The fog descended like a veil on a widow — thick, gray, and full of stories no one wanted to hear. The air tasted like old ash, as if the entire landscape was breathing through the mouth of some long-burned deity.
In that silence, among the ruins of what was once a sanctuary, stood a man.
Arkamiel.
He stood alone, like a shadow of a man, or perhaps the shadow of faith itself. His long black cloak fluttered lightly in the wind, revealing boots that had lost their once-glossy leather shine, now dirty with mud and blood that refused to be washed away.
Though dressed as a priest, no soul would think him a man of prayer. He resembled more a warrior who swore an oath to the holy, and then cursed it.
Tall and strong, with shoulders bearing the weight of sins far greater than his years, he looked like one to whom duty had been etched into his bones. His long hair was tied in a leather braid, dark as oil, and his green eyes were sharp — but not innocent. They gazed at the world as an enemy, not from hatred, but from disappointment.
Through the ruins of the old Bell Tower, Arkamiel walked slowly. Step by step, as though each footfall awakened the spirits of the past. His fingers ran along the cracked stone, where the symbols of the Old Order were still etched: The Spear of Truth, The Eye of Reason, and The Flame of Confession.
All of it was dust now.
"Doesn't look like you're happy to be back," a voice spoke above him. Softly, mockingly, yet with a tone of familiar sympathy.
Arkamiel didn't raise his gaze immediately. He knew who was speaking. He knew every tone of that voice, every hint of sarcasm it carried.
Perched on a branch of a dead tree, a cat sat.
But Ezrael was no ordinary animal.
His fur was thick and black as midnight without a moon, but with wings instead of forepaws. Wings of feathers that shimmered with a silver metallic light, as if they had come from a world beyond this one. His eyes were those of a creature that had seen more death than one world could bear.
"You don't look happy to be speaking," Arkamiel responded, his voice low and hoarse, as though he had said too much in his life.
Ezrael leapt from the branch and landed beside him without making a sound. His wings folded behind him as he approached his companion.
"The sanctuary smells worse than when we left it."
"It's not a sanctuary anymore," Arkamiel said. "It's a tomb."
Silence fell between them, but it was not a pleasant one. It was thick, like water before a storm.
Those who might have watched them — though no one was there — would have thought they were two monsters, or two prophets. The truth lay somewhere between. Or nowhere.
Arkamiel knelt before the old bell. His hand lingered on the cold metal, which no longer gave sound. The tower above him was half-collapsed, and the rest of the structure leaned toward the earth as if begging to be brought down.
"When was the last time you heard the bell?" Ezrael asked gently.
"The day I became a traitor."
"Ah... That day. My favorite."
Arkamiel closed his eyes, and it was as though the world shook beneath his eyelids. The memory came slowly, like a scream from the underworld.
It was four years ago.
The Black Bell Tower stood tall, powerful, a beacon of faith in a world sinking into sin. Priests, the Brotherhood of Israels, clad in black robes with golden trims, walked its halls with the scent of incense, whispers of prayers, and songs of forgiveness.
Arkamiel had been among them — young, the youngest among the elders, but the most devoted. His eyes carried no shadow back then. His heart still believed.
And then the Vesari came.
Small beings. Bluish. Short. Everyone claimed they were demons. Embodiments of sin. The Order of the Bell gave the order: Exterminate. No questions. No hesitation.
But Arkamiel did what was forbidden.
He asked: Why?
And the world exploded.
He snapped out of the memory.
Ezrael watched him carefully. "Don't blame yourself for seeing the truth before the others."
"I don't blame myself for seeing it," Arkamiel replied. "I blame myself for allowing them to curse me for it."
"If you hadn't, we wouldn't have this lovely tour of ruins."
Arkamiel stood up. His body, though young, carried scars. On his left shoulder, beneath the cloak, a scar in the shape of a broken cross — a mark of exile. A mark of betrayal. A mark of truth.
But he no longer ran.
He had come to find something.
Or someone.
"Something's coming," Ezrael suddenly said. His wings fluttered slightly.
Arkamiel immediately reached for his knife. The long silver blade, hidden beneath his cloak, gleamed for a moment in the pale light of the overcast sky.
