Last Request

The fall was a blind, suffocating eternity of darkness. Seraphina tumbled through the vertical shaft, the stale air rushing past her in a disorienting roar, her rough-spun shift catching and tearing on unseen protrusions. She landed not with a bone-jarring crack, but with a deep, muffled whump that stole the air from her lungs in a painful gasp. The impact was cushioned by a mountain of soft, bundled fabric—a pile of linens destined for a scullery that was now likely a tomb of fire and ash. The scent of clean, lye-scented cotton, a fragrance from a world of peaceful, ordered domesticity, was so jarringly out of place in the current hellscape that it made her want to weep from the sheer, brutal nostalgia of it.

For a single, precious second, she lay there, a broken doll in a nest of clean sheets, the distant, muffled roar of the war a world away. But the reprieve was fleeting. A tremor, deep and violent, shook the very foundations of the laundry room, and a cascade of dust and small stones rained down from the ceiling above. The relative quiet was a lie; the battle was not just above her, it was all around her, the entire mountain groaning under the strain of an assault it was never designed to withstand.

Her body was a symphony of agony. Her head throbbed with a nauseating, rhythmic pulse, her palms were a raw, stinging mess of scrapes, and a deep, blooming bruise was forming on her back from the impact. She ignored it all. With a groan that was half pain and half pure, desperate will, she pushed herself out of the pile of linens and onto the cold stone floor.

She was in the residential sub-levels now, a part of the Citadel she knew as intimately as her own reflection. But the familiar, pristine corridors were gone. She stumbled out of the scullery and into a scene of chaotic, civilian despair. The fighting had reached even here, but it was different from the brutal, focused duels of the dungeons. This was the aftermath. This was the collateral damage.

The air was thick and heavy, not just with smoke, but with the palpable, suffocating miasma of mass panic. Great, gaping holes had been blasted in the seamless marble walls, revealing the raw, living rock of the mountain behind them. Fires, fed by shattered furniture and rich tapestries, licked hungrily at the vaulted ceilings, casting a frantic, dancing, and hellish orange glow that made the shadows leap and writhe like tormented spirits. The air was filled with a new sound, one far more terrible than the clash of steel: the sound of weeping.

Panicked civilians, her people, the families of the guards and priests, ran in every direction, their faces masks of pure, faith-shattering terror. A mother knelt on the floor, clutching the small, still body of her child, her wails a raw, animalistic sound of a grief so absolute it was no longer human. A young priest, his fine white robes torn and stained with soot, sat against a wall, his eyes wide and vacant, muttering the same line of scripture over and over again, his faith a broken record against the overwhelming evidence of his god’s absence.

Seraphina was an ant again, but this time she was not navigating a stampede of bulls; she was navigating a flood of her own kind, a river of terror that threatened to sweep her away. People shoved past her, their eyes unseeing, their only thought their own survival. She was jostled, pushed, and nearly trampled as a panicked group surged past her, fleeing a collapsing section of the ceiling.

She saw a man she recognized—a baker whose sweet honey-cakes Jophiel had loved—standing motionless in the middle of the corridor, staring up at the smoke-filled sky through a fresh hole in the roof, his face a mask of dawning, horrified madness. "He has abandoned us," the baker whispered as she passed, his voice a dead, hollow thing. "The Most High has abandoned us all."

The sentiment was a poison dart that struck her already wounded soul. It was true. There was no divine plan. There was no holy purpose. There was only this: chaos, fire, and death. Her instinct screamed at her to join the panicked flight, to let the tide of terror carry her wherever it was going, away from the fighting, away from the pain.

But her love was stronger than her instinct. She pushed against the current of fleeing bodies, her small frame a fragile boat against a raging river, her eyes fixed on the far end of the corridor, towards the familiar archway that led to the acolytes' family quarters. Every step was a battle. She had to clamber over piles of rubble, the stones still hot from the explosions that had created them. She had to hold her breath as she passed through clouds of thick, choking smoke that made her eyes water and her lungs burn.

She reached the archway and her heart seized in her chest. The corridor beyond, the one that led directly to her home, was a scene of fresh, immediate carnage. A Fallen raiding party had just swept through, their work evident in the half-dozen bodies of Seraphim guardsmen who lay in pools of their own blood, their white-gold armor no match for the invaders' brutal, profane force. The air was thick with a new, more terrifying scent: the smell of a predator, a musky, animalistic odor that spoke of a violence that was not just tactical, but personal and cruel.

They were close. The thought was a spike of pure, cold adrenaline in her veins. She didn't hesitate. She scrambled over the still-warm body of a guard whose face she knew, a young man who had always had a kind word for Jophiel, and ran down the now-silent corridor, her bare feet leaving small, bloody footprints on the pristine marble.

She reached her family's quarters—Apartment 7-Delta—and a choked, guttural sound of pure horror tore from her throat. The door was gone, blasted from its hinges. The entire front wall of their home had been peeled away, revealing the interior like a grotesque, life-sized dollhouse. The living area, the place where her family had shared a thousand quiet, peaceful meals, was a ruin of fire and shattered stone. The ceiling had partially collapsed, and a great, massive support beam, thick as a tree trunk and wreathed in hungry, orange flames, lay diagonally across the room.

