The boy died screaming.
That was the first thing Michael recalled — his throat ripped open, his limbs spasming on the ground, the stench of fire and decaying timber heavy in his chest. The memory wasn't his. But it stuck to him, like it burrowed and burrowed and burrowed deep, as if some piece of that death echoed like great wings inside the marrow of his bones.
He woke up under a fallen shrine. Stone dust in his mouth. Blood in his eyes. A symbol etched into the ceiling above him was glowing faintly in the dark. A crescent swallowing the sun like a sigil.
His fingers shook as he sat up. They were too thin. Pale. Someone else's hands.
Then the voices began.
"You're not him."
The whisper emerged from the gloom, low and steady. A woman stepped forward. Her hair matted with ash and dirt, her eyes — sharp, unblinking gleaming with recognition. Or something colder.
"You wear his skin, but you're empty on the inside."
Michael tried to speak. His mouth moved but no sound came out.
"You don't know me," she said. Not as question. "Good. That makes this easier."
She raised a blade. Not toward him, but toward her palm. She sliced deep, and the blood fell in an impeccable pattern on the cracked floor. A circle. A name. A curse.
Something thrashed underneath the shrine. Something old.
Michael stepped back, hands sliding on a shattered rock. He could still feel it — the death that wasn't his. The boy to whom this world had ceased to have a meaning. It hadn't been peaceful. It hadn't been quick.
"You have been summoned," said the woman quietly. "Or maybe stolen. I don't care which."
For the briefest second, her voice faltered. Then she knelt beside him, her expression inscrutable.
"Tell me the truth. Do you hear him too?"
Michael had not wanted to answer. But the words came nonetheless, wrenched from a throat that was not his.
"He's screaming."
The woman closed her eyes. "Then the ritual failed."
…..
Outside, the world waited.
Smoke spiraled through the broken stone. They did not burn in the hills beyond. Somewhere in the distance, bells were tolling slow, deliberate, like a god mourning her children.
Kaela sat still for quite a while.
She crouched in the rubble, blood oozing under her palm, eyeing the boy who wasn't Elias. The boy she'd summoned. The body she recognized battered, familiar but the voice behind the eyes was wrong.
Wrong in the way that stung to see.
Michael didn't speak. He was still recovering his breath. The silence settled between them like fog — thick, bitter, and choked with things unspoken.
"I'm sorry," Kaela finally said, so quietly it hardly made it through her lips. "I had hopes of bringing him back."
Michael turned toward her. Slowly. Like the bones under his skin did not belong.
"You failed," he said. The words were flat. Not cruel. Just… hollow.
Kaela nodded. She didn't cry. She'd done that already hours ago, in the snow outside the ruins of a chapel, when she carved sacred names into stone using a blade pilfered from the cathedral she once served.
"I shouldn't have even tried," she said, whispering. "I knew better. But I couldn't " Her voice broke, and she swallowed it back. "I wasn't going to let him stay dead."
Michael didn't answer. He was gazing at his own hands once more. Flexing them. Testing them.
They weren't his.
Kaela stood. Her steps were unsteady weeks of little food and sleeplessness had hollowed her but her eyes were steady.
"You're not Elias," she said. "But something brought you here. And I need to know what."
Michael shook his head. "I don't know."
"That's not good enough."
He looked up. There was something new in her gaze now. Not fear. Not confusion. Something… distant. Detached.
"You pulled me out of my world. Out of my body. I don't know where I am. I don't know who you are. I don't even know what he.. " he gestured at his chest " was."
Kaela flinched. Just a little. But she didn't break.
"His name was Elias Caelum. He was my friend." She hesitated. "And now… you're all that's left of him."
Outside, the wind howled. The fires had spread embers diffusing through the fissures in the shrine's ruined dome. Here, the world felt thinner, as if something was watching. Waiting.
Michael was unsteady on legs that could barely support him.
"Is it always like this?" he asked.
Kaela frowned. "Like what?"
He looked down at his hands. At the blood. At the ruined altar behind her.
"This world. Is it always this… broken?"
Kaela didn't smile. But there was something akin to it behind her tired eyes.
"Only when the gods are watching."
…..
They didn't talk as they walked out of the shrine. There was no point. The dead could not be unmade by words.
The trail snaked through burned grass and charred stone. Smoke drifted above the hills, settled low to the ground, like fog. Some distance behind them, the broken dome of the ritual site creaked, stone yielding to ancient celestial etchings.
Kaela moved like someone accustomed to hiding — low, fast, no steps wasted. She looked back only once, to ensure he was behind.
Michael walked slower. Not out of caution. Out of dissonance. His feet felt too light. His breath was too sharp. The rest of the world is too noisy.
It was as if someone had cranked up the volume on existence.
Wind in the grass. Cinders in the sky. The weight of every step.
Then it hit.
Not pain. Not quite. More like pressure behind his ribs, beneath the skin. A heat that wasn't heat. It beat once, deep inside his chest, and his eyes began to swim.
He stumbled.
Kaela turned immediately. "What is it?"
"I—" He gasped. His hands sparked. Just for a moment. A flash of gold-white light, rough and raw. Then gone.
Kaela stared at him. "That wasn't Elias's power."
Michael didn't answer. He wasn't sure he could.
The thing was moving under his skin. Not alive. Not dead. Just… waiting.
Kaela moved closer, voice quiet. "You need to control it. If the Church sees that, they will burn you with me."
Michael looked up at her. "Maybe they should."
She didn't flinch. "No do not say that."
Then, faintly, from the north — bells. Slow. Hollow. Measured.
Not mourning bells.
Hunting bells.
Kaela froze. "We need to move."
And somewhere behind them, under the fallen shrine, something opened its eyes.