The world split.
Not like an explosion. Not like a scream.
It was deeper than that. A tearing in reality itself, like a wound that had always been there, just waiting to be opened.
The laughing thing did not die when the black-winged angel's hand plunged into its chest. It did not even falter.
Instead, it leaned closer.
Its grin stretched further, splitting the flesh of its cheeks, ripping them open to its ears. A thick, black liquid oozed from the wounds, sliding down its neck like blood that had forgotten how to be red.
And then it whispered.
"You were never supposed to leave."
Kieran felt it.
A sensation unlike anything he had ever known—like invisible fingers slipping under his skin, digging, searching, grasping at something deeper than his body.
It wasn't touching him.
It was touching his soul.
He choked, his breath failing, his vision swimming. He tried to move, tried to run, but there was nothing to run with. His body felt distant, like an old memory of movement, like something he had already lost but hadn't realized yet.
Because something was pulling him out.
The black-winged angel snarled, its fingers tightening in the smiling thing's chest. But the thing did not resist. It only stared at Kieran.
And Kieran saw.
Saw what lay beneath its flesh, beneath its skin, beneath the illusion of form.
There was no bone. No organs.
Only teeth.
Row after row, spiraling infinitely inward, layers of gnashing, grinding, churning hunger. The grin was only the surface—the smallest hint of what lay underneath.
Kieran was falling into it.
Not physically. Not with his body. But something deeper. Something important.
His thoughts blurred, unraveling like threads plucked from a fraying rope.
He saw himself.
Standing in an empty street.
But it wasn't a street.
It was a mouth.
The buildings, the sky, the very air—it was all made of teeth. They rose around him like monuments, silent and waiting, grinning at him from all sides. The road beneath his feet shifted, the enamel smooth but alive, pulsing beneath his weight.
And then, they moved.
The walls of teeth closed in.
Not fast. Not in a sudden, violent collapse.
Slow. Intentional.
Like something savoring the last few moments before it swallowed.
"You were never supposed to leave."
The voice came from inside his own head now, burrowing deeper, replacing his own thoughts.
"You belong here."
Kieran tried to scream.
But the teeth were already inside his throat.
A tearing sensation. Not in his skin, not in his flesh.
In him.
Something was leaving. Something was being taken.
And then—
SNAP.
Reality slammed back into place.
The black-winged angel had ripped its hand free.
A wet, sucking sound filled the ruined church as the grinning thing collapsed inward. It didn't fall—it folded, its body twisting and compressing, shrinking into itself, like it had never been anything more than a loose collection of wrongness.
But its grin remained.
Even as it disappeared.
Even as it sank into the floor like water vanishing into a drain.
The black-winged angel turned to Kieran.
"You saw it, didn't you?"
Kieran was shaking. He didn't know when he had dropped to his knees.
He could still feel the teeth inside him. Still hear the whisper.
The angel crouched in front of him, its gaze sharp, unreadable. "They're looking for you now. They know what you are."
Kieran's breath hitched. "What... what am I?"
The angel did not smile.
"You were never supposed to leave."
The words echoed, deep and familiar.
Because they had not come from the angel.
They had come from inside Kieran himself.