CHAPTER 74: FOOL’S SONG

  Suryel exhaled like her lungs were finally remembering how to be lungs.

  It wasn’t a calm breath.

  It was the kind of shaky release that came after holding something too long, after swallowing panic until it curdled into exhaustion.

  Then she muttered, voice tight. “Okay. Finally, this is the last one.”

  The words left her mouth like they had teeth.

  Not relief.

  Not victory.

  More like the exhausted, trembling confidence of someone standing on the final stair of a tower, knowing one misstep still meant certain death.

  For a breath, relief almost grazed her chest like a timid bird.

  It fluttered near her ribs, uncertain, ready to flee.

  Helel’s smile flashed quick and bright, like he could charm reality itself into behaving.

  Yael nodded once, slower, steadier, his gaze fixed on her the way Recons fixed their eyes onto a horizon.

  Not romantic, not dramatic, just watchful.

  And present.

  Neither of them said: You can do this.

  They did not need to.

  They were already standing there, bodies angled toward her without thinking, as if their instincts had become infrastructure.

  Then together, all three of their view of the world folded—

  Yet again.

  Reality did not shift politely.

  It collapsed, then reassembled with different rules.

  The air flickered.

  The sky outside the suspended space stuttered like a page turning too fast.

  Familiar.

  Almost harmless.

  That word ‘almost’ was a trap.

  Suryel’s boots scraped lightly against a surface that didn’t fully commit to being solid yet.

  The floor looked like tiled concrete, but it felt like memory pretending to be pavement.

  Not quite stone.

  Not quite dream.

  A skin stretched over something that could be hungry.

  The other six collected anchors vibrated through her bones, threading through sinew, marrow, and breath like a second heartbeat.

  She felt them in her teeth.

  In her wrists.

  In the hollow beneath her sternum where fear lived and survived before.

  The anchor pulled her with warmth toward a window.

  Not physically.

  Inevitably.

  Like gravity with intent.

  Suryel, Helel and Yael’s breath caught.

  Because there she was.

  Across the narrow distance of mundane streets and time itself.

  A room lit with the soft fading warm daylight and sharp shadows.

  A desk and a chair behind familiar green embroidered curtains.

  A girl with pastel-stained fingers humming under her breath.

  Head bent over a blank page like it held the whole world.

  Alive.

  Human.

  Vulnerable.

  Waiting for inspiration.

  Still living in a time that… no longer included.. her.

  Suryel’s chest slammed so hard her ribs threatened mutiny.

  The suspended air thickened, bending around her, pressing like invisible hands.

  Her fingers went cold.

  Her tongue went numb.

  She knew this memory— She lived it.

  She knew it better in the way you know the taste of a nightmare that is about to happen.

  No.

  Not this one.

  Not this past.

  She shook her head hard, like she could physically shake the timeline loose.

  No.

  Not this page.

  Not this wound.

  She continued to think, and her panic sharpened into sound before she could stop it.

  “No! Don’t sing it!” Suryel yelled, voice cracking so sharp it nearly tore the realm open. “Or our lives will change!”

  The girl did not flinch.

  She didn’t look up.

  Nor hear.

  She kept humming, soft and unbothered, pencil moving in little confident scratches.

  Because she could not know or see the future— yet.

  Couldn’t see the version of herself across the street, across the fold, across the ruins stopped and stuck in time.

  Helel did not move at first.

  His expression drained of its usual arrogance like someone had pulled a curtain.

  He stared at Suryel, then at the girl still humming at the window.

  And for a split second, his eyes did not look playful.

  They looked old.

  Yael willed himself to stare at the floor.

  Not out of disrespect.

  Out of discipline.

  Like if he looked too long at the window or his siblings, he might forget where he was standing.

  Suryel’s hands trembled violently.

  Instinct surged through her like a spreading fire.

  She tried to leap, tried to throw herself off toward the building opposite, to break through the walls, through glass, through time itself.

  She could almost feel it, that desperate lunge.

  The impact.

  The crash.

  The miracle of reaching her own past self—

  But Helel and Yael pinned her back before she could move.

  Helel’s grip caught her upper arm, iron-tight, careful not to hurt her but absolutely willing to if it meant he could keep her alive.

  Yael stepped in front of her like a shield, posture controlled, eyes sharp, scanning the edges of the anchor-space as if expecting it to punish her for trying.

  “Do not!” Helel snapped, jaw tight. “You shouldn’t change time. You cannot calculate the cost, the price!”

  Suryel jerked against them like a caged animal.

  “Let go of me!” She spat, panic coiling around her spine like snakes.

