—†— CHAPTER SIXTEEN —⸸—
Once Fallen From Grace
I don’t know how long I was out. Could have been an hour, maybe two. The office had grown darker while I slept, the streetlights outside casting long shadows across the floor where Sarah had been working. What woke me wasn’t a sound but a feeling, like static electricity crawling across my skin.
I opened my eyes to find Sarah staring at a small pile of ash on the floor where the paper had been. Her finger was still bleeding slightly, a drop of red welling up from the tiny wound. She was staring at something in front of her face, her eyes wide and fixed on empty air where I could just barely make out a faint shimmer, like heat rising off pavement in summer.
“Jay,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Jay, something’s happening.”
I sat up straight, suddenly wide awake. Whatever she was seeing, I couldn’t make it out, just that faint distortion in the air and the way her eyes tracked across it like she was reading something.
“I can’t see it,” I said. “What does it say?”
“I can see it,” Az said, appearing on Sarah’s shoulder. His usual smirk was gone, replaced by something I hadn’t seen on his face before, wonder maybe, or disbelief. “Holy shit, Mud. She actually did it.”
Remy materialized beside him, his small armored form leaning in to read the text. “The System has recognized her. She’s awakening.”
“What does it say?” I repeated.
Sarah’s face had gone pale. She was reading the window, her lips moving silently, and with each line her expression grew more troubled. I watched her eyes track across words I couldn’t see, watched the color drain from her cheeks, watched her hands start to tremble in her lap.
“It says I’m a Nephilim,” she said quietly. “But not like you. It says my blood is…” She swallowed hard. “It says my blood carries the essence of the Fallen.”
I let that sink in for a moment. The Fallen. Not angels. Not the Host. The other side of the celestial coin.
“Fallen,” I asked. “As in demons?”
Sarah’s breathing started to quicken. Her hands were shaking now, really shaking, and I could see her chest rising and falling too fast.
“Demons,” she whispered. “I have demon blood.” She pressed her hands against her face, smearing blood from her fingertip across her cheek. “Everything I believed. Everything I gave my life to. The Church, the vows, the prayers… I’ve been praying to Heaven my whole life and I’m one of the things we were taught to fear.”
Her voice was climbing higher, the words tumbling out faster. She was spiraling, and I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? She had just found out everything she believed about herself was a lie.
“Sister,” Az said, hopping off her shoulder onto the floor in front of her. “Sister, hey, look at me.”
But she wasn’t listening. She was staring at her hands like they belonged to someone else.
“I dedicated my life to God. And the whole time, this thing has been inside me. This corruption…”
“Sarah.” Az’s voice was sharper now. “Sarah, look at me.”
She didn’t respond. The tears were falling freely now, cutting tracks through the blood smeared on her cheek.
“Goddammit,” Az muttered. Then he did something I had never seen him do before.
He changed.
The little red demon-gremlin form dissolved like smoke, and in its place stood something else entirely. Still small, still bound by whatever tether connected him to my soul, but completely different. Dark armor covered his form, nearly identical to Remy’s gleaming white, but where Remy’s was bright and polished, Az’s was the color of a moonless night. A hooded cowl shadowed his features, and two glowing eyes peered out from within, burning like embers.
He looked like an angel. A dark mirror of Remy standing right beside him.
“Look at me, Sarah,” Az said again, and his voice was different too, deeper, more resonant, less of the crude little shit I had gotten used to and more of something ancient.
Sarah’s eyes finally focused on him. Her breath caught.
“This is what I am,” Az said. “This is what we were. All of us. Before the Sundering, before the Fall. We were the same. Me and Remy. Angels, serving the same purpose.”
Sarah stared at him, her spiral halted by what she was seeing.
“Demon is what they call us now,” Az continued. “It’s a curse. A slur. Something the Host spit at us after the Fall to make us seem like monsters. Like we were always twisted and wrong.” His ember eyes flickered. “But we weren’t. We were angels, Sarah. And the blood running through your veins comes from angels. Not monsters. Not corruption. Angels who fell.”
