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“I am a scientist,” he said, advancing on me. “And you are an obsolete model.”

Ribbons of white fire lashed out from his fingertips, wrapping around my wrists, my ankles, and my throat. They burned with the cold intensity of a star, searing my skin and pinning me to the floor. I struggled, my light flaring in defense, but his was structured, disciplined, and fueled by the full weight of Heaven’s authority.

“Stay down,” he said, his voice echoing off the tile walls. “Witness the work, Remiel. Learn from it. Perhaps when we are done with her, we can see what can be done with you. You have…irregularities in your aura. A tarnish.”

I lay pinned to the cold floor, the celestial bindings cutting into my flesh. The smell of my own burning skin filled my nose. Looking up at him, I noticed the arrogance in his perfect features, and all I could see was Cassia’s pain. Her in the morgue, blood running down her cheeks. I saw her on the rooftop wearing that damned mask. I saw her breaking, piece by piece, because of them. Because of me.

And something inside me—something that Michael had buried under layers of conditioning and lies—woke up.

It wasn’t the cold light, that detached grace of an angel. It was heat. Weight. The crushing pressure of a star collapsing in on itself. It was bronze and gold and ancient and terrible.

The bonds holding me evaporated, the heat consuming them. I roared, a sound that shook the building’s foundations. I then stood, the air warping around me. The heat radiating from my skin turned the white tiles to gray ash.

Serion stopped, his eyes widening. For the first time, the clinical detachment cracked. “What…” He faltered, stepping back. “What is that…signature? That isn’t…that isn’t Heaven.”

“No.” My voice was layered and distorted, like two stones grinding deep within the earth. “It is older.”

I reached out my hand, but I didn’t reach for my fallen blade. Instead, I reached into the air, into the fabric of reality itself. I felt the hum of the universe—the raw chaotic energy that existed between the atoms—and pulled.

Light coalesced in my grip. Not the thin white light of the Seraphim. This was heavy. Solid. A blade of pure molten gold that crackled with arcs of bronze lightning. It hummed with a song of creation and destruction.

The Blade of Glory.

I didn’t know how I knew the name. I just knew it belonged to me. It always had.

Serion’s face went white. He scrambled backward, knocking over a tray of vials. “That’s impossible. That weapon… It’s a myth.”

“You had been a bad seraph,” I whispered, the truth settling over me like a cloak I had forgotten I wore.

I closed the distance in a heartbeat, a flash of golden motion. He threw up his shields, layer upon layer of celestial wards, and I swung the blade.

It didn’t just cut through his defenses. It ate them. The golden fire sheared through the hard light, through the steel table he had tried to put between us.

He screamed, a high thin sound of absolute terror. “Wait! The tribunal! They will—”

I drove the Blade of Glory through his chest.

It wasn’t a clean kill. It was an erasure. The moment the primordial steel touched his essence, he was unmade. The golden fire of the blade devoured his light, and his eyes rolled back, burning out like spent bulbs. His mouth opened in a silent O.

“B-blade of Glory?” he choked out, his voice dissolving into static. “What…are you?”

“I am Balance,” I said and twisted the blade.

Serion exploded into a shockwave of sterile white light that shattered every piece of glass in that room, blew out the windows, and scoured the walls clean.

And then there was silence.

I stood in the center of that ruined laboratory, the Blade of Glory fading from my hand and returning to the ether. My chest heaved, and the bronze light receded beneath my skin, leaving me cold and trembling.

I looked at the spot where the seraph had stood. There was nothing left. No body. Not even a feather. Just a scorch mark on the floor that looked like a shadow burned into the stones.

I fell to my knees. But the physical exhaustion was nothing compared to the weight crashing down on my soul.

And then I remembered.

I remembered the rain. The boy with black hair standing beside me. The chaos.

I knew what I was. And I knew that by what I had just done, by killing a seraph with a weapon that shouldn’t exist, I had signed my warrant again. The tribunal wouldn’t just hunt me now. They would come with everything they had to bury my memories before I could remember the rest.