The day's final light had bled from the sky, leaving the vast city of Heaven under a serene, starry mantle. In the Sentry District, the darkness was deeper, the shadows longer. The buildings, made to absorb light, now seemed to exhale a quiet chill.
Warden Hana stood before a full-length mirror of polished silver in her spire. The reflection showed a woman who was both familiar and a stranger. Her once dark hair was now a cascade of straight, light blonde, the color of winter moonlight, falling past her shoulders. Her eyes, once a deep brown, now held a piercing, deep golden hue—not the blinding radiance of an Archangel, but a luminous, fierce amber that seemed to gather what little light existed in the room. Her skin was pale, her frame small, but it held a tensile strength, a coiled readiness that hadn't been there on the beach. A stern, unwavering gaze had settled onto her features, etching lines of quiet intensity where softness used to be.
She shed the official white and gold tabard of her Wardenship. In its place, she pulled on a simple, elegant white gown, its high collar and sweeping sleeves edged with delicate gold thread—the subtle uniform of a mid-level priestly administrator. Over this, she drew a hooded cloak of rough-spun, dusty brown, its edges frayed and travel-worn. It swallowed her slight figure and, when the deep hood was raised, hid her distinctive hair and eyes in shadow. She looked like any other soul going about a private, unimportant errand in the night.
She left the Vigil Spire by a side entrance, her footsteps silent on the cobbled lane. The main thoroughfares of the Sentry District were quiet at this hour, lit by soft, floating orbs of light. She didn't take them. She slipped into the Interstitial Ways—the narrow, twisting service alleys that ran behind the grand facades, where the perfect harmony of Heaven grew thin and the air smelled of cold stone and forgotten things.
Her destination was a cul-de-sac known unofficially as the Whisper's End. Information, purchased from a nervous logistics clerk months ago, had led her here. She moved like a ghost, her golden eyes scanning the darkness from within her hood.
She heard them before she saw them: low, rough laughter that grated against the night's peace. Rounding a final corner, she saw a group of five angels clustered in the dead end, their backs to a soot-stained wall.
They were not the radiant, serene beings of the choirs. Their forms were solid, muscular, and utilitarian. Their wings, if they had them, were tucked away. They wore simple, dark tunics and trousers, and their faces held expressions of bored malice. One, a large man with a shaved head and intricate, glowing tattoos coiling up his neck and over his scalp, was holding a small, shimmering crystal—a captured piece of "starlight essence," likely siphoned from a public park. He was tossing it idly from hand to hand. They looked less like angels and more like thugs haunting a mortal city's alley.
Hana stepped into the pool of faint light from a high window. They fell silent, their heads turning in unison.
"Well, look what drifted in," said the tattooed one, his voice a low rumble. He stopped tossing the crystal. "Lost, little priestess? The nice gardens are that way."
"I'm not lost," Hana said, her voice muffled slightly by the hood but clear in the quiet alley. "I'm looking for information."
A grin spread across the face of a smaller, sharp-featured angel. "Information? That's a precious commodity. What do you have to trade for it?"
"There's no currency here," Hana stated flatly.
The sharp-featured one laughed. "Oh, there's always currency. Favors. Secrets. Pleasure." His gaze swept over her cloaked form with insolent leisure. "What's under the hood, I wonder? Must be something sweet, to be out here all alone asking questions."
The bald leader's grin widened. "He's got a point. We're bored. Entertainment's scarce. You want our time, you pay with yours. Come with us, have a little fun, and maybe we'll feel chatty afterward."
A cold, familiar anger—the same that had fueled her ascent—stirred in Hana's chest. It mixed with a fresh, bitter wave of disgust. These were the souls who made the cut. Petty, cruel, allowed to exist here forever, playing their games in the gilded cage. Jin, with his quiet strength and weary heart, was cast out, and this filth remained.
She let out a soft, contemptuous breath she knew they'd hear. "Tch."
