Caelan was freezing.
He perched on a rain-lashed gargoyle, wings clamped tight against his back like frozen lead. Rain that should have vaporised on contact struck his skin and stayed, cold and accusing.
He had missed a routine execution tonight. A petty debt-collector demon in the subway. The creature had been cornered, trembling, begging. Caelan had raised Eden's Fang and simply… waited. Three full seconds of nothing.
Four bullets left. Four bullets that suddenly felt like toys.
He could still taste her on the back of his tongue: iron, ash, pomegranate rot. His divine light guttered like a candle in the wind. Purity had become absence, and the absence ached.
He needed the heat.
The crucifix burned against his collarbone.
"You missed," Father Elian said, disappointment sharp as broken glass. "Again."
"Dimensional phasing," Caelan lied.
"Three seconds of perfect stillness is not phasing, Caelan. It is hesitation. The poison spreads."
The line died.
Caelan stared at the neon city below and admitted the truth to the rain.
He was addicted.
Liliru was burning alive and bored to death.
The penthouse writhed with Lust's finest: incubi and succubi doing things that would make Caligula blush. None of it touched her. She felt nothing except the overclocked thrum of her own power trying to eat her from the inside.
Her Blood Roses sprouted from the marble floor, grew six feet in seconds, then withered into black ash. Unstable. Starved.
She hurled a glass of distilled agony against the wall. It shattered without satisfaction.
Asmodeus's golden projection flickered above the orgy. "The Saint broke you, niece."
"He chipped a tooth," she snarled. "I'll rip the rest out."
"Then why are your shadows anaemic?"
Because the kiss had injected order into her chaos. Because her darkness now craved the cold lattice of his light to give it shape.
The lights died.
The temperature plummeted forty degrees. Every lesser demon hit the floor shivering.
Silence fell: perfect, predatory, absolute.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass hovered Nyxael/Lumina. Fused twins. Black wings and white wings. Male and female stitched into one impossible being. Grey silk robes. Perfect harmony.
They tapped the glass. No sound. The tap still rang inside her skull as a tuning fork struck against bone.
"The Nephilim vessel is toxic," they said in stereo. "It must be purified, then consumed."
Liliru's whip formed and lashed. It passed through them like they were smoke.
They dissolved into the night.
Asmodeus's projection stuttered. "What in the nine hells was that?"
"The Choir of the Forgotten," she whispered. "They just declared open season on hybrids."
She was no longer hunting the Saint.
She was prey.
The little church had been unmade.
Half the altar is frozen at absolute zero. Half incinerated by black fire that left no soot. Paradox carved into stone.
Caelan knelt in the aisle, studying the fused sigil: an hourglass with wings.
He felt it before he heard her.
"Don't touch the ash," Liliru said from the shadows of the narthex. "It'll hollow you out."
He rose, Eden's Fang already aimed between her eyes.
She stepped into the moonlight wearing a long black trench coat over the same torn dress. Exhaustion and fury painted under her eyes.
"How did you find me?"
"You reek of vanilla and bad decisions." She gestured at the ruin. "This is my problem now."
"This is Heaven's jurisdiction."
"Not when they're hunting me, angel."
She walked straight into the muzzle until cold steel kissed the hollow of her throat.
"Shoot," she said softly. "Go ahead. Leave the Choir free to perfect their ritual. They want hybrids, Caelan. Living batteries. They think if they harvest us at the exact moment of fusion they can birth their new god."
The gun did not waver, but his hand did.
"We're the highest-yield pairing on the planet right now," she continued. "That kiss? That wasn't an accident. That was a test detonation. They felt it across dimensions."
She leaned closer. The barrel dented soft skin.
"We're both running on fumes. Your light's dying. My dark's choking. One week. We find their nest, we burn it down together. Then we go back to trying to murder each other."
Logic screamed: pull the trigger.
The addict whispered: She's warm.
He lowered the gun.
"One week," he said, voice raw. "You follow my lead. You touch nothing without permission. You kill only what I allow."
Her smile was tired, relieved, and terrifyingly genuine.
"Deal."
She lifted her hand and pressed it flat over his heart.
Heat flooded him like the first sunrise after eternity. His wings unfurled involuntarily, black feathers trembling.
Under his palm, her chaotic pulse slowed, steadied, and found rhythm against his own.
Two hollow creatures, suddenly less empty.
Somewhere in the dark, the fused twins watched and smiled with two mouths that moved as one.