  Helel’s voice dropped low, tight, deadly playful in that way that meant he was scared but refusing to show it.

  “I’m sorry.” His grip tightened a fraction. “But no.”

  He tugged her backward into the leafy protection of potted plants that did not belong on any rooftop.

  They were part of the anchor’s camouflage.

  A decorative lie meant to make the scene feel sort of normal.

  Like memory could be made harmless if it looked like a postcard.

  “We are only here to look.” Helel muttered, his eyes never leaving the window. “To watch, find the causality and collect the anchor into the page.”

  Suryel thrashed once, furious, breath breaking. “Collect?! This is my life!”

  Yael’s voice cut in quietly, his words carried weight. “Suryel.”

  His hand hovered near her wrist, not grabbing, just offering a point of contact she could choose.

  “You know that you are no longer human.”

  She didn’t take his hand.

  She could not take it—

  She couldn’t accept the loss.

  Her eyes stayed locked onto the window like it was the only thing holding her upright.

  And then Yael’s frown deepened.

  Because something shifted in the room across the way.

  A presence.

  A movement in the past timeline.

  There.

  Across the room, behind the humming mortal, someone stepped into view.

  Not family.

  Not a mundane adult.

  The past Helel.

  A version of him Suryel hadn’t met at that time.

  The version she hadn’t needed yet arrived in response to her call.

  A version she hadn’t anticipated surviving long enough to understand…

  Original.

  Alive in that moment.

  Suryel froze so hard her lungs forgot how to breathe.

  Helel beside her went still too.

  Not with shock.

  But with recognition.

  With something sharp and unreadable.

  The past Helel bent behind the human Suryel, watching her draw with careful interest.

  Not yet predatory.

  A bit bored but playful.

  And then growing… curious.

  His hand lifted, to lightly brush a stray lock of hair away from the her face, a gesture that was supposed to be so gentle it looked like it belonged to someone else entirely.

  But then something around her stopped his hand.

  That was when he smiled.

  A small, private expression.

  One Suryel didn’t remember being real.

  One she didn’t remember ever being for her.

  But watching that, she felt as if that was the moment her fate was sealed.

  Suryel’s throat closed.

  Her vision blurred.

  Then voices echoed through the wall of the girl’s home.

  Family.

  Mundane.

  And familiar.

  Dangerously painful in their normalcy.

  The kind of danger that doesn’t wear claws because it doesn’t need to.

  “Mom…” Suryel shivered. “Dad…”

  Her polearm felt too heavy and too light at the same time, like the weapon didn’t know whether it belonged in a battle or a confession.

  “How am I supposed to…” She whispered, voice shaking. “How is a causal anchor supposed to be here? What question needs to be asked? How am I supposed to collect it?!”

  The hum of the collected anchors buzzed harder in her satchel, almost impatient.

  History trying to retain its one-sided view.

  Trying to keep the narrative clean.

  Trying to make sure she kept watch.

  Suryel’s teeth clenched until her jaw ached.

  Helel’s eyes flicked toward her, and for the first time since the hunt for the causality anchors began, his expression slipped.

  Not into humor.

  Into guilt.

  Then his thought landed in her mind like a blade wrapped in something soft and precious.

  Sharp.

  Heavy.

  Invisible.

  Crushing.

  “Suryel… I’m sorry.” Helel muttered aloud, he couldn’t keep it inside, he reached for her hand.

  Her head snapped toward him, eyes wild.

  “Don’t.” Her voice broke. “Please, Helel, not right now.”

  Yael reached for her hand too, warmth offered in the storm of her panic.

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  Suryel flinched and tore away like touch itself was a trap.

  And she ran.

  Not methodically.

  Not strategically.

  Not like a hero escaping a snare.

  She ran like a prey, feet slamming across the floor that shattered and remained suspended, her polearm swung by her side on reflex.

  Her heart hammered like a drum in the Mundane Realm.

  The scene twisted around her and the brothers.

  Corners folded.

  Shadows snapped into impossible angles.

  Echoes of steps that weren’t hers whispered behind her like a chorus of laughter she couldn’t see.

  It tried to name her as the Miracle Child.

  Alive.

  Smiling.

  Singing.

  Human.

  Innocent.

  Gone from her, but still there in the past.

  It tried to keep her there.

  Suryel stumbled, breath hitching.

  A laugh barked out of her throat, wrong and sharp, half hysteria, half survival reflex.

  She couldn’t stop moving.

  If she stopped, she’d have to feel it.

  If she stopped, she’d have to accept the sight of herself smiling, warm, bright and loved before the world broke her open.

  Behind her, Helel chased, boots eating distance in controlled, brutal strides.

