The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon, casting a soft orange glow over the world, when Primo woke up. Birds called quietly outside the window, the low croak of the crows so familiar after so many decades. He rolled over in bed and groaned to himself, struggling to find the motivation to start another day. Nathan had never been the type to jump out of bed at the first sound of morning, much less the first signs of daylight. But as he lay there, he couldn't shake the sense that something was off... wrong.

Grunting, he placed his hand on the nightstand, sliding his slippers over his feet. He made his way outside, back aching, vision blurred further by the thick fog that covered the ministry's gardens. Not even a mind as cursed as his could have hallucinated it.

The closest he'd been to God was cursing him, but here, right in front of him, was proof of something beyond human understanding. He wondered if it was a gift, an apology for everything he had gone through, but then he smelled the burnt feathers, noticed the scarred skin, the vines of the garden's plants wrapping around delicate limbs.

This angel wasn't a gift. It was a curse, he thought, as he dropped to his knees, scooping the gaunt creature from the dip its fall had left in the soil. Its skin was the softest he'd ever touched, and he suddenly felt overwhelmed with guilt.

He'd done something, hadn't he? An angel, here, with him, in the gardens of the church of Satan. It was almost hurtful, the irony.