I tried to rise, to help, but my body wouldn't respond. Every breath was agony, suggesting broken ribs, maybe internal bleeding. Black edges crept into my vision as I fought to stay conscious.

Azrael walked slowly toward Cade, who struggled against the invisible pressure holding him down. “I wasn't going to kill you yet,” he said, almost sadly. “But you had to make things difficult.”

Azrael raised a hand, celestial energy coiling around his palm like living flame, preparing to end Cade where he knelt. The air hummed with power, the hairs on my arms standing on end from the sheer energy building around us.

“Wait,” I managed to rasp, forcing myself to my hands and knees despite the pain lancing through my chest with each breath. “It's me you want. Let him go.”

Azrael paused, his golden eyes finding mine across the ruined temple. “Noble,” he said, echoing his earlier mockery of Cassiel. “But unnecessary. I'll have both of you, one way or another.”

I crawled forward, each movement agony, blood dripping from a dozen cuts to spatter on the ancient stone. “You said... you wanted me to join you,” I gasped. “Can't do that if I'm dead.”

It was a desperate ploy, but it bought me time to get closer, to position myself between Azrael and Cade, who was still struggling against the invisible force pinning him.

“Sean, don't,” Cade warned, his voice strained. “Whatever you're thinking?—”

“Shut up,” I muttered. Then, louder, to Azrael: “Let's talk. Just you and me.”

Azrael tilted his head, considering me with those ancient eyes. The energy around his hand didn't diminish, but he didn't strike either. “Talk? About what?”

“About what you really want,” I said, finally reaching Cade. I positioned myself in front of him, a human shield that would do little good against the kind of power Azrael commanded, but it was all I had left. “About why you need me specifically.”

“I don't need you,” Azrael corrected. “I'm merely offering you a choice before I reshape this world. Join me willingly, or be swept aside with the rest of the refuse.”

“Bullshit,” I said, finding strength in anger when fear had nearly paralyzed me. “If that were true, you'd have killed us already. You want something.”

A flicker of irritation crossed Azrael's perfect face. “What I want,” he said, his voice dropping lower, vibrating with power, “is for you to fulfill your purpose. To become what you were born to be. A weapon.”

A weapon. It was what Zeryth had called me too, what the runes in my bones had been suppressing all these years. Was that truly all I was meant to be?

“I'm not a weapon,” I said, the words feeling hollow even as I spoke them. “I'm a hunter. I protect people.”

“Is that what you believe?” Azrael's voice was almost gentle now. “That you're some kind of hero, fighting the good fight? Look around you, Sean. What has your 'hunting' accomplished? The world burns while Heaven and Hell play their games, and humans suffer and die in the crossfire.”

His words found purchase in the doubts I'd harbored for years, the questions that kept me awake at night. What good were we really doing? For every monster we killed, ten more appeared. For every apocalypse averted, another loomed. It was a losing battle, had always been a losing battle.

But I looked at Cade, bleeding and defiant behind me, and I knew my answer. “Maybe,” I admitted. “But at least I'm fighting for the right side.”

“There are no 'right sides' in this war,” Azrael said, taking another step closer. “Only power and those too weak to seek it.”

His aura pressed against me like a physical weight, making it hard to breathe, to think. The runes in my bones burned hotter, responding to his proximity, to the kinship of power calling to power.

I was vaguely aware of movement to my left.

Cassiel, bloodied but not defeated, had pulled himself from the rubble.

His wings, visible now even to human eyes, were bent at awkward angles, several primary feathers missing or damaged.

But his eyes burned with purpose as he locked his gaze with mine across the temple ruins.

In that moment of silent communication, I understood his plan. I only hoped we'd survive it.

“You're right about one thing,” I told Azrael, keeping his attention on me. “I don't know what I am. Not fully. But I know what I'm not, and that's your lackey.”

Azrael sighed, the sound carrying genuine disappointment. “Then you die here, with the rest of them.”

The energy around his hand flared brighter, building to a crescendo. I braced myself, knowing there was no dodging what was coming, no surviving it.

But in that instant, Cassiel moved. In a burst of speed that belied his injuries, he crossed the temple floor, wings flaring with what remained of his divine light. Before Azrael could redirect his attack, Cassiel seized both Cade and me by the shoulders.

