotous spectrum. He saw streets not filled with fleeing refugees or marching soldiers, but packed with dancing, cheering people. They waved flags emblazoned with rainbows, a symbol he had only ever associated with the promise after the Great Flood.
The data streamed in.
Men holding hands with men. Women kissing women. People whose very forms existed in a beautiful, shimmering space between the rigid definitions of male and female he had always known. Fantastic costumes. Glitter flashing in the sun like powdered gems. Faces painted in vibrant colors. Music loud and rhythmic and full of joy, pulsing through the crowds.
There were signs, not of hatred or condemnation, but of celebration.
"Love is Love."
"Born This Way."
"Trans is Beautiful."
He saw families. Parents marching with their children. Old couples who had clearly weathered decades together. Young people discovering themselves for the very first time. He saw groups from churches, carrying banners that reframed holy scripture into messages of radical acceptance.
It was a display of profound, unapologetic, joyful existence.
It was the antithesis of the camps and the rubble.
This was not a defiance born of warfare. It was a defiance born of pure, unadulterated being. Love, not as a placid concept, but as a loud, vibrant, public declaration.
Avin's eyes opened, and the searing desert sun felt less harsh. The blue sky seemed less empty.
He looked at Lila, the storm in his eyes replaced by dawning, wondrous confusion.
"They are celebrating?" he asked softly. "They are celebrating their love… in the open? For all to see? Without shame? Without fear?"
The history attached to the file surfaced next. Riots. Persecution. Plagues. The long, brutal fight for the simple right to exist and love as they were.
This parade was not a beginning.
It was a victory lap.
A living triumph over a darkness he knew all too well. The darkness that whispers that you are wrong, that you are unnatural, that you should hide.
"This is the weapon," he breathed, realization settling into his face. "This is what you mean. To not hide. To not be ashamed. To starve the fire by… dancing."
He looked back at her, a flicker of something like a smile touching his lips. The first true one.
"It's the strangest battle strategy I have ever encountered."
"And yet look how it works," she said. "Now look up solidarity marches. In general. The US, France, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea."
The fragile, beautiful smile lingered on Avin's face. He had just witnessed joy as an act of war, and it had rearranged the ancient architecture of his mind. Before he could fully settle into it, her next instruction arrived.
Solidarity marches.
Once more, he turned inward.
This time the command was broader, and the result was a sprawling, global tapestry of movement.
He saw rivers of people flowing through American cities, signs held high, demanding justice for a man whose name, George Floyd, now represented a deep historical wound. The crowd was a mosaic of faces, black, white, brown, young and old, voices joined into a single, thunderous chant. They were not marching for one man alone. They were marching against a shadow that had haunted that nation for centuries.
Paris followed. Streets clogged with protestors in yellow vests, a cry of economic desperation and refusal to be invisible. It was messy, angry, sometimes violent, but at its core was a demand for dignity.
Malaysia. Thousands marching for clean elections, yellow shirts blazing against corruption, demanding the sacred right to choose their own leaders.
Japan. South Korea. Quiet, disciplined processions against nuclear power. Massive union marches demanding fair wages. A human sea pushing back against faceless corporate power.
Women across nations reclaiming their bodies and their rights. Students walking out of schools to demand action on a changing climate, their youth an indictment of the inaction of their elders.
These marches were not always joyful.
They were born of anger, grief, and fear.
Yet they shared a core truth.
A refusal to suffer alone.
The instinctive understanding that a burden shared is lighter, and a voice multiplied can tear down walls. Connection as a physical force. The opposite of the isolation he had endured.
Avin opened his eyes. The desert felt sharper, more real.
"They stand with each other," he said quietly. "Even when they are strangers. Even when it is dangerous. They see another's pain and choose to make it their own."
He turned to Lila, transformation written plainly across his face.
"This is the architecture of your hope," he said in awe. "Not blind optimism, but deliberate construction. Building together, even as the world cracks."
"You are a race of heralds," he added softly. "You just don't know it."
She looked down at him, fond and gentle.
"Globalization. The Internet," she said. "They broke down the walls we used to have. Distance, inconvenience, isolation. Seeing each other in real time softened the island of one philosophy into something communal. We remembered the village."
"It takes one to raise a child."
Avin let her words settle.
"So your Citadels fell," he said slowly, "but you built a different connection. Not stone and mortar, but light and thought."
He gazed toward the horizon, imagining invisible threads circling the world.
"A global village," he murmured. "Where a cry of pain in one hut can be heard in all the others. Where distance no longer shields ignorance."
He looked back at her, respect deepening into something steadier.
"It takes a village to raise a child," he repeated. "And you believe it takes a village to heal a world."
Understanding locked into place.
The weapon was not just love. It was shared love.
Not just courage, but collective courage.
A genuine smile bloomed on his face, free of pain or irony.
"This is a far more complex battlefield than I was trained for," he said. "One fought with presence instead of power. With solidarity instead of steel."
He breathed in the desert air again, and this time it felt clean. Possible.
"I have spent eight hundred years alone," he said quietly. "I think my first lesson must be learning how to stand with others."
He met her gaze, steady and resolved.
"Where do we go from here? Show me this village of yours."
"I am ready to be raised."