Page 5 of Property of Prophet

The decision makes itself. I can’t provide adequate care through leather and whatever else lies beneath, so the vest has to come off.

My hands work zippers and fasteners, peeling away fabric from skin that should be colder than it is. His body temperature registers wrong, not hypothermic despite exposure, not frozen despite the crater’s ice. Warm. Actually warm to the touch when everything I know about medicine and cold-weather trauma says he should feel frozen.

I set the vest aside, patches up, and focus on what lies beneath.

His shirt hangs in tatters, burned and shredded. I cut away what remains with scissors from my medical kit, revealing skin that makes my breath catch.

Burns cover his torso. These are not ordinary burns—they look as if they’ve already been cauterized, with edges too clean and precise. The lacerations I noted earlier, the slash across his ribs and abdomen, are not bleeding anymore. They are not scabbed over or closed, just not bleeding. And beneath the damage, beneath the wounds that should be weeping and raw, I see...

No. That’s impossible.

I lean closer, firelight casting shadows across his chest, and watch. Just watch. For thirty seconds, a minute...

The burns shrink.

Not dramatically, but they shrink. Edges pull inward by millimeters, angry red fading to pink, then to skin tone that matches the surrounding flesh. And the lacerations, they knit. Tissue regenerates before my eyes, cells multiplying at rates that defy everything I learned in medical school and mock every principle of human physiology.

My hands hover above his chest, afraid to touch, afraid to confirm what my eyes report. Human bodies don’t heal this way. Can’t heal this way. They require proper treatment, clean wounds, and absence of infection. It doesn’t happen in minutes while unconscious in a freezing cabin.

Unless the body in question isn’t human.

There’s no explaining this away anymore. Whatever fell from the sky wasn’t human. I’ve been operating under the assumption that what fell from the sky was a man, and that the impossible survival came from luck or adrenaline. The medical intervention would follow normal patterns. All those assumptions shatter now, broken by the evidence of accelerated healing, survival that defies physics, and that strange light I saw in his eyes.

I rock back on my heels, medical kit forgotten, mind racing through implications.

Not human. Those words reshape everything.

The crater makes sense now, or makes the kind of sense that exists beyond human understanding. The wing prints burned into earth, the wolves’ reverence, the tear in the sky, all pieces of a picture I can’t quite see but know exists.

Fear crawls up my spine with icy fingers. Five years I’ve lived in isolation, running from humans, from their capacity for betrayal and violence. And now I’ve brought something else into my home, something that fell from heaven, hell, or whatever exists beyond the veil of normal reality.

Smart would be putting him back outside.

Smart would be leaving him on the porch, where whatever he is becomes Alaska’s problem, not mine.

Smart would be protecting myself from this complication and impossibility, who wears a human shape but heals with inhuman speed.

My hands move to his shoulders, preparing to drag him back through the door.

His eyes open.

Impossible blue pins me in place, holding me frozen. Light swirls in those depths, not reflected firelight, not tricks of shadow, but actual luminescence originating from within. Power radiates from him, pressing against my skin without physical force, making the air feel charged.

“Please.” His voice emerges stronger, though pain threads through each syllable. “Don’t... I won’t hurt you.”

The words should reassure me, but they don’t because creatures that can survive impossible falls, heal from catastrophic injuries, and carry light in their eyes operate by rules I don’t understand. Promises mean nothing when you’re dealing with something beyond human.

“What are you?” The question rushes out, rusty and harsh.

Something crosses his face, grief, maybe, or regret. “I don’t... I don’t know anymore.”

“You’re healing. I watched your burns disappear. Watched lacerations close.” My voice climbs despite efforts to control it. “Human bodies don’t do that.”

“No.” He tries to sit up, fails, and falls back with a groan that sounds entirely too human for whatever he is. “They don’t.”

“The wings. There were wing prints in the snow. Burned into the ground.”

Confusion clouds those luminous eyes. “Wings?”