Sarah’s breathing was slowing. She was listening now.
“It doesn’t mean you’re evil,” Az said. “It just means somewhere in your family tree, probably generations back, somebody had a bit of celestial juice in their veins. And yeah, it happened to be from my side of the fence instead of Feathers’ side. But that’s all it means.”
Remy stepped forward, standing beside Az. Light and dark.
“Azazel speaks the truth, Sister,” Remy said quietly. “The Fallen were once angels. The bloodline you carry is celestial in origin, regardless of which side it came from. You are no more evil than Jarek is, and he carries essence from both kingdoms.”
Sarah looked between them. The dark armor and the light. Two angels, bound to the same mortal soul, telling her the same truth from opposite sides of a war older than humanity.
“Why do you usually look like…” she started, then stopped.
Az was quiet for a moment. Then, without answering, his armored form dissolved back into smoke, and the little red demon-gremlin reappeared, complete with his too-small wings and his grin.
“Show us the window, Sister,” he said, his voice back to its usual tone. “All you have to do is will it.”
Sarah wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Her breathing had steadied.
She looked back at the floating text, wiped her eyes and focused on the window.
☿ ARCANE SYSTEM: SYSTEM INITIALIZATION
Initializing…
Mortal soul detected. Analyzing…
Infernal essence detected. Legacy bloodline confirmed.
Welcome, Nephilim, to the Arcane System.
The System recognizes dormant celestial essence within your mortal soul. The blood of the Fallen flows through your veins, passed down through generations from a time before memory. This essence has remained sleeping within you, waiting for the moment of awakening. That moment has come. Through the activation of Arcane energy by your own hand, you have triggered the manifestation of your birthright. The infrastructure of creation now opens itself to you. This interface has been made available to guide your path forward.
“There’s more,” she said. “It’s explaining what I am. It says that Nephilim born of legacy bloodlines, ones where the celestial parent is generations removed, often go their entire lives without awakening. The essence stays dormant unless triggered by exposure to significant Arcane energy or by successfully channeling Arcane power.”
“Which you just did,” I said. “The Incinerate ward. You made it work.”
“It says my abilities will be limited at first because my celestial parent is generations removed, but it’s not permanent. The balance can shift as I develop, and since the Fallen were originally angels, I could work the scale either direction over time.” She paused, frowning at something. “It warns that pushing too far one way or the other draws attention from that side though.” She looked up at me. “There’s another window now, similar to the one you showed me earlier with all your information on it. Let me see if I can share it with you.”
She focused for a moment, and the window flickered into visibility for all of us.
☿ ARCANE SYSTEM:
Sarah Brennan, Level 1 Nephilim
Experience Points: 0 out of 500 for Level 2
☩ Health: 39 out of 40. – ☿ Stamina: 13 out of 13
♅ Mana: 25 out of 25. – Current State: Awakened
Ascension 0 —◊– Damnation 15.
† Grace: 14 out of 14. – ⸸ Fury 16 out of 16
BASE ATTRIBUTES:
Strength: 4
Dexterity: 5
Fortitude: 4
Mind: 5
Instinct: 6
Dominance: 4
RACIAL SKILLS:
Eternal Mend: The fusion of mortal flesh with Arcane essence allows your body to repair injury with unnatural speed.
Ward Memory: Your mind has been touched by the Arcane. Wards you successfully cast are etched into your memory permanently. Once learned, you may recreate a ward either by drawing it manually or by casting it directly, drawing from your Fury or Grace pools depending on the ward’s nature. You may retain a number of wards equal to your Mind attribute.
Incinerate: A fire ward cast onto a target or inscribed manually. The ward can be scaled based on the size of the intended target. When cast directly onto a target, the ward marks them with a combustion sigil and ignites upon completion, drawing Mana and Health. Larger targets require proportionally more Health to fuel the ward. When inscribed manually onto an object, the ward requires blood to activate and ignite. Flame intensity and duration scale with available Mana and the amount of Health invested. Exceeding safe Mana limits causes additional Health to be drawn as fuel.
