Arthur Ketch has killed many things in his life.

Monsters that begged, monsters that laughed, monsters that looked almost human when the blade went in. He knows the weight of power intimately: how it feels to walk into a room knowing you are the most dangerous thing in it, knowing that whatever stands in front of you can be ended with enough preparation and the correct weapon. It’s a comfort, that certainty. A structure and something he’s built his entire existence upon.

This is not that.

The air shifts before he even sees you, pressure settling low and heavy against his ribs, like the world itself has taken a slow, uneasy breath. It isn’t the familiar hum of angelic grace—not the sharp, burning presence of Castiel (that he just met once or twice before) or the distant, cold authority of Heaven’s rank and file.

This is older, deeper: it crawls beneath his skin rather than striking it head-on, setting every instinct he has finely tuned over decades of hunting on edge.

Ketch stops short, boots planted firmly against the concrete, fingers flexing unconsciously near the weapon at his side. For the first time in a very long while, he doesn’t know which one would be appropriate: angel blade, sigils, bullets soaked in sanctified blood or whether any of them would matter.

You stand there with no obvious threat, no grand display of power, and yet the space around you feels wrong, warped, as though reality is quietly bending itself out of deference.

He studies you the way he would a new species of monster, cataloguing details with clinical precision. The way shadows cling a second too long, the way the air hums faintly, like a distant choir buried under centuries of silence. This isn’t something the Men of Letters trained him for and here are no notes in the archives about how to deal with something that feels like it predates the rules entirely.

Arthur has faced archangels before (or at least the echoes of their destruction) and lived to tell the tale. He’s never mistaken himself for a god, but he has always believed, deep down, that with enough preparation, anything could be killed.

But standing in front of you, that belief fractures. Not shatters; he’s too disciplined for that, but cracks, hairline and dangerous, spreading through the foundation of everything he thought he understood.

His jaw tightens, the habitual smirk refusing to come. Killing vampires and ghouls is simple enough. Even angels follow patterns, arrogance being their most exploitable weakness. You, however, are watching him in a way that suggests you already know every move he could make before he considers it.

For the first time in years, Ketch is acutely aware of his own mortality: not as a theoretical concept, but as something very real, very fragile. He straightens anyway; if he’s going to be outmatched, he’ll at least be composed.

“You don’t feel like Heaven,” he says quietly, voice steady despite the tension coiling tight in his chest. “More... ancient, if I may,” a pause, eyes never leaving you, “I don’t believe running away would improve my luck.”