CHAPTER 75: INTO PERMANENCE
Before anyone could speak again, Samael extended a hand.
Not hurried.
Not dramatic in the way mortals expected.
Just… deliberate.
As if the decision had been made long ago, and he was only now allowing the universe to catch up.
His fingers opened like a judge granting a sentence.
The air shifted.
Not with wind.
With authority.
It pressed down on Suryel’s skin, on her teeth, on the back of her eyes, as though her bones had suddenly become aware they were standing in a courtroom.
The world didn’t darken, exactly.
It tightened.
Like reality itself was holding its breath because Samael had decided to speak in actions instead of words.
The parchments shuddered violently, rising like frightened birds startled out of a sacred grove.
They lifted in unison, edges snapping, corners twitching like they had nerves.
Ink marks glimmered faintly across their surfaces, half-memory, half-wound.
The sigils on them did not glow like blessing.
They glowed like consequence.
Then they spun.
Pages fluttering with echoes of past tragedies.
Not images exactly.
Not full visions.
But impressions sharp enough to taste.
The Prince’s tower.
The Rooftop chase.
The Veil’s fallen bride.
The Mountain’s vengeance.
The Cup’s poisoned cheer.
The Tower’s almosts.
All of it.
A swirl of time, loss, and death.
All compressed into the flight of paper and shadow.
Suryel’s throat tightened, the polearm in her hands suddenly heavier, as if every past thread had decided to sit on her shoulders all at once.
Her fingers flexed against the shaft, knuckles whitening.
The hum crawled up her bones like a warning with teeth.
She could feel the stories recognizing her.
Not kindly.
Like they were asking her—
So, what now?
She swallowed hard, eyes tracking the circle of hovering pages as they began to orbit like hungry moons.
In the background, the Realm wasn’t empty.
It never was.
Even here, even now, the Mundane Realm kept moving like it always did.
Blind, noisy, and faithful to its own routines.
A market street stretched wide and crowded, a living artery clogged with bodies and commerce. Vendors barked prices over one another like competing birds, their voices stacking into a constant roar. Smoke from skewers and frying oil curled up into the air, tangling with the scent of citrus, sweat, and damp stone.
A fruit vendor argued with a customer, waving a bruised mango like it was evidence in court.
A man hauling crates shoulder-checked through bodies like he owned the road.
A woman cursed as her basket snagged on someone’s sleeve.
Children ran laughing between stalls, sticky-handed and fearless, their feet slapping cobblestones like the world belonged to them.
Coins clinked.
A shop bell chimed.
Someone shouted for bread.
Life continued.
Not because it was safe.
But because mortals didn’t know how to do anything else.
They didn’t look up.
They didn’t see the way the air tightened.
They didn’t feel authority press down like a verdict.
They didn’t notice shadows stretching wrong beneath awnings, bending where no light should bend.
If they sensed anything at all, it was only the brief instinctive discomfort of a crowded street, the fleeting thought of why does it suddenly feel colder or warmer? before dismissing it as weather.
And the fight didn’t pause for their ignorance.
It moved through them.
A blur between bodies.
A hard pivot around a merchant’s cart.
A flash of steel that looked, for half a second, like sunlight reflecting off metal—
Until it didn’t reflect right.
Until it cut the air too clean.
Until the world made that sound, that thin sharp crack like glass deciding it was done being whole.
The parchments burst upward through the crowd like unseen startled birds, spiraling above the street in a tight orbit, fluttering just high enough to be mistaken for trash caught in wind.
Just low enough to make a cloth seller curse when one snapped against her canopy.
A man ducked instinctively, scowling as a shadow passed over him.
“Watch it!” He snapped at nothing.
Then he went right back to counting coins.
People flinched when the air shivered.
When the crowd’s breath hitched.
When a dog started barking like it had seen something it wasn’t meant to survive.
But mortals didn’t understand what their instincts were screaming.
They just adjusted.
They stepped aside.
They grumbled.
They complained about the cold.
They blamed the wind.
A woman yanked her child closer without knowing why, eyes narrowing as if she’d caught the scent of danger but couldn’t find its source.
A man muttered a prayer under his breath and didn’t even realize he’d done it.
A cart wheel hit a crack in the road and jolted, spilling grain, and the seller cursed like the universe had personally insulted him.
The chase threaded through it all.
A turn too sharp.
A shoulder check through the crowd.
A leap over a basket of fish that made the vendor shriek in outrage.
A burst of movement that made a few mortals stumble, blink, then shake their heads like they’d imagined it.
Like their eyes had lied.
Like reality had simply… skipped.
They kept walking.
Kept bargaining.
Kept living.
Oblivious witnesses.
Helel moved before Suryel’s body even finished reacting.