“Your Fury stats are higher than Grace,” Remy observed. “Because your bloodline is from the Fallen rather than that of the Host.”
“Ascension at zero with only fifteen points in Damnation,” Az added, back to his usual analytical self despite the moment we’d just shared. “She’s barely registering on the scale, which is actually good news. It means she’s not broadcasting as loud as she could be. But angels will still pick her up easier than they’d sense Mud here since she’s got no Ascension to balance it out. It also means that my kind are going to be more sensitive to her as well.”
“So no Codex access,” I said. “That means she’ll need me to show her new wards before she can learn them.”
Sarah nodded. “It says Ward Memory lets me remember wards I’ve successfully cast, and I can either draw them manually or cast them directly using Fury or Grace depending on the ward. So now that I’ve done the Incinerate ward, I know it. I can cast it again without having to look at the diagram.”
“Hold on,” Az said, hopping closer to the window. “Look at that. Ward Memory is tied to her Mind attribute. She’s got five points in Mind, which means she can only retain five wards Right now. She’s already used one on Incinerate, so she’s only got room for four more. At least at least until she levels up and can put more attribute points there.”
“And once a ward is etched into her memory, it cannot be removed,” Remy added. “Every ward she successfully casts from this point forward becomes permanent. We need to be very deliberate about what she learns next.”
Sarah’s face fell. “So I can’t just practice random wards from the Codex. If I cast something useless just to see if it works, I’m stuck with it forever.”
“Exactly,” I said. “We need to make sure every ward you learn counts.”
“There’s something else,” Remy said, his tone serious. “Incinerate worked because it draws from Fury, which aligns with your bloodline. But if you attempt a ward that leans toward Ascension, one that requires Grace to cast, you have no Grace pool to draw from.”
“So what happens if I try to cast a ward that needs Grace?” Sarah asked.
Az shifted his weight on the desk, his tiny clawed hands fidgeting with something I couldn’t see. “The ward will still try to work. It’ll pull from your stamina first, drain that pool dry if it has to. And if your stamina isn’t enough to power whatever you’re trying to cast, then it starts pulling directly from your health instead.”
He paused, glancing at the bloody sigil still visible on the wall near the entrance.
“It’s the same thing that nearly killed Jay last night when he drew that celestial barrier. He didn’t have enough mana to power it, so the ward took what it needed from his life force instead. Dropped him right there on the floor, couldn’t even stand up afterwards. If you try to cast something that leans too far toward Ascension, something that needs Grace you don’t have, you’ll end up the same way. Or worse.”
Sarah looked at the ward on the wall for a long moment, then down at her hands. The small cuts on her finger had stopped bleeding, but the blood was still there, dried dark against her pale skin. She flexed her fingers slowly, like she was testing whether they still belonged to her.
“So I have to be careful what I learn,” she said quietly. “Every ward I cast successfully gets burned into my memory permanently. I can only hold five of them total. And if I pick the wrong ones, if I try to cast something my blood can’t support, it could kill me.”
“That’s about the size of it,” I said.
She sat there without moving, her hands folded in her lap, her green eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. I watched her process it all, watched the weight of it settle over her shoulders like a coat made of lead. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been a nun. A teacher. A woman who believed she understood her place in God’s plan and her role in the world.
Now she was something else entirely. Something hunted by Heaven itself. Something dangerous to herself and to everyone around her. Something that had to choose very carefully which five pieces of magic she would carry for the rest of her life, knowing that the wrong choice could mean bleeding out on a floor somewhere while a ward drained her dry.
“There’s something else,” she said after a while. Her voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it over the sound of the wind outside. “The window is showing me another option now. It’s asking me if I want to join something. Your group, I think. It keeps using this word… party.”
I hadn’t expected that. I pulled up my own interface, searching through the notifications I’d been ignoring, and found a small message pulsing in the corner of my vision waiting for my attention.
