In the lab’s shadowed corner, Xanthe stood, her pendant a heavy anchor around her neck, her eyes locked on Mishael. His unyielding spirit, his heavenward gaze and his hymns whispered in the dark, fractured her allegiance to Kesal, a crack in the loyalty she had sworn. Her family’s faces, bound in Xavalon’s neon grip, haunted her, yet Mishael’s radiant faith kindled a truth she could no longer suppress, a faint echo of Yah’s call she had long buried.
The embrace in Yusl Vale lingered as a fragile haven, a moment when its green slopes seemed to cradle father and son against the gathering tempest. But New Canaan’s shadow stretched far, its talons buried deep since the ambush that tore Mishael and Ariel from Matanel’s side. In Kesal’s laboratory, a sterile vault of steel and sulfurous runes, their blood, ablaze with celestial fire, was harvested to challenge Messiah’s prophecy. Mishael’s release, a calculated ploy, left Ariel captive, a wound that bled into the crimson dawn of year six.
Kesal’s bargain slithered like a serpent’s coil: Mishael’s freedom in exchange for silence about the lab’s veiled spires, bound by the threat of Ariel’s death. “One word, Halfling, and your brother’s wings will blaze,” Kesal hissed, his voice a dagger laced with Lucifer’s poison.
Mishael, wrists chafed raw from restraints, gave a tight nod, his eyes burning with defiance yet shackled by fear. Stripped bare, his silver wings trembling in the lab’s icy breath, he was blindfolded with coarse burlap and thrust into a drone’s hold. The machine rumbled through Xavalon’s barren wastes, its tremors a dirge that drowned Mishael’s whispered prayers. Hours later, it ejected him into a jagged ravine, dust choking his lungs, the blindfold catching on sharp stones, his form laid bare beneath a blood-red sky. His wings, tattered and frayed from the ordeal, curled instinctively around him, their gossamer remnants a fragile veil to cloak his vulnerability, a divine grace sustained by Yah’s radiant touch, preserving his Halfling form against the ravine’s desolation, a beacon to guide his rescuer’s eye.
Peris Quinn, a saint skilled with Matanel’s bow, scoured the ruins for steel to fuel Matanel’s forge. Her breath stilled as she glimpsed Mishael, his Halfling glow a beacon amid the desolation, his silver wings, radiant despite his broken state, a testament to Yah’s mercy shielding his spirit where exhaustion should have stripped them bare. “Mishka Benrubi,” she whispered, wrapping her tattered cloak around his quivering frame, her hands steady with quiet awe. A coded pulse summoned General Micah ben Israel, and Michael swept down like a tempest, his azure eyes alight with relief and fury.
“Mishka, you’re with me now,” he said, lifting his son from the dust. In his arms, he bore Mish to Petra’s angelic outpost, where crimson cliffs stood as steadfast guardians against the world’s despair.
In the heart of Petra’s outpost, Gabriel stood in a chamber where Zaphrite lanterns wove blue veins across the stone, their glow a faint mirror of Ariel’s valor. His silver wings stirred beneath his cloak as he faced Mishael, his eyes sharp as the first light of dawn.
“You saw him, Mishael,” he said, voice low, taut with a father’s aching need. “Ariel’s there, bleeding. Give me something, anything, to find my son.”
His words struck with a force Gabriel hadn’t meant, heavy as a stone cast into still waters. Mishael slumped against the wall, his face pale as ash, eyes shadowed by a guilt that struck Gabriel like a blade.
“I can’t, Uncle Riel,” he murmured, his voice splintering like fragile ice. “Kesal’s drones — they’ll know. They’ll kill him. I see Ari every night, screaming, and I’m useless.”
His hands trembled, haunted by the lab’s needles and blades, his guilt a specter that made him recoil from the lanterns’ fleeting light. By night, he roamed Petra’s corridors, sleepwalking, whispering Ariel’s name, a brother abandoned in that profane crypt.