The fog rippled.
From it, shadows began to emerge.
Blue light in their eyes.
Short bodies. Thin, but fast.
Three figures.
The Vesari.
___
The wind ceased. Even the trees—broken, bare, ghostly—seemed to hold their breath. Everything stood still, as if the world knew something was coming that did not belong to this place. It no longer belonged to anything.
Arkamiel did not blink.
Three figures walked out of the mist, slowly, almost silently. At first glance, they looked like children—short bodies, short arms, eyes too big for the heads they were attached to. But as they emerged from the haze, it became clear that there was nothing childlike about them.
Their skin glowed bluish, but not in a healthy way. More like flesh that had stayed too long under the moonlight. Their eyes were empty, no pupils, yet filled with something deeper—sorrow. Or a silent hunger.
"Vesari," Ezrael whispered, descending softly from the stone ledge next to Arkamiel. His wings spread, not yet for flight—but for balance. For readiness.
"These ones are different," Arkamiel replied, not raising his voice. His hand already held the silver blade tightly.
"Noticed it, have you?" the cat asked. "No hysteria. No howls. Only silence. As if... they're listening."
The three creatures stopped ten steps away. The smallest among them—or perhaps the youngest—stepped forward. It was a male figure, with large eyes that, unlike the others, held the trace of a tear on its cheek.
At that moment, everything around Arkamiel went silent—not from the outside, but from within. As if the world had disappeared, leaving only him. And that child.
"We are no longer what you thought," the small Vesari said, its voice both human and inhuman. As though someone were reading words from the bottom of a well.
Arkamiel shuddered.
That voice.
It was... familiar.
Not in identity, but in memory. As though someone had spoken from his deepest dreams—nightmares—uttering a truth he didn't want to hear.
Ezrael stepped forward, lowering himself, wings spread wide.
"That's not normal," he whispered. "They don't speak. They've never spoken."
But the small Vesari was staring directly at Arkamiel.
"You are... the last."
Arkamiel moved closer. Slowly. He didn't lower his blade, but neither did he prepare to strike.
"The last what?" he asked.
"The last who remembered us before the darkness."
That moment—short silence, followed by that spoken sentence—felt as if the entire world had lost its footing.
And then everything changed.
The other two Vesari—those standing behind—roared at once, their jaws snapping open, filled with sharp, black teeth. Their bodies began to twist, elongating as if something inside them was changing.
An attack.
"Watch out!" Ezrael shouted, leaping toward the first one who charged.
Arkamiel instinctively turned, his knife already swinging.
The first attacker was fast—too fast. It reached him in the blink of an eye. Its claws, curved like razors, flashed toward his throat. But Arkamiel dropped low, sliding under the attack and slicing the creature's stomach with the silver blade.
A scream.
Not human.
Not animal.
Something in between.
The Vesari collapsed, its body trembling, then disintegrated into ash-like mist.
The second one was already on Ezrael.
But the cat was more than a cat.
With one sweep of his wings, he spun in the air and slammed the creature to the ground. His claws gripped its face, and with a sound akin to glass shattering—he destroyed it.
The third Vesari, the small one, just stood there.
It stared at Arkamiel as if it saw the truth that the world had refused to acknowledge.
And then, in a voice barely above a whisper, it said:
"They are coming. The bells are no longer ours. Beware... the mirrors."
There was no time for more words.
In that same instant, its body trembled with a wave of blue light, and then—vanished. As if it had never existed.
Arkamiel stood amid the ruins, breathing deeply, his palms shaking—not from the battle, but from what had been said.
Mirrors.
Ezrael flew down and landed on his shoulder, slightly out of breath, but alert.
"This wasn't an attack," he said. "This was... a sign."
"A warning," Arkamiel confirmed.
He pulled his cloak tighter, looking eastward, where the mist had not yet cleared.
He knew what he had to do.
He knew this wasn't the end—but the beginning. And he knew there was someone who knew more.
If the mirror was the next clue, then he had to return to the place where no exiled priest should ever set foot:
To the monastery of Saint Vitra.
Where all sins began.