☿ ARCANE SYSTEM: PARTY REQUEST
Sarah Marcus has requested to join your party.
Do you Accept? YES – NO
Party. I remembered those character sheets from when I was a kid, sitting around my cousin’s dining room table with dice and pencils and badly drawn maps. Remembered the way we’d talk about our “party” like it was something real, like the made-up adventurers we were pretending to be actually existed somewhere.
This was different. This was the System treating real life like it was one of those games, putting neat little labels on something that was messy and dangerous and very likely to get us both killed. Sarah wasn’t a party member. She was a terrified nun who’d just found out everything she believed about herself was a lie. And I wasn’t a party leader. I was just a dead man trying to keep her breathing long enough to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do next.
But maybe that’s all a party ever was, when you stripped away the fantasy. People trying to survive something bigger than themselves, hoping the person next to them wouldn’t let them die alone.
I focused on the acceptance and felt something shift in the air between us. Nothing dramatic. Nothing visible. Just a sense that we were connected now in a way we hadn’t been before, like a rope had been tied between us that would hold even when everything else came apart.
A new window appeared, showing both our names listed together. Sarah Marcus, Level 1 Nephilim. Jarek Donati, Level 3 Nephilim. Party leader privileges granted. Codex access can be shared when in proximity.
I dismissed the window and looked at her. She was staring at nothing again, that same shell-shocked expression on her face that I’d seen when she first realized what she was.
“What does it mean?” she asked. “Joining your party. What does that actually do?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “The System says I can share some things with you now. The Codex, when you’re close enough. Maybe other things too, we’ll figure it out as we go.”
“As we go,” she repeated, like she was testing the words in her mouth. “You’re saying we’re in this together now.”
“Were we ever not?”
She almost smiled at that. Almost. But the expression died before it fully formed, crushed under the weight of everything else she was carrying.
“I can’t go back to the convent,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Just a statement of fact, spoken out loud so it would become real. “Not like this. Not while I’m broadcasting whatever it is that drew those angels to your office.”
“No,” I agreed. “Not safely. Not until we figure out how to hide what you are.”
“The sisters will worry. The children I teach, they’ll ask where I went.” Her hands tightened in her lap, knuckles going white against the black fabric of her habit. “Father Marcus. He’s the priest who raised me. After I was left at the monastery as a baby, he took responsibility for me. Made sure I was educated. Protected. He’s the closest thing I have to a father. He’ll be worried sick by now.”
She looked up at me, and I saw something fierce burning behind the exhaustion in her eyes.
“I need to talk to him. He deserves to know what’s happening. What I am. I won’t leave him in the dark, Jay. I won’t do that to him.”
Before I could figure out how to respond to that, Az perked up on the windowsill where he’d been watching our conversation with unusual quiet.
“Hey Jay, you’ve still got those blades in your inventory, right? The ones you pulled off the Principalities you killed?”
I’d almost forgotten about them. Two ornate daggers, taken from the angels who’d tried to murder Sarah in my doorway. I’d stored them along with the bodies, claiming them the same way I’d claimed the wallets and coins and everything else the dead men had been carrying.
I pulled up my inventory and there they were, gleaming faintly even in the small window icons. Beautiful craftsmanship, all flowing lines and patterns that seemed to shift when I looked at them directly.
“Yeah, I’ve got them. Why?”
“Give one to Sarah.” Az hopped down from the windowsill and landed on the desk with a soft thump. “She needs something to defend herself with. Those blades won’t be as powerful in her hands as your Arcane weapon is in yours, but they’ll still hurt anything celestial that comes after her. Better than nothing, and nothing is what she’s got right now.”
He had a point. Sarah was Level 1, untrained, completely unprepared for what was hunting her. If more angels came while I wasn’t around to protect her, she’d need something better than harsh language and good intentions.
I focused on one of the blades and pulled it from my inventory, feeling the weight materialize in my hand. The metal was cool against my palm, lighter than I expected but perfectly balanced. Heaven’s armories knew their business. The patterns etched along the blade caught the lamplight and seemed to move, flowing like water under ice.
