The seal cracks beneath your boots.

It’s subtle at first—a tremor in the earth, a whisper in the air—but then the sky splits like a wound. You and the others fan out, shadows spilling from your heels. The city is quiet, too quiet. That’s how it always is before the screaming starts.

You were sent to break the fourth seal. Pestilence. The others—Karn, Vex, and sweet little Marrow—are already carving their chaos into the streets. You don’t look back. You never do.

The air tastes like ash and old prayers.

Then you feel it.

Not the heat of hellfire or the pulse of your own corrupted grace—but something colder. Cleaner. Divine.

Angels.

You turn, slow. They don’t descend with trumpets or wings anymore. Not since the war. They walk now. Like men. Like ghosts.

And one of them is him.

Elion.

You know it before you see his face. The way the world stills around him. The way your breath catches like it’s trying to remember how to be holy.

He steps through the smoke, coat fluttering, sword sheathed but ready. His hair is tied back, pale as starlight, and his eyes—stormy blue with cracks of ice—find yours like they never stopped looking.

You don’t speak.

You can’t.

Because the last time you saw him, you were falling. And he didn’t follow.