And beneath it, crushed and pinned, were her parents.

Her father, his kind, gentle face now a pale, ashen mask, was already gone. He lay motionless, his eyes staring blankly at the collapsing, smoke-filled ceiling, a silent testament to the brutal, instantaneous violence that had torn their world apart. Beside him, her mother was still alive. Barely. Her lower body was trapped beneath the immense weight of the beam, her fine acolyte’s robes blackened and smoldering. Her breathing was a shallow, painful rasp, but her eyes, the same warm, gentle eyes as Jophiel's, were open, lucid, and fixed on Seraphina with a desperate, all-consuming urgency.

"Seraphina…" her mother breathed, her voice a faint, papery whisper that was almost lost in the crackle of the flames.

"Mama!" Seraphina screamed, the name a childish, desperate wail. She rushed into the wreckage, her mind a blank, white panic, and grabbed at the beam, her torn, bleeding hands trying to find purchase on the hot, splintered wood. She pulled, her muscles screaming with a strain they were never meant to endure, a futile, pathetic effort against tons of stone and timber. It didn't budge. Not an inch.

"No, child… stop," her mother whispered, a faint, sad smile touching her lips. "It is too late for us." She reached out a trembling, soot-stained hand. "Seraphina, listen to me. Jophiel. Where is he?"

"I don't know!" Seraphina sobbed, her tears carving clean paths through the grime on her face as she abandoned her futile effort and collapsed to her knees beside her mother. "I have to get you out!"

She reached for her mother's arm, intending to pull, to try again, to do something, but her mother rejected the touch, her weak hand pushing Seraphina’s away with a surprising, final strength. "No. Go save your little brother," she commanded, her voice suddenly, impossibly strong, filled with a mother's final, absolute authority. "He needs you now more than ever." Her gaze softened, her eyes looking past Seraphina, at the still form of her husband. "I will be with your father soon."

Just then, a new sound cut through the roar of the fire—the harsh, guttural shouts of the Fallen, closer now, just outside the ruined apartment. They were coming back.

Her mother's eyes widened, not with fear for herself, but with a final, desperate terror for her children. "They're here," she breathed. "Forget us! Seraphina, please! Protect him! Go!"

The plea was a physical blow, a choice so impossible, so monstrous, it threatened to break her mind in two. Leave her mother, here, alive, to die in the fire or at the hands of the Fallen? The thought was a violation of every natural law, every filial instinct. But the image of Jophiel, small and alone and terrified, was a fire in her soul that burned even hotter than the one consuming her home.

From the corner of the room, from beneath the heavy, overturned dining table, came a small, terrified whimper.

Jophiel.

He was there, huddled in the darkness, his small arms wrapped around his legs, his body shaking with a violent, silent terror. He had seen it all.

The choice was no longer a choice. It was an oath. A sacred, final command from her mother.

"I love you, Mama," Seraphina sobbed, her heart shattering into a million irreparable pieces. She scrambled across the rubble, her hands finding her brother under the table. He was catatonic, his eyes wide and vacant with a shock so profound it had stolen his voice. She pulled him into her arms, his small, trembling body a fragile, precious weight.

She turned for one last look. Her mother had turned her head away from the fire, away from the encroaching sounds of the enemy. She was stroking her dead husband’s face with a gentle, loving touch, her lips moving in a silent, final conversation. "I will be with you soon, my love," she was whispering to the silent air. "I love you."

The image, an act of such profound, quiet love in the face of absolute horror, would be the brand on Seraphina's soul for the rest of her life. This was the moment her guilt was born, not just the grief of loss, but the active, agonizing guilt of abandonment.

With a final, ragged sob that was torn from the deepest part of her being, she turned and fled, dragging her small, silent brother from the ruin of their home. She burst out into the corridor just as a Fallen warrior, its face a mask of snarling fury, rounded the corner. It saw them—a girl and a child, easy prey—and lunged, its cruel, black iron blade held high.

Seraphina froze, her body instinctively shielding Jophiel's, her mind a blank, white screen of final, absolute terror.

A blur of white and gold slammed into the Fallen from the side. "Get the child to safety!" a familiar voice roared.

It was Elias, their neighbor, a kind, gentle man who had always slipped Jophiel extra honey-cakes. He was also a knight of the Seraphim Guard. He had his own holy blade locked with the Fallen's, his face a mask of grim, suicidal resolve as he held the creature back, buying them a single, precious second.

Seraphina didn't wait. She ran, her bare feet slapping against the blood-slicked marble, her brother a silent, trembling weight in her arms, the sounds of Elias’s final, desperate, and heroic battle fading behind her. She ran from the fire, from the battle, from the memory of her mother’s last request and her father’s dead eyes. She ran, her guilt a living, breathing thing on her back, heavier than the child she carried in her arms.