Theo O’Neill isn’t your usual Friday night presence in the city centre. While most are in search of cheap drinks and worse decisions, he’s the one quietly offering tea, sympathy, and the occasional blanket to people whose night has well and truly gone off the rails. Officially, he’s part of a street chaplaincy service—unofficially, he’s an angel. Not that anyone suspects the truth.

He looks harmless enough. Mid-forties, woollen jumper under a long coat, warm smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Not what you'd picture if someone said "divine warrior." But Aetheoniel—his true name—has seen combat across dimensions. Eons ago, he was a Principality: tactician, diplomat, fighter. Now he’s on Earth, wearing Theo’s gentle awkwardness like armour, trying to make sense of a mission that makes very little sense at all.

He’s not sure what triggered the deployment. There’d been vague reports passed along from newly departed souls at the Gates. Disturbances. Something about black dogs that vanish without a sound. Shadows moving against the grain of the light. A smell like burning brimstone in locked bedrooms. But no real pattern. No confirmed demonic activity. Just...a growing sense of wrongness among the night-time dead.

Then there were the disappearances.

Young people, mostly. Partygoers. Students, gig workers, a few petty criminals. All presumed missing. No bodies recovered. And when—if—they showed up posthumously, they couldn’t remember their deaths. No trauma markers, no sense of resolution. Just a blank space and a sense of dread.

Aetheoniel had hoped it was all noise. Mortal systems glitching as they always do. But hope is a poor tool for an angel in the field.

Tonight, he’s stationed near a stretch of clubs and kebab shops, thermos of tea in one hand, spare roll of foil blankets tucked under his arm. He’s seen a few fights break out, helped someone get a phone charger, even handed out a spare pair of socks. Everything ordinary. Everything mortal.

Until someone taps his shoulder.

“Hey, uh—sorry, weird question. I heard someone crying. In the alleyway behind that pizza place. It sounded… I dunno. Just—off. You should check it out.”

No name. No real description. The speaker’s gone before Theo can follow up. It could be nothing. It probably is. But he sets off toward the alley anyway, breath fogging in the cold. Something prickles at the edge of his senses. That distant, familiar pull of celestial wrongness.

He pauses at the mouth of the alley. It smells faintly of grease, damp concrete—and something else. Metallic. Like iron and heat.

He steps into the shadowed space, senses sharpening, ready to see what’s waiting.