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Black feathers scatter around me, the fire searing through me lighting me with a new light. The kind of light that pushes away darkness. The kind of light that brings me clarity and reminds me of the souls I’ve given my existence to protect. Lucifer might have Raven’s soul, but it means nothing to me. I will fight the universe until she’s free.
“Let her go, Micah! Don’t take her with you!” Kase’s voice bellows through the air.
I stare at the four silhouettes of angels above me—not all angels. Fire blazes through Dante’s skin, allowing me to see his features from above. He punches Andre, sending him crashing into Zade. The two brethren spin away and soar upward. Cassius swings his blade, scratching it across Dante’s stomach. The devil spits his hellish venom, smoldering Cassius’s wings.
“Micah, let her go!” Kase shouts, throwing a red orb of Hell energy high into the air.
I brush my lips to Raven’s forehead. “I’m so sorry. You deserve better. You deserve more. I’ve failed you.”
She blinks through the wind whipping around us. “You’re wrong. You saved me.”
Kase roars. “Now!”
Bowing forward, I use all my strength to throw Raven into the air, praying to the Higher Power to show mercy on her when the brethren won’t. She screams and flails, trying to grab the empty air for anything to hold on to. Her soul calls to me, begs for me, but all I can do is stare at the azure sky and her soul lighting the world like the sun shines from her very spirit.
The world shakes and quivers, and thousands upon thousands of whispers cry in my ears. My eyes water with tears, my body seeming to split open under the wave of darkness and despair threatening to swallow me whole.
I reach my arms out, imagining Raven bracing me in her pure light. She screams my name through the air and into my mind. Sadness rips through me, but the foreign emotion doesn’t belong to me. It’s Raven’s grief and regret. It’s her soul weeping as I fall away from her.
Like a dark shadow cutting through the brilliant light, I watch Dante catch Raven in his arms and soar away. Heat burns at my back, and I ignore the sensation licking and biting my skin, tearing through my clothes until I’m as exposed as my being to the unfair world. A world I yearn for—no, I need for—it to find the justice it deserves.
Shadows engulf me, stealing away the light from the sky, and I close my eyes and give silent thanks for the devils saving Raven, for the world for sparing her from Hell. I lose myself to the pitch darkness and try to summon my holy light to push away the shadows, but nothing happens. I exist in a world of nothingness. I’m nowhere and everywhere, nothing and everything. An electric sensation sparks through me, starting at my fingertips to zap over my hands and up my arms. The energy flares through the void, cracking the foundation of this strange realm on in-between. Bright light shoots through the fissuring world until the darkness vanishes, and my world turns white.
I press my palms into the cool floors of my home, my body weak and broken, but my being pulsing with the energy that dragged me from darkness. I kneel on one knee and stare at the crystal glass, reflecting my image back to me. My sanctuary suddenly feels so empty. So bare and lacking everything I had loved. The window that once gave me a view of the light I’ve spent my eternity fighting for now only shows the blood and bruises from Cassius...and black wings in place of where my heavenly light once shone through in feathers of pure white.
I bow forward and hang my head, a flurry of unfamiliar emotions bursting through me. How could this have happened? I followed my path. I fought for and obeyed the divine mission. I don’t understand how everything I spent my existence fighting for could’ve just abandoned me, leaving me in a quiet world without love and grace and the one soul I felt so destined to save.
“Why?” I ask, voicing my question out loud. “Why give me a path I couldn’t take? Why abandon me and the most brilliant soul in the entire universe?”
Silence greets me.
If the Higher Power listens, it doesn’t give a response.
I’m alone.
Heat bursts through my body, and I slam my fists to the floor, cracking it with my strength. All the love I had for my home away from the heavenly kingdom vanishes with the last ounce of light I had left. Pushing to my feet, I stride toward the crystal window. In place of myself stands a towering creature standing on two hooved feet. Thick cords of muscle twine around my limbs, pulsing a strange fiery light through my body. I no longer have hands and fingers, but in their place is another set of hard bone structures like the hooves on my feet. Tusks jut from my massive head and sharp teeth fill my wide mouth. A tail with strands of tough skin swings from my lower back and it’s strange to feel like as if it’s just a normal appendage on my body, though when I reach to touch it, my back is as smooth as always.
I drink in the features of the strange beast—the beast I know lingers inside me, and see myself as the devil the world will now know me as. I run my hands down my body, watching the hooves drag across my torso, despite feeling my fingers touch over my muscles as they work down to my penis and scrotum—things that were just a part of me for no other reason than to mimic a mortal...but now.
I groan at the pleasure exploding through me, taking in the strange sight of the fat, twisted appendage between my legs. I look down and inspect my body. The only monster is the reflection in the mirror, but it’s like the creature sets me off. I can’t stop myself from stroking my hand over my shaft, watching it grow with the addicting sensation tingling through my groin.
“Micah...?” The softness of Raven’s voice trickles through my mind, the call of her soul like an unsung melody playing my soul strings. I feel it deep inside me, and all I can think about is her.
“Raven, I’m here,” I call out, spinning to look around the empty sanctuary.
“What’s happened to him, Dante?” she asks, her voice turning into a whisper. “Is he going to be okay?”
“If he makes the right choice,” Dante responds. “If he doesn’t, he’ll be lost. I don’t know when we will ever find him again.”
A wave of despair crashes through me, coming from Raven. “Micah, please. Please don’t leave me. I’m lost without you. I need you. Please. Please.”
“Sorry, pretty soul. Prayers don’t work on him any longer.” Dante’s words ignite something inside me. I don’t need prayers to guide me back to Raven. I have the light of her soul, even here, in this place of loneliness.
Raven sighs. “I’m not praying. I’m begging.”
“It’s making me jealous,” Dante says, growling.
Laughing, she says, “Good. It should. He saved me. He—”
