Kieran's body wasn't his.
Not anymore.
He could feel it—himself, shrinking, folding, being pressed into some dark, forgotten corner of his own mind. His thoughts weren't thoughts, not really. They were echoes, distant and dull, like a voice screaming underwater.
And the thing wearing him?
It was smiling.
Not just with his mouth.
With something deeper.
A grin beneath his skin, stretching through his veins, splitting open behind his eyes.
The black-winged angel was watching, but it did not move.
It was waiting.
And the thing in Kieran's body knew.
"You," it said, tilting his head at an unnatural angle. The voice layered over itself, not quite aligned, the sound slipping in and out of different tones, different mouths.
The angel's expression was carved from stone. "You were buried for a reason."
The grin on Kieran's face widened.
"I wasn't buried." The thing flexed Kieran's fingers, stretching them like it was trying them on. "I was worn."
A sharp pain stabbed through Kieran's mind—his real mind, the one locked behind the thing's grip. He tried to scream, tried to fight, but his body did not belong to him.
He could feel the thing inside him, folding him down, reducing him, making room.
For what?
For it.
The angel took a step forward.
"You don't belong here."
The thing let out a slow, rattling exhale.
"Neither do you."
Then—
Kieran's head snapped sideways, fast enough to break a human neck. The skin along his jaw tore slightly, a thin, red seam appearing that shouldn't have been there.
And something underneath moved.
The black-winged angel tensed.
It saw.
It knew.
And for the first time, it hesitated.
The thing inside Kieran noticed.
It laughed.
"You thought he was just a boy."
The grin widened too far, splitting Kieran's lips at the edges.
"You thought you could keep me asleep."
Its hands—Kieran's hands—twitched. The fingers cracked, bending the wrong way, like the bones inside weren't human anymore.
The angel moved.
But not toward him.
No.
It took a step back.
And Kieran, somewhere in the depths of his own mind, felt real fear.
Because the angel was not afraid of him.
It was afraid of what was inside him.
And then—
The voices started.
Not out loud.
Inside.
They whispered in his bones.
They spoke through his teeth.
They crawled behind his eyes.
"You were never supposed to leave."
"You were never supposed to wake up."
"You are not Kieran."
The thing wearing his body shuddered.
Its grin flickered—just for a moment.
And in that instant—
Kieran pushed.
He didn't know how. Didn't know if it would work.
But he shoved himself upward, outward, toward his skin—
And everything collapsed.
The walls of the church shattered into nothing.
The world peeled away.
And Kieran—
Fell.
Not into darkness.
Not into light.
Into something else.
Something that had been waiting.
For a very, very long time.