Behind closed lids hid eyes of oceanic radiance, their ivory-cream hues gleaming with a subdued elegance once opened and their glaring gaze drifted briefly to the boy, his subdued presence in the glow of the library standing out like a storm cloud adrift in an otherwise clear sky. Her glare sharpened like a blade, lingering on him with a quiet intensity. In a tone as sharp and commanding as tempered steel the mysterious girl spoke, her words gilded with the confidence of unquestioned authority. "Avert your gaze." Her voice carried the weight of a queen addressing a mere foot soldier. The boy's instincts urged him to meet her command with stoic silence, but the sight of her prismatic pearl-toned eyes – evidenced an angelic ancestry – thus compelled a measured humility. "...how...where did you..come from?" he replied, his voice steady but with a faint, unreadable edge. After a brief pause, he added with a subtle shift in tone, "...you..are an angel..aren't you?." "Avert..your..gaze" she pressed, her eyes narrowing. Her irises slid to the corners of her gaze, dissecting every subtle movement Nils Fehrenbach made.
The distinct color of her eyes betrayed her nature, otherworldly and angelic, but she bore none of the celestial hallmarks described in the library's sacred manuscripts. No golden sun hovered in eternal radiance behind her. No veil of shimmering rainbow light concealed her face. Most notably, no silver-white wings spread from her back – the defining trait of all angels. Yet, despite the absence of these sacred signs Nils knew, or perhaps only assumed that the girl who had appeared before him was an angel. His gaze, which had been fixated on her in reverent awe, dropped swiftly at her command. She had emerged from a sudden, blinding flash of light, her form lying gracefully atop the polished wooden floor, veiled in silken cloth that seemed to shift and shimmer with its own light. Her beauty was beyond anything Nils had ever seen, like a figure torn from the pages of a masterwork painting come to life posed perfectly for his artistic eye.
"I merely wonder" Nils said in measured tones, "for what reason an angel would find herself in the physical world"
"What importance is that knowledge to you?" the angel asked, her gaze drifting briefly away from Nils Fehrenbach.
"Well..." he replied. His tone as restrained as her posture, "I had only ever made an assumption that there was reasoning behind the separation of the realms by the gods"
"What do you, a human, know of the realms – or the gods?" Her voice soft and soothing, yet her manner of speech as sharp as a razor.
"Not all too much, I'm afraid," Nils admitted, his fingers grazing the polished table as they slid toward a familiar tool for general spell-casting. A swirled-tip wand rested in his palm, its smooth surface fitting naturally between his fingers like his trusted pencil. Nils' gentle smile masked a hidden hostility as he turned his gaze back to the angel. "Well, angel," he began, his tone honeyed but sharp, "seeing as you lack all your defining features I can only assume you've claimed this vessel without a transfer of your powers. And I, Nils Fehrenbach of the institution of Reverend Garden, feel the need to discover wether you pose any significant threat to this city and its people, If you do..." His smile lingered for just a moment before fading. "...eliminate you."
Lowering himself into a crouch, Nils pressed the tip of the wand to the polished floor. His voice softened, taking on a more conversational tone. "You'll answer my questions, starting with your name."
The angel, momentarily thrown aback by Nils' sudden shift in demeanor, pulled herself upright, clutching the silken cloth closer around her shoulders like a makeshift shield. Her red lips moved hesitantly before she whispered just loud enough for Nils to hear, "You… an art major..?". Her tone carried disbelief, as though the words tasted foreign in her mouth. Her gaze drifted briefly into his stern eyes, whose imposing presence seemed at odds with the calm stillness of the library. She continued, her voice faltering under the weight of her own words as she did, "I've never heard of you, why would a student of an art institute study magic... shouldn't you have joined Void Palace?"
At her remark Nils' expression hardened, his glare narrowing with a sharp, almost predatory intensity. The subtle movement, though silent, was a clear warning, an exhausted patience. The angel froze as her eyes flicked between Nils and the wand in his grip. A long pause lingered in the air, punctuated only by the faint hum of the oil lamps. Finally, she relented, with her voice stiff and measured she spoke, "… My name is —
Her divulgence hung in the space between them like a fragile thread, but Nils did not relax to her words. His crouched posture remained firm, his wand still pointed toward the floor while a crystal shard that came into sudden view lanced him through the chest. For an instant, Nils' world froze. His eyes widened as the sting of the impalement blooming as a roaring wave of pain that crashed through his mind. With the chill of the shard radiated through his frame, numbing his limbs even as blood spilled freely from the wound, soaking in the fine fabrics of his tailored suit. Each ragged breath came harder than the last, his chest heaving as air hissed through the punctured lung. The burning ache clawed at him, relentlessly, like a molten iron pressed onto the skin. He collapsed to the polished checkered floor with a thud, rendered immobile by the dual effects of both a severe loss of blood and the graveness of the ill-received wound, yet burning. The attack was swift. Precise. A death sentence delivered before he could even react.
"Foul play"...the thought burned through his hazy mind as darkness crept in at the edges of his vision. He struggled to cling to consciousness, to piece together what had gone wrong "you lured me into a false sense of security...made me lower my guard...only to cast...while I..".
His thoughts faltered, fragments slipping away as numbness consumed him while the wand slipped from his fingers and clattered uselessly against the floor.
Before the embrace of death had fully enveloped him, Nils heard the fainting voice of the angel as if she were a great distance away "Know this art-student..." she paused and retreated her bare feet from the spreading pool of blood "you were at fault for your own death".