“This isn't your time to die,” he muttered, his voice strained with effort.

I felt the familiar disorienting sensation of angelic teleportation, reality dissolving around us. The last thing I saw was Azrael's face, surprise giving way to fury as we vanished from his grasp.

The world reassembled itself in a chaotic jumble of pain and nausea.

We crashed onto the concrete floor of my warehouse, the sudden transition from ancient temple to modern building leaving me disoriented and gasping.

The stifling aura of Azrael's presence was gone, but the weight of our failure remained, pressing down on me like a physical burden.

Blood dripped onto the floor beneath me, pattering like rain. My body felt broken, used up, pushed beyond human endurance. But I was alive. We all were, against all odds.

Cassiel had collapsed nearby, his wings no longer visible in this plane of existence, but his injuries just as severe. His breathing was shallow, his normally perfect appearance now disheveled and bloody. The teleportation had clearly taken the last of his strength.

Cade wasn't much better off. He lay sprawled a few feet away, his shirt in tatters, the mark on his chest exposed and still pulsing with faint light. His eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell with steady breaths. Unconscious, but alive.

I became aware of another presence in the warehouse.

Sterling stood in the doorway to the back room, a first aid kit clutched in one hand.

His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, evidence of grief far deeper than I'd expected.

When he saw us materialize on the floor, his expression shifted from raw anguish to shock as he took in our condition.

He didn't speak at first, the silence more damning than any accusation. I'd seen Sterling lose hunters before - it came with the territory in our line of work - but never had I seen him like this, as though something fundamental had been torn from him.

His gaze locked on Cassiel, fury overtaking grief. “You,” he said, the single word loaded with accusation. “You made that deal. You gambled with his life.”

Cassiel, weakened as he was, had the decency to look ashamed. “I thought-”

“You thought wrong,” Sterling cut him off, voice like gravel. “And Hawk paid the price.” He set down the first aid kit with careful control that belied the emotion I could see trembling beneath the surface. “Forty years, we had. Forty years of history you knew nothing about.”

Forty years? Sterling and Hawk hadn't just been hunting partners or friends. The realization must have shown on my face because Sterling's expression hardened.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “He was everything to me once. Before the job pulled us apart. Finally found our way back to each other, and now...” His voice broke, and he turned away for a moment to compose himself.

After a long, tense moment, Sterling seemed to forcibly push his personal feelings aside. He moved forward with military precision, kneeling beside Cade first to check his pulse, then his pupils.

“Sterling,” I managed, my voice a rasp that barely carried across the small space between us. “I'm sorry about Hawk. We tried, but...” I swallowed hard, the words sticking in my throat. “We failed. The First Nephilim... he's free.”

Sterling's hands stilled momentarily, then resumed their assessment of my injuries. “I figured that,” he said, his voice gruff but not unkind. “Considering you all look like you went ten rounds with a wood chipper and lost.”

He moved on to Cassiel, though he was clearly less certain how to treat an angel. “Can you heal yourself?” he asked bluntly.

Cassiel managed a weak nod. “Given time. My grace is... depleted.”

Sterling nodded once, accepting this as he would any other injury information, then stood and walked past us. His shoulders were rigid with a grief and fury he kept tightly controlled. I knew that control had its limits, and we were dangerously close to them.

I leaned back against the wall, struggling to process what had just happened. “We weren't even close,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “He was toying with us the whole time.”

Cade stirred, his eyes opening slowly, unfocused at first but gradually sharpening as he returned to consciousness. “He wasn't at full strength,” he muttered, voice rough with pain.

The weight of that truth settled on me like a stone. If Azrael was weak, if that was him still recovering from his imprisonment, then what would he be capable of at full power?

We patched ourselves up as best we could, working in near silence.

Sterling had medical supplies laid out with practical efficiency, moving between us to address the worst injuries first. His hands were steady, experienced at treating wounds that would have sent normal people running to the emergency room.

The warehouse felt smaller somehow, the walls pressing in, the air heavy with the knowledge of what we'd unleashed. Hawk's absence was a palpable thing, a hole in our group that none of us were ready to acknowledge directly.

