The air in the office had grown still.
Lucian leaned back in the creaking chair, eyes half-lidded, lost in the faint hum of the city beyond the cracked window. A distant siren wailed like a ghost, swallowed by the hum of New York's unrest. A flickering desk lamp cast long shadows against the stained wall.
He was still—until the pain came.
Without warning, a heat surged through his chest, followed by a deep, celestial pull. He gripped the sides of the chair. The walls twisted. The world peeled away like paper set to flame.
Then—
He was not Lucian anymore.
He was Luciel, Commander of the Fifth Choir, Bearer of the Celestial Balance. His armor, forged in divine breath, shimmered with runes that pulsed like stars. His wings—twelve of them—unfurled behind him, each feather a blade of radiant fire.
He stood in the golden Hall of Reckoning, surrounded by Thrones, Dominions, and Seraphim.
At the center of the grand dais stood Azrael—the Archangel of Endings. His blade, The Blade of Final Mercy, hummed with judgment. His voice was neither loud nor soft, yet it silenced the heavens.
"You tampered with mortal fate. You showed mercy to the corrupted. You passed balance where wrath was decreed. You are guilty."
Luciel's voice, though shaking, held dignity.
"I only did what was just. I upheld equilibrium—"
"You undermined Heaven's decree."
"And if Heaven's decree is flawed?"
The silence that followed was the weight of eternity.
Azrael's wings spread. "Then you are no longer Heaven's."
And the blade fell.
Luciel's wings were ripped from him—not cut, not severed. Torn. Each feather fell like a star collapsing in slow motion, burning across the skies of memory. Light bled from his chest, not red but gold. His name echoed once, twice—and was no more.
He fell through realms of silence, through screaming wind and formless void.
As he plummeted toward mortality, a whisper—his own—was carried on the currents of his fall.
"I will climb back to the throne… and I will burn the stars themselves."
—
Lucian gasped.
His lungs seized as if dipped in ice. He lurched from the chair, coughing, sweating, heart slamming like a war drum.
[System Alert]
— Memory Synchronization Complete —
Quest Unlocked: Burn the Blade of Azrael
Reclaim your legacy. Shatter the weapon that unmade you. Begin with the Mortal Threads.
Reward: [Undisclosed]
He staggered to the sink in the corner of the room, splashing cold water over his face.
Burn the blade? Find Azrael?
Not yet. He was too weak. The stars weren't ready to burn.
But this world… this city? It was brimming with rot.
And rot was something he could work with.
—
Lucian spent the next day walking the city. No destination. Just watching. Listening.
He saw a man beating his son in an alley over a failed pickpocket attempt. A woman selling her insulin online to feed her baby. A teenager holding her friend's hair as she overdosed in the back of a mechanic shop.
And through it all, he watched the police turn their heads.
He needed access to the root. Not the surface.
—
It was in Precinct 16, a dull brick building near Crown Heights, that he found his opening.
Lucian walked in, quiet and purposeful. The officer at the front desk, a young man with puffy eyes and an aggressive keyboard, barely looked up. "You lost?"
"No," Lucian replied. "I'm here about the Martinez case."
That got his attention.
He was escorted, with suspicion and curiosity, to Detective Marian Ortega, the same woman who'd skimmed his report days earlier. She wore a grey blazer over a coffee-stained shirt and looked like she hadn't slept in weeks.
"You again," she muttered. "You're not supposed to have access to half the data you cited in that file."
"I don't," Lucian said. "I observed. I listened. I noticed what others ignored."
"Uh-huh. Let me guess—you want a job."
"No," he said. "I want a purpose. That's different."
She studied him. "We're stretched thin. Special Investigations is desperate for thinkers who don't ask for glory. You might be crazy. But I've seen crazier do good."
She tapped a number on her phone.
—
By the following week, Lucian was invited into a trial consultancy with the Special Investigation Forces (SIF), a shadow unit embedded within NYPD that handled the "too strange to explain" cases—ritual crimes, serial disappearances, cryptic messages burned into walls, murders with no bodies, symbols etched in bone.
Lieutenant Morgan Hale—grizzled, built like a war tank, and always chewing on nicotine gum—led the unit.
"This ain't CSI," Morgan had growled during orientation. "This is gutter science. You read patterns no one wants to believe in. You follow instincts that feel wrong. You survive by not asking questions you can't handle answers to."
Lucian nodded. "Sounds like home."
—
He was assigned an office that smelled like mildew and stale coffee. His desk was a graveyard of unsolved files. Case photos, witness reports, autopsy diagrams. Over time, he began to trace invisible threads—connections between seemingly unrelated crimes.
The Martinez case, he learned, was tied to three others across the city. All involved mutilated animals, cryptic Latin messages, and missing teenagers. Everyone else dismissed them as separate.
Lucian didn't.
He started mapping patterns on a whiteboard. Built psychological profiles. Identified ritual behavior overlooked by overworked detectives.
Soon, whispers started around the precinct.
"The new guy's weird, but damn if he doesn't get results."
"He talks like he's from a different century."
"Don't look him in the eyes too long."
Lucian, for his part, was focused.
Focused on rot. On corruption. On sin.
That night, as he locked up his office, the System chimed again.
[New Passive Unlocked: Whispering Presence]
In places of moral decay, your presence sows subtle unease. Empaths sense your truth. Liars falter.
[New Objective: Tempt the Curious]
Three within the task force have begun to suspect you are not what you seem. Push them. Pull their strings. Tilt their souls.
Lucian smiled faintly.
He wasn't just hunting sin anymore.
He was planting it.
One soul at a time.