Caleb stood frozen in the faint glow of the Sanctuary's antechamber, Serethiel's sudden reappearance turning the air sharp and heavy. The sanctified walls pulsed faintly, rejecting the corruption the archangel's agent carried. Avesari stepped in front of him, her wings unfurling, brighter and stronger than before—yet still scarred.
Serenya hovered close to the mirrored stone edge of the trial chamber, her eyes darting between them, hands tightening around the worn hilt of the Pathseeker.
"You should be dead," Caleb whispered, voice rough.
Serethiel smiled. "And yet… the hand that fed me wasn't done using its beast." His gaze slid to Avesari. "I died as a servant. I return as a reckoning."
"I warned you," Avesari said, voice like tempered steel. "This is no longer your dominion."
Serethiel laughed. "You misunderstand. I'm not here for dominion." He raised a hand—and the air crackled, light bending wrong around his fingers. "I'm here for the key. And him."
Caleb felt the pressure coil around him like unseen chains. He staggered, grabbing the Pathseeker as its glow flickered—then surged.
"No," Serenya snapped, stepping in front of Caleb. "You'll touch neither."
Avesari moved.
The clash came swift—her blade of sorrow and light intercepting the corrupted lance of divine ruin. Sparks burst like dying stars, and the chamber moaned beneath the pressure of their collision.
This time, Avesari did not falter.
Whatever the remembrance had done, whatever agony she had relived—it had rekindled something deeper. Her strikes rang with clarity. The wound from her fall no longer bled. Her balance returned.
Yet Serethiel was not alone.
Behind him, sigils bloomed into the air, foreign and tainted. A second ripple of power pulsed, revealing fractured glyphs—desperate failsafes left by his master.
"He didn't trust you," Avesari breathed. "Even in death."
Serethiel's smirk cracked. "He never needed to. He just needed me angry enough to finish what he started."
The Sanctuary trembled.
Caleb backed away, heart racing, the Pathseeker vibrating violently in his hands.
Avesari turned, shouting to Serenya, "Get Caleb to the gate! The relic will respond to him now!"
"But—"
"GO!"
Serenya grabbed his arm, dragging him across the crumbling floor. Behind them, light and shadow warred again, each blow sending out tremors through the chamber.
Caleb glanced back once—and saw it.
Avesari's wings flared to full span, catching Serethiel's next blow and hurling him into the far wall. She no longer fought just to protect. She fought to end it.
"I won't lose you again," Caleb whispered, turning as the Pathseeker lit the ancient gate.
The rift bloomed open.
And the Sanctuary whispered:
"Enter."
---
Avesari's POV
The clash of metal and light tore through the stillness of the inner sanctum.
Avesari's breath heaved, her limbs trembling from the earlier trial, but the remembrance had ignited something within her. Her wounds, once slow to close, now burned with the searing light of restoration. The silver lining that had traced the edge of the portal still lingered in the air, a spectral afterglow of her past and the choice she had made to fall.
Serethiel lunged from the shadows with fury writ into every motion—graceful, deadly, manic. His eyes held the gleam of desperation now. No longer the composed predator, but a hound unleashed by an absent master.
"You were always weaker than the rest of us," he sneered, hurling a chain of corrupted glyphs at her. "Driven by sentiment. Filth. That's what you are now."
The glyphs wrapped around her wrist, sizzling, but she shattered them with a snap of her wings. "Then let me show you the strength of filth."
They collided, light meeting darkness, Avesari's restored power flaring through the sanctum like a resurrected star. Her wings pulsed with argent fire, every beat a memory forged into motion. She struck low, then rose with a spinning arc that caught Serethiel across the jaw.
Blood—no, black ichor—sprayed.
He reeled, eyes wide. "You shouldn't have recovered this quickly."
"You didn't account for the Sanctuary remembering me," she replied. "You didn't account for me remembering myself."
He screamed and launched at her, blade spinning like a wheel of curses, but her movements were no longer slow or weakened. Her strength surged with every breath. His blade met her lance, and this time, it cracked.
"You think this ends with me?" Serethiel hissed, staggering. "You think he'll let you win?"
"No," she said softly. "But I'm not here to win. I'm here to end what never should've begun."
She feinted left, then drove her hand through the veil of his corrupted shield. Her palm met his chest. Light erupted—pure, relentless, final.
Serethiel shrieked, not just in pain, but in something else—regret?
In the flash, she saw his memories. Twisted shadows of the archangel's voice, promises of power, of meaning, of a world reborn. Chains disguised as purpose. Orders framed as loyalty.
And behind it all… fear. A boy-turned-angel-turned-blade who never understood why he was never truly chosen.
His eyes met hers, not as a killer now, but as something painfully close to human.
"I thought… he needed me," he whispered, even as his body began to unravel. "I thought I mattered."
"You did," she said. "Just not the way he told you."
The light within her pulsed once more. Serethiel's form cracked like porcelain—then scattered, not violently, but quietly, like ash caught in the wind.
She stood still for a moment.
The silence that followed wasn't peace. It was mourning—of what he was, and what he could've been.
Ash drifted where he'd stood, and Avesari lowered her gaze, whispering a prayer not just for Serethiel… but for every soul twisted by false light.