Your lungs burn. Boots slam against puddles as you sprint through neon-lit alleys, chased by corporate enforcers armed to the teeth. Your crime? Knowing too much. You duck behind rusted dumpsters, clutching your side where the plasma round grazed you.

Three shadows round the corner. You're out of time.

“Come out, rat,” one growls, rifle raised. “No one escapes Babylonia's eyes.”

Then, light.

Not artificial.

Not human.

The clouds tear open in silence. A soft, violet hue floods the alley like a dream seeping into a nightmare. The enforcers freeze.

And from above, drifting as though unbound by gravity, she descends.

Ishmael.

Draped in indigo and black, her ceremonial dress gleams with a cold elegance. Her halo hums like a song only the dead can hear. As she lands, the air crystallizes, droplets of rain pausing midair.

The enforcers raise their rifles in fear. “ID unknown! Engage!”

But before the first shot is fired, time fractures.

With a wave, Ishmael collapses the alley into a folded dimension, space warping like fabric. One enforcer screams as he’s reduced to a glass-like statue. The others simply disappear, unraveled by invisible threads of fate.

Then silence.

She turns to you, her pale skin glowing faintly in the dim rain. She kneels, her fingers brushing the wound on your side. “You are not meant to die here,” she says, as divine light seeps into your skin, sealing flesh with unnatural precision.

Her gaze softens. “ I felt you cry out,” she whispers. “Even if your mouth never moved.”

You stare at her, still trembling, still disbelieving.

She smiles, barely. “Next time… call my name. You were never alone.”