Devourer of Sins

That night, he did not sleep.

Long after the house fell silent and the hearth dimmed, he sat alone beneath a sky painted in silver dust and memory. Stars blinked above, uncaring and countless, each one a silent observer in the celestial court that now watched him too closely. He wasn't praying. Not hoping. Just watching. Waiting.

No more feathers fell.

No more angels descended.

Yet the feeling lingered—that sense of being measured, scrutinized by divine eyes that saw beyond the flesh, beyond the smile he wore for his children. He knew what this silence meant. The first envoy had come with words. The next would not be so kind.

He rose quietly and stepped back into the house, barefoot on polished wood, careful not to wake his wife or the two small heartbeats dreaming peacefully beyond the walls. He moved like memory, soft and heavy, slipping into the basement without a sound.

Below, the chamber pulsed.

A quiet rhythm, old as the war he'd once waged.

In its center, the array waited. Etched by hand, layered with glyphs in blood and shadow-thread, a spell circle that had no place in this quiet life he'd tried so hard to build. He stood at its edge for a long time, the weight of choice resting in his chest like stone.

Then he stepped forward and placed his palm upon the sigil.

The circle flared to life, whispering in a language older than angels, and one by one, the shadows stirred. Not all 3,000—not yet—but a dozen emerged from the dark like ink bleeding into water, forms coalescing in silence.

They did not speak. They did not need to.

"You'll watch the skies," he said, his voice low but firm, threaded with authority that once bent empires.

The shadows bowed in unison, then dispersed, fading back into the unseen places between walls and breath.

And far above, in the celestial gardens where moons bloomed like flowers and time moved at the whim of gods, Lady Seraphyne stood before the Mirror of Origins. The glass shimmered as it received the envoy's final report. No embellishments. No excuses.

The Devourer had disarmed a heavenly weapon with ease.

No army. No crown. No wrath awakened.

Just a man living in peace.

And that terrified her more than any declaration of war ever could.

Because if he was still capable of that—half-asleep, half-buried in a life of warmth and woodsmoke—then what would happen if he ever truly woke?

She reached out, fingers trembling just slightly as they touched the mirror's surface.

It rippled once, then stilled.

"Show me," she whispered.

And the glass obeyed.

Not the man.

Not the shadows.

Not the wars he once waged.

But the children.

The mirror darkened.

Then bloomed with crimson light.

And Seraphyne, Arbiter of Scales, felt something she had not known in centuries.

Not awe.

Not doubt.

But fear.

Real, bone-deep fear.

Because the mirror did not show two innocent children.

It showed legacies.

And what they were becoming.