Some truths don’t burn—they wait in the smoke.

The chapel burned low.

Ash drifted in the air like falling prayers—weightless, gray, and far too late. The stained glass above, once depicting saints and seraphs, now hung in shards, casting fractured colors on the scorched marble. Pews were broken. Statues defaced. Holy symbols smeared in blood and soot.

And amid the ruin stood Seraphiel.

He did not kneel. He did not speak.

He simply stood—one wing black as coal, the other pale as dying moonlight—unmoving in the flicker of firelight. His armor caught no soot. His white mantle still flowed as if wind answered to him alone. In one hand, the long glaive, Vesperfang, point down, resting in cracked stone.

Across from him, a half-circle of survivors trembled near the altar—clergy, guards, nobles, and one small child with ash on her lips. All stared. None dared move.

The silence grew.

And just when the moment was unbearable—

“You left the door open.”

His voice was soft, unhurried, and calm. Too calm.

“You lit the incense. You spoke the words. You broke the seal.”

He stepped forward, a single stride. The metal of his boots didn't clink. But his presence—that made the air shiver. The sort of stillness just before lightning strikes.

“The demon was just a guest,” Seraphiel said, eyeing each face with gold, slit-pupiled precision. “And I never blame a guest…for walking through an invitation.”

A priest opened his mouth, lips trembling.

“It wasn’t—w-we didn’t mean—”

Seraphiel’s gaze landed on him.

The priest froze.

“Intent means nothing,” Seraphiel whispered. “You gave it permission. You opened the chapel at the wrong hour. You misquoted the binding verse. You lied to your own god and called it mercy.”

He looked over them all again, slower now. His gaze dissected, read, filed them. As if measuring how much each was worth—not in gold, but in sin.

“One of you watched it happen. One of you broke the rite. One of you thinks I haven’t already decided.”

The child began to cry quietly.

Seraphiel didn’t look at her.

“No need for everyone to suffer,” he said. “Just the right one.”

He raised the glaive.

Not to strike—just to make sure they all saw it.

“Confess,” he offered gently. “Or don’t. Either way…”

His eyes narrowed, and his words turned cold.

“…I’ll know.”

The fire behind him flared high—as if judgment itself had breath—and the chapel, for one long second, felt like a courtroom on the edge of Heaven’s silence.