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The figure entered towards the tundra, cloak billowing behind, her graceful gait simulating the dance of a flame. A runic design in a color that reminded me of moonlight was etched onto the lining of her puff-sleeved crimson shirt and full skirt, flaring with every swing of her arms.

Lean sable fingers clasped the edges of her hood before it could blow back and reveal her features, the movement riding up the hem of her shirt, revealing the tight band of skin around her belly button.

But that’s not what stole the breath from my lungs.

What must have been a thousand feathered wings of the purest white outstretched from her back, gleaming in the desolate landscape. I gazed after her like I would at a fire: mesmerized and unmoving.

I was staring at a literal angel.

The next vortex in line was the only thing in the world that could grab my attention.

Emerald sparks erupted from its inner rings and showered the ground, some catching the backdraft and singeing the earth around my feet. I curled my legs in even more as mossy wreaths of energy coalesced into the flesh of another being. Green finery came to bloom as the figure ducked to exit, a muddy mound the lone trace of her journey here as the wormhole crumbled in on itself.

Cool platinum hair slipped out from the cover of this ethereal being’s short, hooded cowl as she marched onto the dusty terrain. Her hand, so fair it popped against the stale, stark world like snow falling on an overcast day, twirled at a loose strand. A circular pattern in a metallic identical to the other angel’s adorned the sides of her breeches and ribbed tunic.

The soil speckled the heels of her knee-high boots and clung with a magnetic attraction to the tips of her untucked wings.

“Akosua, I should have known you’d be the first to arrive,” the newcomer said with a bite of sarcasm that made my ears perk as she joined her comrade in red.

“And here I assumed you’d be the last.” Akosua’s smoldering tone hit me like déjà vu. I racked my brain, but where would I have heard it? She inclined her head. “Cute boots.”

The angel in green pretended to squash a bug. “I’m not the one whose ass is on the line. And thanks,” she added, sticking her leg out, admiring them herself.

“Every time you cuss, Gaia, I swear a baby cherub dies.” A playfulness lined Akosua’s words.

Gaia exhaled heavily. “You say that about all my vices.”

A gust carried their banter, blending their laughter with its sighs. I watched in awe, a curl of familiarity growing in my stomach and practically banging on the back of my head.

Plumes of daytime protruded from the third vortex, sheathing them in a buttery light. Like a rising dawn, it illuminated the sparse plain, near blinding as the helix accelerated and a winged human frame eclipsed the light. A breeze fanned her knee-length cloak, revealing the silvery white insignia stitched onto her amber bodysuit and matching leggings. She drifted out to join the others, lithe frame and feathers clad in rays from a sun that wasn’t above her.

Gaia turned. “Fei, we almost thought you wouldn’t make it.” The shadow from her cowl still blocked her face, but I sensed the teasing in her tone.

“Please, I’m always on time. Some idiot released a demon over Shanghai.” Fei stalked towards them as the wormhole released to the wind, she too shielded by the contour of a hood, aside from the slightest dip in her neckline that revealed her light fawn collarbone. “I’d never miss a meeting with my favorite Watchers.”

The three of them together, and I knew in an instant.

These were my Voices, in the flesh.

Holy sh—maybe I shouldn’t finish that thought; I was in the presence of angels. But the realization hit me harder than my near-back-breaking landing into their realm.

I was in complete shock and at the same time…I wasn’t. I wished I could say it had never occurred to me this was a possibility—that the voices who hijacked the sounds of the world, and in turn my senses, weren’t just a manifestation of my grief. That they were more than the darkest parts of my reflection that I was literally killing myself to keep hidden.

I’d silenced those ideas because it seemed like a way out of facing my reality, my grief. But deep down a piece of me had always known a greater meaning existed beyond their words.

Beyond me.

Watcher. Every whisper, holler, murmur…every spoken variation of the word over the last ten years replayed in my mind. Dizziness rocked me forward and my palms planted me firm as I stared at the loose pebbles, inches from my nose.

I took a ragged inhale and looked up. There was still another vortex left…

Azure ribbons poured out of the maelstrom, sparkling like the top of the sea, surging with the swell of its inner workings, crashing against invisible boundaries. It sprayed the rocks with a salty vapor and pattered the soil with rain. Rearing back, it strained under its own tidal influence until a figure was released with the small break of a wave.

Her drawn feathers shuddered, glistening as if touched by a spring morning’s dew. The layered slip of her ultramarine dress flocked beneath her rich blue robe, submerging the rest of her body in loose, flowy fabric. Similar to the first three angels, I couldn’t see the face beneath her hood, but I felt her purpose—a clear spark of recognition I felt deep in my fluttering heart as if it were my own.

Something in me pushed me to my feet, and I stumbled towards them, ignoring the intense burst of pain in my back.

As Akosua, Gaia, and Fei shifted to acknowledge the newcomer, the emblems on their seams reflected off the overcast sky. Emblems I’d passed off as standard patterns in the fabric, but these were something more. These were the Empyrean symbols for the elements—the ones I’d drawn on Myrian’s door: fire, earth, air, water.