  His wings stayed hidden, but his presence filled the space like heat.

  “Oh, come on, stop running Suryel!” Helel hissed, voice sharp as razors, reaching for her.

  He grabbed her just quick enough before she could get hit by a car that didn’t exist until it did.

  The anchor-space manifested mundane hazards like it was trying to make her fear useable, real and practical again.

  “You could get killed by accident if you don’t slow down!”

  Suryel slapped his arm aside and kept running.

  “No!”

  She couldn’t stop.

  The anchor corridors bent into streets near her old home that felt alien.

  Buildings she didn’t remember.

  Hallways that curved wrong.

  Doors that folded into themselves like paper.

  Windows that reflected scenes that weren’t there.

  The story circled and kept her framed within the corners of the scenes.

  The human Suryel remained oblivious, humming, sketching, living, immune to this suspended intrusion.

  Helel’s voice rose, panic threading through authority.

  “Suryel!” He roared and caught her struggling in his embrace, he whipped her to face him and held her face. “Anchor! Sunbird! Face it! You can’t outrun your memory to escape this or it will claim you!”

  Yael followed, silent and vigilant, daggers drawn.

  His gaze kept scanning the warped corners, reading the anchor-space like Recon reads a kill zone.

  In the distance, mundane pedestrians drifted in and out of existence, blurred silhouettes with grocery bags and school backpacks, people who were not people, only set dressing for the anchor’s cruel authenticity.

  When Yael spoke, his voice was low, tense, every syllable a warning.

  “We are here to witness… with you.” Yael said, keeping pace, feet silent even on impossible pavement. “You cannot restore your core by running. You cannot destroy these threads of your distorted pasts by running. You cannot escape causality.”

  He breathed in before he added, softer, more human-like. “Please, don’t run. There is no need to be scared and try to escape. We are willing to face this with you… believe me when I say that this pains us too. Please.”

  Suryel’s lungs burned.

  Her hands shook violently.

  She skidded around a corner and nearly slammed into a wall that became a hallway mid-motion.

  She laughed again, ragged.

  Then cried.

  Then swallowed it back like poison.

  “I…” Her voice shrank. “I don’t think I can close this page. I think it would be too painful to completely collect it and reintegrate it to my core…”

  Her eyes squeezed shut as she ran, tears spilling anyway.

  “I’m scared.” A breath. “I’m sorry.”

  She ran faster.

  Helel gritted his teeth, eyes narrowing. “You’re not leaving this, Suryel! You don’t have to!”

  Suryel whipped her head back, hurt bleeding into rage.

  “Well, you did not let me choose, don’t you remember?!” She shouted, voice raw, eyes teary, nose wet. “You forced me into this, Helel, ever since you reached for me!”

  Helel skidded to a halt for half a breath.

  Not because he didn’t want to chase her.

  Because the truth hit him like a physical blow.

  Yael grabbed his arm immediately, yanking him forward without mercy.

  “Don’t pause, Helel.” Yael snapped. “You need to accept this too. Keep chasing.”

  His daggers flicked like nervous thoughts, slicing through warped air as he tested the space.

  “The anchor doesn’t punish!” Yael said, jaw clenched. “But it doesn’t forgive either, you already know that. So, don’t destroy yourself avoiding it, Helel. This fragmentation is becoming thick and real. We need to reach her. She needs to reach herself.”

  The world shook violently.

  Shadows stretched into impossible forms.

  Suspended air quivered like reality was a nerve being struck.

  Suryel’s boots slid.

  She caught herself on her polearm like a crutch.

  Then she stopped.

  Not because she wanted to.

  Because her body finally betrayed her.

  She stood panting, heart threatening to tear from her chest.

  And her eyes caught the human Suryel again.

  Smiling.

  Humming.

  Sketching.

  Alive.

  Impossible.

  Suryel’s knees hit the floor.

  Not gracefully.

  Not like surrender.

  Like collapse.

  Like gravity finally claimed what panic had been holding up.

  Her mouth opened.

  She wanted to scream.

  To vanish.

  To run again.

  But she couldn’t.

  Helel knelt beside her, one knee down, hand firm on her shoulder.

  His voice dropped into deadly calm.

  “Look…” He said, hands raised like surrender, patient and pained. “You don’t have to forgive me.”

  Suryel’s breath shuddered like it didn’t want to exist inside her.

  Helel continued, quieter, as if speaking to something fragile he refused to name.

  “I also acknowledge… my hand in this harm.” His throat bobbed, he tapped his chest once, trying to catch her eyes. “I… it doesn’t matter what I think or I say right now. This is now about your core.”