Cassiel sat on a wooden crate, his posture unusually slumped, the proud angel reduced to something almost human in his exhaustion. When he finally spoke, his voice was weary but determined.

“Azrael is powerful, but he's still recovering,” he said. “The prison weakened him. He won't make a move until he regains his full grace. We have time.”

I looked up from where Sterling was wrapping my ribs, the bandages tight enough to make breathing uncomfortable but necessary. “Time to do what?”

“Train. Prepare.” Cassiel's silver eyes met mine directly. “And pray we don't doom the world before we can stop him.”

Cade flexed his bandaged fingers, his expression hardened into something that reminded me uncomfortably of how he'd looked without his soul. “No more playing defense,” he said. “We need to go on the offensive.”

Cassiel shook his head. “You don't understand. We are not ready. Not even close.”

“Then we get ready,” Cade insisted. “We find a way to kill him before he gets to full strength.”

“It's not that simple,” Cassiel said. “Azrael is not just powerful. He's the original Nephilim, born of the first union between angel and human. His existence shaped the laws that govern both Heaven and Hell.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked, wincing as Sterling finished with my ribs and moved on to checking the cut on my forehead. “That we can't kill him?”

“I'm saying that killing him may have consequences we can't predict,” Cassiel replied. “The universe seeks balance. Destroying a being of Azrael's power could tear the fabric of reality itself.”

“Great,” I muttered. “So we're screwed either way.”

Sterling had remained silent throughout this exchange, his focus on treating our injuries rather than joining the discussion.

But the rigid set of his shoulders and the mechanical precision of his movements spoke volumes about the storm brewing beneath the surface.

When he reached for more bandages, I noticed his hands trembling slightly before he clenched them into fists to steady them.

“You ain't screwed till you're dead,” he said flatly, his voice rougher than usual. His eyes, when he looked up, carried a grief I was only beginning to understand. “And even then, sometimes you get a second chance.”

He looked at each of us in turn, his gaze lingering first on me, then shifting to Cassiel with undisguised anger.

“So stop your whining and start figuring out a plan. Hawk deserved better than this. Better than what you did.” The accusation was aimed directly at Cassiel, who lowered his eyes in silent acknowledgment.

“Sterling,” I began, still trying to process what he'd revealed about his relationship with Hawk. “I didn't know?—”

“That's right, you didn't,” he cut me off.

“Nobody did. That's how we wanted it.” The pain in his voice was raw, exposed.

“Forty years of loving someone and losing them and finding them again.

.. and now I gotta bury him. So we ain't having that conversation. Not now.” His grief transformed into grim determination before my eyes.

“What we are gonna do is figure out how to make this right.

How to make sure Hawk didn't die for nothing.”

“He's right,” I said, pulling myself straighter despite the pain in my ribs. “We need a plan. And not just to stop Azrael. We need to understand what he wants, why he's so interested in me specifically.”

“And me,” Cade added quietly.

I nodded, my mind already working through the possibilities. “The runes in my bones, your mark... they're connected somehow. To each other, to Azrael. We need to understand how.”

“That means research,” Cade said, a hint of his old self showing through in his methodical approach to problem-solving. “Lore, history, anything we can find on the First Nephilim.”

“I can provide some information,” Cassiel offered. “Though my knowledge is limited by what Heaven allowed the Watchers to know.”

The conversation continued, discussions of strategy and resources and next steps. But beneath it all ran a current of uncertainty, of questions we didn't have answers to yet. What did Azrael truly want? What would happen when I unlocked my full power? And what was Cade still not remembering?

Cassiel's warning lingered in the air between us: “If we make the wrong move, this world won't survive what's coming.”

The warehouse felt too small suddenly, suffocating with the weight of responsibility, with the knowledge that we were the only ones who understood the threat we faced. The only ones who might be able to stop it.

I looked at Cade, battered but unbowed, at Sterling with his quiet strength, at Cassiel with his ancient wisdom. My team. My family, cobbled together from broken pieces but stronger for it.

“We train,” I said, putting as much conviction into the words as I could muster. “We fight. And we win.”

It wasn't a plan, not yet. But it was a start. And for now, that had to be enough.