He lunged into the crowd, boots skidding on cobblestone as a merchant cursed and yanked his cart aside.
A woman shrieked when Helel vaulted a basket of fish, silver scales scattering like coins across the street.
His sword was already in motion.
To mortals, it was only a flash.
A strange streak of light that didn’t belong to any sun.
His grin didn’t reach his eyes.
It was there out of habit, like a blade kept sharp even when the war wasn’t funny.
This wasn’t playtime.
This was war.
“I’ll redecorate the Abyss with your ribs.”
Helel muttered it like a promise he’d already written down, voice bright with violence as he threw himself into the hellion-made storm.
Then he snapped his gaze toward the dark like he was staring directly into Samael’s mouth.
“Don’t you dare mess with her.”
His blade met the edge of the whirl, slicing through reality in a flash.
A clean, violent line.
The air split with a sound like glass deciding it was done being whole.
The parchments scattered.
Fragments spinning away like torn feathers.
Shadows recoiled.
Kept away—
But they didn’t flee.
They waited like Samael trained them to.
Like even darkness knew how to hold formation.
Suryel leapt, polearm flashing.
She didn’t aim at the pages.
She aimed at what the paper was trying to become.
Because the parchments weren’t just objects.
They were anchors.
And anchors didn’t just sit.
They latched.
A memory-thread tried to hook behind her eyes.
Pulling her back into a story, slick and fast.
She felt it like a cold hand reaching for her thoughts.
Not her body.
Her mind.
The kind of violation that didn’t leave bruises but left you blinking wrong for days.
Suryel’s breath hitched.
Her stomach turned.
She saw it for half a heartbeat: a rooftop edge, a scream, the taste of metal.
Her vision sharpened too hard, like the world had suddenly become a knife.
She sliced through it midair.
The polearm’s blade didn’t just cut air.
It cut connection.
The thread snapped with a sound she felt more than heard, like a violin string inside her skull being severed.
No.
Not today.
Not again.
Then her eyes snapped up. “Yael?”
The name cracked out of her like a thrown dagger, sharp and desperate and too loud to be dignified.
Because only then did she notice it.
The space where he had been was empty—
Yael was gone.
Suryel’s stomach dropped so hard it felt like gravity had personally betrayed her.
But there was no shimmer of retreat.
No footstep.
No warning.
Just absence.
A hole in the world shaped like her safety.
She remembered Belial’s words, he implied Samael wanted Yael.
Her head turned too fast, scanning, searching, trying to force the universe to cough him back up.
Their mission to collect the Causality anchors on Earth had been interrupted.
And she suspected that someone had taken her beloved brother.
Suryel’s mind tried to click into calculation mode.
It tried.
It started listing options like a desperate merchant.
Anchor the pages.
Secure the causality threads.
Don’t let Samael win.
Don’t let the stories scatter.
Don’t let your core fracture—
But her heart refused to cooperate.
Her chest felt too small for her lungs.
She couldn’t breathe enough.
She needed to make a choice.
Which to prioritize.
The anchors?
Or Yael.
Helel cursed, pivoting hard toward the space Samael vacated, sword swinging as if he could carve the truth out of empty air.
His voice echoed sharp and furious, his whole body turning into a threat.
“Coward!” Helel spat, blade humming. “Come back and say whatever it is I know you are thinking with your whole face!”
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But Samael vanished to reappear again somewhere soon.
No footsteps.
No shadow trail.
Nothing but the hum of inevitability pressing against their chest like a hand.
Suryel’s knees hit the floor.
Not from weakness.
From impact.
From the sudden, vicious weight of fear.
Her palms scraped stone.
Her polearm’s haft clattered once, then steadied as she gripped it like it was the only thing keeping her from shattering.
Her eyes darted, scanning like a hunted thing.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as if trying to escape her body first.
“Yael! Where are you?!” She called.
Then louder, voice breaking into desperation, into pleading.
“Yael! Helel! He’s missing, I think they took him! We can’t… I can’t lose him!”
Somewhere behind them, Hellions shifted in the dark like a tide preparing to rise.
Not all of them rushed in.
Not yet.
Some hovered at the edges, watching.
Eager.
Predatory.
Waiting for a mistake.
Because that’s what Hellions did.
They waited for cracks in your soul.
And that was when they came in to flood you— as Legion.
Suryel could hear them in the corners of her perception, like insects inside the walls of reality.
A few Hellions slipped closer, their shapes half-formed, their hunger more confident now that panic had entered the room.
Their presence felt like cold laughter.
Like a room full of mouths with no faces.
Helel saw them too.
His posture shifted, shoulders rolling back, sword lowering into a ready line.
The grin sharpened.
The kind of grin that meant I dare you.