Her hood fell back as she lifted her head, revealing her face and hair in the dim light. Her golden eyes fixed on the leader. "Evil is allowed to stay in Heaven," she murmured, the words a venomous whisper meant only for herself, "when my love couldn't even come in."
The bald angel's leer faltered for a second, replaced by confusion at her tone and the sudden, unsettling light in her eyes. Then he shrugged. "Philosophy later. Business now." He took a step forward, reaching a thick hand toward her cloak.
He never made contact.
Hana didn't move her feet. She simply raised her right hand, palm open. From the empty air above it, light condensed—not the gentle glow of the city, but a harsh, focused brilliance. It stretched, solidified, and formed the shape of a spatha, a straight, double-edged sword of pure, white-gold light. It hummed with a soft, deadly frequency. The air around it crackled.
The thugs froze, their grins vanishing.
"Wha—" the sharp-featured one began.
Hana moved. It wasn't the graceful glide taught in the training grounds. It was efficient, brutal violence. She was a blur of brown cloth and searing light. She didn't fight to disarm or subdue. She fought to break.
She sidestepped the leader's clumsy grab and brought the flat of her light-blade across the temple of the angel on her left. There was a sound like a bell cracking, and he dropped. She pivoted, her cloak flaring, and drove the hilt into the gut of the one behind her. He folded with a whoosh of lost breath.
The remaining two, including the sharp-featured one, lunged. One tried to grab her from behind. She dropped low, sweeping his legs with a kick that carried the weight of centuries of disciplined will. He crashed to the stones. The sharp-featured one produced a short, wicked-looking dagger of dark energy—a forbidden construct. He stabbed at her face.
Hana parried with her light-blade. The collision didn't ring; it sizzled, his dark dagger dissolving into motes of shadow upon contact. Before he could react, her free hand shot out, fingers closing around his throat. She lifted him, the strength in her slight frame absolute and terrifying. She held him aloft for a moment, his feet kicking uselessly, then slammed him back-first against the alley wall. He slid down, unconscious.
It had taken less than ten seconds.
The bald, tattooed leader was the only one left standing, his stolen crystal lying forgotten on the ground. The bravado was gone, replaced by primal fear. He backed up until the wall stopped him.
Hana let her light-blade dissolve into fading sparks. She walked toward him, slow and deliberate. He tried to swing a fist. She caught his wrist, her grip like a vice of stone, and twisted. He cried out, dropping to his knees.
She leaned down, her golden eyes inches from his terrified face. "Information," she said, her voice chillingly calm. "Where do the ones who ask the wrong questions go? The ones who trade in things other than 'pleasure'? Where is the real market?"
He gasped, struggling for air she wasn't even restricting. "I—I don't—"
Her grip tightened fractionally. A warning.
"Alright! Alright!" he wheezed. "The Cascades! The abandoned waterworks, beneath the Garden of Eternal Dusk! There's a grate… behind the third fallen statue of the Weeping Shepherd. It leads down. They… they meet there. The ones who want to know things they shouldn't. The buyers and sellers."
She held his gaze, searching for deceit. Seeing only raw fear, she released him. He collapsed, clutching his wrist.
"Thank you," she said, the courtesy grotesque in the aftermath. She pulled her hood up once more, shrouding her hair and the fierce light of her eyes. She turned and melted back into the alley's darkness, leaving the broken thugs in the silent, stained light.
She didn't return to her spire. The night was young. The Garden of Eternal Dusk was in Raphael's district, a place of perpetual, beautiful sunset. It was a long way from the Sentry's grim walls.
As she navigated the sleeping city, moving from shadow to shadow, her mind churned. A secret market. A place for forbidden trade. It was a crack. A back door. It was exactly what she needed.
The system was corrupt. It judged Jin unworthy but let predators linger in its alleys. It preached peace but was built on silent, sanctioned cruelty. She had played by its rules for over two centuries to get to this point.
Now, she would use its own corruption to tear it down from the inside. The search for the rogue angels—and the path to Jin—had finally found its scent. It led down, into the dark, dripping underbelly of paradise.