I ran.
Not because I was brave. Not because I had a plan. I ran because my body remembered fear better than my mind remembered truth.
My name wasn't Azrael. At least, I didn't think it was. But they believed it. And the way they looked at me, the way their glowing spears trembled in their hands, told me one thing:
Azrael was no hero.
The cracked terrain gave way under my boots as I stumbled through what looked like the aftermath of a cataclysm. Sky-stones chunks of floating islands lay shattered and embedded into the red-soaked earth.
Blackened trees flickered with embers. The air stank of scorched metal and something far older. Something divine.
Golden blood still clung to my fingertips.
I didn't know what I had done. But the body I now wore… it did.
The wind shifted, and a faint hum began to build in the pit of my stomach. At first, I thought it was the sound of thunder rolling through the cracks in the sky. But no. It was deeper than sound. More intimate.
It was coming from the armor.
It pulsed against my chest faint, like a heartbeat. My heartbeat? Its own? I couldn't tell. When I slowed my breath to listen, it responded, syncing its rhythm to mine.
And then it whispered. Not in words, not at first. But in sensations.
Visions struck me like lightning bolts.A battlefield beneath a black sun. A woman screaming as her wings burned to ash.
A hand my hand driving a sword through the spine of something too massive to be human.
I doubled over, gasping.
"What the hell is happening to me…"The armor pulsed again.
"One of Twelve has fallen."
The voice was genderless, echoing inside my skull like it had always lived there, just waiting for me to wake up. My knees hit the dirt as I clutched my head, the world spinning.
"Warning: Celestial protocol breached. Identity merge incomplete. Host synchronization at 32%."
"What does that mean?" I croaked, sweat trailing down my brow. "Host? Synchronization? Who are you?"
"You are Azrael. You are not Azrael. You are the vessel."
I pushed myself up slowly. The armor groaned under the strain, but it was more than a shell, it was a second skin. No… more than that. It was me.
In the distance, the soldiers were regrouping. They didn't pursue immediately. Perhaps they were afraid of what might happen if they got too close. Or maybe they were waiting for something. Someone.
Either way, I needed to move.
I slipped between scorched stone pillars, remnants of a tower that once scraped the sky. Birds no longer sang here. No crickets. No wind. Just the whisper of the armor and the lingering memory of a god's final breath.
I found it half-buried in rubble a weapon, curved and black, the metal humming even in stillness. As I reached for it, the air sizzled. A sharp jolt surged up my arm, but I didn't let go.
The moment I wrapped my fingers around the hilt, the visions returned, stronger this time. More vivid. A girl, maybe sixteen, eyes like starlight, her hand outstretched toward me.
"Don't do it," she said, her voice cracking with desperation. "Azrael, please…"
My hand drove the sword forward anyway.The vision shattered.
I fell back, gasping.
Was that real? A memory? Or something the armor wanted me to see?
"Soul-linked weapon retrieved," the voice confirmed. "Designation: Eclipture."
"Eclipture…" I whispered. The name tasted like blood and regret.
As the sun dipped behind what remained of a floating mountain, I spotted movement, real this time. Scouts. Four of them, scanning the horizon from a ridgeline. Their helmets glinted like obsidian mirrors, reflecting fractured skies. I ducked low behind a toppled pillar, my breath shallow.
They hadn't seen me yet. But they would.
I had two choices: keep running, or test whether this armor had any fight left in it.
I didn't feel like a warrior. I felt like a boy who had been thrown into a stranger's skin. A coward wearing a king's crown.
But if I kept running, sooner or later, I'd be caught. Or worse, someone else would die thinking I was the monster they feared.
So I stood.And the armor stood with me.
Blue light flickered from the cracks in the plating. The blade in my hand felt heavier now, but familiar, like a tool I'd once mastered. I stepped out from behind the pillar and the nearest scout's head snapped toward me.
"Contact!" he shouted.
Too late.
My legs moved before I gave the command. The armor had taken over, or maybe we moved as one. The distance between us vanished in seconds, and then I was in it,swinging, parrying, dodging. The first scout lunged.
The blade moved. The armor anticipated him. Countered. Disarmed. One down.The second and third attacked in unison synchronized, fast, lethal.
I ducked under one spear, twisted, and slammed the flat of Eclipture against the other's head. A crack not metal on metal, but metal on bone echoed through the air. Two down.The third hesitated.That was his mistake.
I stood over their unconscious bodies, heart hammering, arms shaking. I hadn't killed them, not this time. But I could have.The armor would've liked that.
"Why are they after me?" I asked aloud. "What did Azrael do?"
"The Twelve were bound by law. Azrael broke it. He killed one of his own."
I staggered.
"Why?"
"Unknown. Memory core is corrupted. Full identity access requires 100% synchronization."
"And until then?"
"You are a fugitive of the Sky Accord. Hunted. Feared. Alone."
I sheathed Eclipture if you could even call sliding it into a groove along my back "sheathing" and turned my gaze toward the horizon. In the distance, hanging like a crown in the clouds, was Vajari. One of the Twelve Floating Cities. A bastion of divine authority. Home of the skyborn. It glowed with light. Power. Secrets.
And somewhere inside it, someone knew who Azrael really was.I had no memory. No allies. No reason to believe I'd survive this.
But I had questions. And the answers were waiting in the sky.