“Try it.” Helel warned softly, almost conversational, like he was inviting them to ruin their own day. “I would love to see you all try.”
The hellions in the background stiffened.
A horned hellion took half a step, then stopped, like invisible rules had wrapped around their ankles.
No one moved in.
No one wanted to be collateral.
The parchments, however, began to settle.
Not gently.
Not kindly.
They hovered in a circle before her, pulsing, vibrating.
Not destroyed.
Not safe.
Just… condensed.
Like Samael had taken a storm and folded it into a knife.
The hum of causality thrummed, almost expectant.
It wasn’t only sound.
It was pressure.
A note that didn’t belong in mortal ears, yet insisted on being heard anyway.
Suryel felt it in her teeth.
In her spine.
In the delicate spaces behind her eyes where tears were born.
Helel snapped his head toward her, expression sharp, command sliding into place like armor.
“Suryel! Focus. Collect them!” He shouted, sword still raised, shoulders squared. “Anchor the pages. Hold the stories. Hurry!”
Suryel’s eyes flashed.
She looked up at him like a spark looking for gasoline.
“Are you insane? How can I think of doing anything else right now?” She hissed, voice raw. “Yael is gone! I need you to help me find him first!”
Helel’s jaw ticked.
His gaze didn’t soften— but something in his eyes stilled like lava.
The kind of heat that only existed when you loved someone enough to become dangerous.
“And if you don’t anchor them.” Helel shot back, stepping closer, sword angled outward to guard her. “Then Yael is gone and so is everything else. This is what Samael wants. Panic. Split priorities. Dumb choices!”
Suryel’s throat meant to argue again.
But the hum rose, louder, sharper, like the pages were mocking her indecision.
Helel’s voice cut in again, ruthless and certain.
“He will keep himself safe for you! Trust me!”
Sharp enough to cut.
The words landed like a slap.
Not cruel.
Not unkind.
Just… necessary.
The pages vibrated like they were laughing at her hesitation.
Suryel hated that he was right.
Hated that she needed him to be right.
Hated that this was happening at all.
Her lips trembled.
Then she bared her teeth like a cornered animal.
“If he’s hurt or…” She said, voice low, lethal with fear. “I’m going to feed Samael his own spine.”
Helel’s grin flashed.
Quick.
Feral.
Proud.
“That’s my girl.”
Then his expression hardened again. “Now move!”
Suryel flinched.
Then her jaw clenched even when her eyes teared.
She dove.
Hands trembling.
She reached for the hovering parchments, fingers brushing the edges shakily as if touching them might burn.
And it did.
Not physically.
But in the way grief burns.
Each page hummed like a living wound.
Each anchor felt like a decision she’d made in blood.
She grabbed one parchment, then another.
Her fingers didn’t just hold paper.
They held history.
They held the weight of moments she hadn’t asked for, consequences she hadn’t earned, grief she hadn’t been allowed to process because survival had demanded speed.
The ink wasn’t ink anymore.
It felt like it had texture.
Like it was alive.
Like it wanted to crawl into her skin and claim her.
Behind her, Helel’s sword carved a protective arc, his stance widening as Hellions tested the perimeter.
Shadows struck like spears, and his blade answered like lightning.
A Hellion lunged too close.
Helel didn’t even look.
He simply swung, the sword cutting through the creature’s midsection like it was smoke with bones.
It hissed and unraveled, retreating into the dark like a lie exposed.
Suryel’s breath came in sharp pulls.
The hum surged.
Desperate.
Angry.
Alive.
She inhaled, forcing herself to see.
To face.
To categorize.
Not forgive.
Not save.
Just… hold.
Because that was the rule of it, wasn’t it?
The stories didn’t need her tears.
They needed her spine.
Her fingers tightened around the parchment edges.
The ink on them seemed to crawl, rearranging itself, like the pages recognized her grip and decided to cooperate.
Or resist.
She couldn’t tell which.
Helel barked without turning, voice slicing through the chaos:
“Stop shaking, sunbird! You’re not dropping them again.”
Suryel snapped back, reflexive, angry at her own body for betraying her.
“I’m… not… shaking!” She said per slash cut through hellion and air.
Helel snorted, a sharp sound in the middle of violence.
“Sure. And I’m a humble monk!”
Despite herself, despite the terror, a broken laugh tried to claw its way out of Suryel’s chest.
It died before it reached her mouth.
Because fear was still sitting on her tongue.
The last page clicked into place in her grasp—
And the hum became a single note.
High.
Piercing.
A sound that felt like it scraped against the inside of reality.
Then Samael struck again.
No warning.
No announcement.
A wave of shadows, black and sharp, erupted like a thrown net of knives.
Hellions poured with it, not fully material but present enough to harm.
Their forms were half-smoke.