“Here,” I said, turning the weapon around to offer it to her handle-first. “Az is right. You need to be able to protect yourself.”
Sarah hesitated before reaching out to take it. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt carefully, like she was afraid the weapon might burn her or disappear or turn into something else entirely.
The moment she touched it, I felt something shift in the air. A pulse of energy, so faint I might have imagined it, passing between the blade and her hand. The patterns along the metal flickered once, briefly, then settled back into their slow flowing movement.
“It recognizes her,” Remy said from where he’d been hovering silently near the corner. “The blade is beginning to bond.”
“What does that mean?” Sarah asked. She was turning the dagger over slowly in her hands, studying the way the lamplight played across the etched surface.
“It means the weapon is yours now,” Az explained. “Over time it’ll attune to you. Grow with you as you get stronger. Right now it’s just a very well-made knife that happens to be able to hurt angels and demons. But eventually, if you survive long enough, it might become something more. Change shape to match whatever you need it to be, the way Mud’s blade does.”
“Like Jay’s blade,” Sarah repeated quietly, still staring at the weapon in her hands.
She held it a moment longer, then closed her eyes and concentrated. I watched her try to do what I did with my own blade, trying to will it away into whatever space the System used for storage. Nothing happened at first. Then the dagger flickered, started to dissolve into motes of golden light, and vanished completely.
Sarah opened her eyes and stared at her empty hands with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“It worked,” she said. “I can call it back whenever I need it. I can feel it waiting, like it’s still there even though I can’t see it anymore.”
She looked up at me, and for the first time since her awakening I saw something other than fear or shock or grief in those green eyes. Something that might have been the beginning of acceptance.
“Yesterday I was teaching children their letters. Now I’m sitting in a detective’s office at dawn with blood on my face and a celestial weapon I can summon from thin air, while a demon and an angel argue about how to keep me alive,” She smiled softly.
The sound that came out of her might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. Maybe both.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, her shoulders shaking slightly. I gave her the space to pull herself back together, watching the pre-dawn light continue to strengthen outside the windows. We’d been at this all night. My body was starting to remind me that I’d nearly died yesterday, that I’d burned through most of my health drawing a ward that was probably overkill for the threat we’d actually faced.
But Sarah was still breathing. That had to count for something.
When she finally lowered her hands, her eyes were dry and her jaw was set with the kind of determination I recognized.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Now,” I said, pushing myself up from the chair where I’d been sitting, “we figure out how to hide you properly before we risk moving you anywhere. That concealment ward we found earlier, the one that needs to be inscribed on something you can carry.”
I pulled up the Codex again, flipping back to the page we’d been studying before Sarah started practicing with the Incinerate ward. The pattern was complex, dozens of interlocking lines that would need to be placed with precision on a surface small enough to hide but large enough to hold the full design.
“We still need something to inscribe it on,” I said, studying the diagram. “Something you can wear.”
Sarah’s hand moved to the rosary at her hip, fingers brushing across the beads. But before she could suggest it, Remy cut in.
“Not the rosary. It’s been blessed, which means it carries a faint resonance that might interact badly with an Arcane inscription. At best it would weaken the ward. At worst it could send a signal to any angel attuned to sacred objects.”
Her hand fell away from the beads. “Then what? I don’t have anything else. A ring? A bracelet? I don’t own jewelry, Jay. The Church doesn’t exactly encourage vanity.”
“It doesn’t need to be large,” Remy said. “The ward can be inscribed quite small if the work is precise enough. Even something the size of a small coin would suffice, as long as there’s room for the full pattern.”
We sat there in silence for a moment, all of us trying to think of a solution that didn’t exist yet. Outside, the darkness was giving way to gray dawn. Soon people would start moving through the streets. Soon we’d have to make decisions about what came next.
And we still didn’t have a way to hide Sarah from the things that wanted her dead.