  His eyes flicked toward the window, toward the girl drawing.

  “You need to face this memory. Categorize it. You have to face and see yourself still within it.”

  His hand tightened on her shoulder, not possession, not control.

  Grounding.

  A tether.

  “That is all the anchor asks… like it has in all your other six casualties.”

  Yael hovered close, eyes steady.

  His daggers slid back into their sheaths, but his posture stayed ready, as if even memory could strike.

  “This is why we came with you. Why the Throne allowed us to go be with you.” Yael said softly. “To witness. To anchor. To hold you to the story. Since we have stood with you from the beginning.”

  He glanced at Suryel, and his voice gentled without weakening. “Not to save you. Not to fix you… just to be here to hold you when you asked… when you can’t hold yourself.”

  The six other anchors pulsed.

  Humming.

  Vibrating.

  Pressing inevitability into the air as if in agreement.

  Across the room in the past timeline, the past Helel straightened, gaze sharpening like he’d sensed something.

  For a second, his eyes moved.

  Not seeing Suryel directly.

  But… tracking the shape of her existence.

  Like he was checking.

  Like he was confirming.

  Then he disappeared.

  Not vanishing.

  Just leaving.

  Returning to whatever the past had demanded of him.

  An uncharacteristic and sudden summons by the crow turned hellion Samael, current Helel remembered.

  The past Helel left the human girl in undisturbed, perilous calm.

  Suryel’s throat tightened so hard it hurt.

  And then she did something that made Yael’s eyes widen.

  Something that made Helel go still.

  Suryel stood.

  And stepped forward.

  Not running.

  Not fighting.

  Walking.

  Each step heavy.

  Each step deliberate.

  She moved into the room’s threshold like she was stepping into her own grave.

  Her lips parted.

  And she sang.

  Not comfort.

  Not nostalgia.

  The song carried inevitability, terror, and raw possibility.

  A melody she had once sung without knowing what it meant.

  What had been a fool’s song.

  A call in disguise.

  An unknowing sleeping girl’s hum that had called attention.

  Suryel’s eyes stayed on her human self as she sang.

  Her voice trembled, but she didn’t stop.

  Because this time she knew.

  This time she wasn’t innocent.

  This time she was the survivor watching the beginning of the wound.

  She finished… then whispered, almost to herself, almost to the anchor within the memory. “What if none of this was inevitable?”

  Silence fell.

  The world tilted.

  Shadows and hums waited.

  Suryel swallowed hard, then repeated it, sharper now, like she was stabbing a nail into reality.

  “None of this… is inevitable.” Her eyes narrowed.

  Her hands tightened on her polearm.

  As if remembering her mentor, Metatron’s words.

  “That’s why I am here.” She whispered in finality and decision.

  The chapter’s quiet shattered.

  The hum of the six anchors receded like a tide pulling back.

  Replaced by a low vibration that ran through Suryel’s chest, through Helel’s stance, through Yael’s steady calm.

  The final parchment floated before Suryel, reluctant but waiting.

  It looked like it didn’t want to become permanent.

  Like it knew what it would cost.

  Suryel’s fingers brushed it.

  Warm.

  Then hotter.

  “All seven…” Suryel whispered, voice hoarse. “They’re… all here.”

  The other pages pulsed and floated out from her satchel.

  Each a heartbeat of time, choice, consequence.

  Suryel looked around.

  Windows shimmering.

  Shadows folding.

  The mundane world humming like it held a secret it was too scared to tell.

  Helel straightened, voice almost casual, but his eyes sharpened like a blade being drawn.

  “Congratulations sunbird.” His grin tried to show up. It failed halfway. “You did it. You collected…”

  He glanced at the parchments with the kind of attention a predator gives prey.

  “All threads of causality to strengthen your core… is now within your hands.”

  Suryel exhaled, trembling.

  The weight of every past anchor pressed against her.

  And for the first time, she felt the echo of all six clearly:

  The sword.

  The whisper.

  The coin.

  The cup.

  The tower.

  The veil.

  The song.

  Each a story.

  Each ended in a death of herself.

  Each a chain of inevitability.

  And yet she had survived them all.

  She was the thread that stitched them together.

  Suryel, Helel, and Yael were anchored.

  But in the Mundane Realm now in the present timeline.

  And it was at that precise instant that the world snapped.

  A shadow ripped across the space where light should have been.

  Not moving like smoke this time.

  A black-winged watcher moved like a cut.

  Samael appeared, eyes calculating.

  Draped in shadow like a cloak he wore for theater.

  His voice slid through the calm like a razor.

  “Well hello there, little star and sister’s keepers.”

