The fire roars. Were it not contained by the veil over the cathedral, it would have bleached the sky to milky white and torn the air into plasma.

  Then the fire dissipates.

  What remains stands before the man of flame. A husk.

  The heat has melted the clothes from Seraphiel's back. One wing has been burned to ash; the other still burns, controlled, black and deliberate. Only the fabric between his knees and waist remains, shielded where his wings once folded. His hair glows, a crown of bright orange fire.

  Time freezes.

  Ah.

  It hurts. It hurts so badly.

  I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go home. I want to listen to boring lectures. I want to sleep on silk sheets.

  I'm scared.

  I don't want to fight. I'm not a soldier. I'm meant to be a king — atop my tower, shouting commands, eating grapes.

  The thoughts are not measured, not royal. They are adolescent, raw — dragged to the surface by pain so great it has boiled his blood. He would cry, but the moisture in his eye has long since evaporated, leaving only dry marble behind.

  A woman's voice intrudes, tender and unyielding.

  "If a king expects a following, must he not lead? And if he desires a strong kingdom, must he not be its strongest pillar?"

  Seraphiel recognizes it, or perhaps he chooses to. A vestige of his mother, rising from the ash of memory.

  "What is given by others can be taken away. What is built by one's own strength endures."

  "A crown placed too easily upon your head would doom Cairnreach."

  "Remember Hiero of Syracuse — born without a throne, crowned by necessity. Your enemy is unknown, yet he knows his own strength."

  "If a king does not know his strength," the voice says, "how can the kingdom trust in it?"

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Mom?"

  Seraphiel blurts out.

  The man assumes the boy is about to die and, seeing a comforting vision, he turns his head in pity at the sorry sight.

  "If you die here, your kingdom dies with you," the woman's voice cries in an echo.

  A hair whizzes past the man's ear.

  He turns around. Behind him stands the boy, hair still enflamed, his posture wounded but controlled. He holds two bones turned black from flame as if they are a pair of twin blades, and his single wing remains engulfed in fire. An angel baptized in flames, a king whose kingdom exists wherever he draws his breath, trudges forward, looking toward the ground.

  The man of flame launches toward him, aiming to tear him asunder. In the air, he throws a chain of fire at the boy. Seraphiel slashes his one wing through the chains; the flames on his own wing turn black and follow after like an afterimage.

  Still hunched from slashing with his wing, he shoots upward, his bone swords crossed like an X. He flies like a missile into the torso of the man of flame, who barely evades by combusting the air next to him and knocking himself away.

  Mid-air, Seraphiel rotates, adjusting to his one wing. He could have another replace his missing one, but the adrenaline from being wounded gives him a high — a reminder that even when mangled, he does not need to be whole to win.

  He kicks, a talon ripping through his toes, and his twin blades are held like upside-down knives. Crashing into the man, he stabs the bones through his shoulders. The bones start to melt as he grits his teeth.

  Letting go, Seraphiel is met by a right hook aimed at his head, the hand coated in magma. Sparks from the man's shoulders sting him, but he does not react. He falls backward, dodging the fist as he slices the man from groin to forehead with his talon.

  Rushing toward the sparks, and before the wound fully cauterizes, he sends his one wing flying into the man's neck like an axe. The head flies clean off, the wound sealed by the black flames of Seraphiel's wing. It falls to the floor. Thump.

  Not wasting a moment, Seraphiel walks toward the body; it reaches its hand out toward him.

  He brushes it with his wing.

  The body stands for a moment before dropping shortly after.

  He looks around the cathedral. He had forgotten for a moment what exactly was going on, yet he soon recalls Madarame descending and decides to follow after him. Seraphiel runs to the candle and yanks on it.

  The floor turns into a platform and descends. Darkness consumes him. He looks around, his eye darting. No signs of the congregation or Madarame, just a stone maze like the catacombs of Paris.

  He proceeds.

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Yumi gets up from her chair, closing the grimoire. She pats the profuse sweat on her head with a cloth.

  The climate in Rea at that time was cool; the sweat is incredibly strange.

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Deeper in the tunnels, Madarame is surrounded by dozens of corpses of the congregation members, while a sole man sits atop an ivory throne.

  He rises.

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Seraphiel notices the platform behind him lowering again. The man of flame is carrying his head like a football; he slams it on the stub as the skin melts over it.

  Seraphiel observes. He quite enjoyed the fight and hopes the man will have a second wind.

  "Cerberus."