  Belial hovered beside him like an amused catastrophe, gauntlets glinting.

  Curiosity sharpened like hunger.

  They didn’t loom subtly.

  They didn’t stalk.

  They simply existed in the space like the universe had been forced to make room.

  Samael leaned slightly, head tilting as his gaze locked onto the parchments.

  “So… this is the plan the Throne and your older brothers decided to do?” He said, voice smooth as venom. “Seven parchments, collected in your trembling hand. I had a feeling they would try to restore your core and…”

  His smile widened just enough to be insulting.

  “That is too tempting to take, so I waited for this moment.”

  He let the word take hang like a threat.

  Then he clicked his tongue softly, as if disappointed.

  “Not surprising.” Samael’s eyes narrowed. “And it’s becoming too predictive.”

  He gestured lazily, as if conducting.

  “They let seven pages from an unstable book that should have been destroyed, shouldn’t have existed… to be with you three. Unguarded, as if they are asking for me to…”

  His gaze glittered.

  “… help myself with it.”

  The world stuttered.

  Reality hiccuped like it didn’t want to cooperate.

  Even Helel’s step faltered.

  Even the hum of the anchors warped.

  Suryel’s breath caught.

  Yael’s stance widened, daggers flicking into his hands in one clean motion.

  Helel moved instantly, long sword sweeping from his side as he placed himself between Samael and Suryel.

  No hesitation.

  No debate.

  Only protection.

  Samael’s voice dropped into certainty.

  “So you will give them to me.”

  He smiled.

  “All seven.”

  Suryel spat out the only question her fear could sharpen into anger.

  “Why?”

  Samael raised an eyebrow like she’d entertained him.

  “So we can burn them,” He said pleasantly. “Complete Helel’s mission. The one he failed to do and lead to this catastrophe.”

  His gaze slid to Suryel.

  And his smile became cruelly intimate.

  “We must… empty you so the brothers can be emptied of weakness, attachments and memories.” His tone sweetened. “Not integrated.”

  Suryel’s stomach pitched.

  It sounded like he planned to give her fragmentation, but permanent.

  She could feel the shape of it like a hand closing around her throat.

  She would live.

  But as a constant.

  Not dead.

  Not erased.

  Not saved.

  Just… becoming the causality itself.

  A page.

  A mechanism.

  A tool.

  Helel growled, sword lifting slightly, stance widening.

  “You might have left her in that castle as an infant…” His eyes flashed. “But it was I who chose to keep her.”

  His voice carried that particular kind of calm that meant violence was already decided.

  “You don’t get to decide what to do with her.” He leaned forward a fraction. “Not a chance.”

  Samael tilted his head, shadows crawling around him like smoke with intent.

  “You would deny the opportunity to be the great unblemished blade of the Eternal Realm again?”

  His eyes flicked to the parchments, then back to Suryel like she was the real prize.

  “You’ve seen the pages. You’ve felt the weight. And yet you still resist.”

  Yael’s daggers traced small, precise arcs, not threatening, just measuring.

  Exit vectors.

  Weak points.

  The distance between Samael’s throat and the nearest blade.

  His voice was taut.

  “Do you understand what this means?” Yael asked, gaze never leaving Samael. “What he actually means is he wants her to die so he can shape her… again.”

  His jaw clenched.

  “Just like how he sent you to find her in that cradle.”

  Yael’s eyes sharpened like sunlight turned into a knife.

  “Now he wants to take her.”

  Samael smiled, calm, theatrical, delighted.

  “Exactly.”

  His gaze slid to Yael with false admiration.

  “I had no idea you’re this smart.”

  Then, like a cat remembering it has claws, Samael added.

  “Your name is Yael, right?”

  Belial cracked his knuckles and chuckled as Samael continued.

  “Curious…” Samael murmured, head tilting. “Let’s see if she resists. Or explodes.”

  Belial’s grin widened like a door opening into a bad idea.

  “Samael would love to speak with you, little guardian.”

  The air tightened.

  Pressure coiled.

  The world bent into a narrow cage.

  Suryel’s eyes flicked between them.

  Her breath hitched.

  Her hands shook.

  But she didn’t drop the parchments.

  She didn’t crumble.

  She didn’t run.

  Not this time.

  She raised her polearm and swung the blade tip downward, carving one syllable into the suspended floor.

  Not a word meant for Samael.

  Not a threat.

  A request.

  A command.

  A plea written with steel:

  Please open the gate to the realm, Authority!

  A call and a demand for the Eternal Realm to answer, for an exit to exist.

  Suryel lifted her blade again, heart a drum of warning and defiance.

  And she met Samael’s eyes like she was daring him to try.