Half-hunger, eyes like pits where light went to die.
The Eternal Hosts in the distance backed away as one, like the room itself had exhaled fear.
Suryel’s body reacted before her mind could.
She spun, polearm a blur, planting herself over the gathered pages like a shield with teeth.
She struck low, then high, then pivoted.
Her movements instinctive now.
Not elegant.
Not trained like Eternal Hosts.
But real.
Human-born.
Survivor.
Her polearm cracked into a Hellion’s shoulder, scattering it into mist.
Another tried to reach past her.
Suryel slammed the butt of the weapon into the ground, sending a shock through her stance that threw it back.
Her voice came out as a growl. “No.”
Then louder, breath ripping, eyes bright with fury. “These are mine!”
Helel met them head-on.
He parried, slicing a corridor of darkness, the edge of his blade leaving a pale burn in the air where shadow had been forced to remember it could be wounded.
Helel shouted into the dark, voice taunting, too loud to be safe and too furious to care.
“Samael! This is your plan? Paper cuts and cowardly tricks?”
Suryel didn’t let herself look for Yael again.
If she did, she would break.
So she didn’t.
She fought.
Daggers flashed.
A burst of movement at the edge of her vision—
Yael reappeared.
No grand entrance.
Just suddenly there, as if the universe had blinked and he had stepped through the blink.
Eyes wide but alive, breath sharp, a dagger already slicing threads of darkness as if he’d never left.
Suryel’s chest seized.
Relief hit her so hard it almost made her dizzy.
Alive.
He was alive.
Her knees almost buckled from the sheer, violent gratitude of it.
Helel didn’t waste time on emotion.
He only barked, voice tight, sword already moving.
“Good of you to join us. Now move!”
Yael moved.
His form was sunlight through steel, weaving between strikes.
Cutting clean lines through shadow threads trying to bind Suryel’s arms.
His presence anchored her more than the pages did.
But there was something… off.
Not obvious.
Not enough to name.
Just a fraction of a beat where the timing didn’t match the Yael she knew.
Like the rhythm of him had been copied instead of lived.
Suryel didn’t have time to chase the feeling.
She only had time to survive.
Yael’s voice cut through the chaos, calm but urgent.
“He displaced me…” Yael muttered, breath clipped, daggers crossing to sever a binding thread. “Not far. He wanted separation.”
Suryel’s eyes flicked to him, fierce.
“Did he hurt you?” She demanded, half-rage, half-panic.
Yael’s gaze did not meet hers. “No? I’m here aren’t I?”
That was his answer.
It should have been comforting.
It landed… strangely.
Like a line delivered correctly but without the warmth behind it.
But she did not have time to think.
The fight became a storm of motion.
Helel’s sword arcing through void, each strike a statement:
Not here.
Not her.
Not my brother either.
Nope.
Not today.
Never ever.
Suryel was also spinning, striking, slashing, dodging.
Her polearm cracked against shadow like a bell rung in a graveyard.
Yael weaved like warmth in winter with one dagger.
Precise.
Efficient.
Terrifying in his quiet way.
Hellions hissed, recoiling, reforming, trying again.
They weren’t mindless.
They were coordinated.
Some attempted to distract Helel, tried to draw his blade away.
Others lunged toward Suryel’s hands.
A few tried to circle behind Yael.
But Yael didn’t panic.
He simply adjusted.
Kicking and slashing them in rapid succession.
Not wasted movement.
Not wasted breath.
The last parchment hovered like the eye of a hurricane, humming its warnings, vibrating against the very edge of what reality could contain.
It was the most important one.
The most dangerous one—
The Miracle child’s story.
And Samael wanted it.
Samael’s voice, calm and cutting, slid through the battle like a blade sliding between ribs.
“You think holding them will save you?”
The tone was almost amused.
Like he was watching children protect toys.
“You think this gives you a choice? An option where you can fight me and win?”
Suryel’s teeth gritted.
Her eyes locked forward, refusing to let his voice crawl into her head the way it wanted to.
“No I don’t.” She snapped, voice shaking with rage more than fear. “I hold them, because it gives me control over my past! And my future. I am not yours!”
Samael laughed.
Not loud.
Just a soft exhale of entertainment.
“Future?” He repeated it like the word was a joke. “How adorable, little star.”
Helel snarled, blade flashing, his stance widening like he was ready to fight the concept of Samael itself.
“Say one more word to her and I’ll make your mouth a historical event.”
Samael didn’t respond directly.
He didn’t need to.
Now that he managed to take and hide a leverage.
His voice lowered, intimate, like a secret being planted.
“You will find me, Suryel. You will come to the Abyss to find me.”
Then he disappeared.
The shadows surged again.
Obeying Samael like trained hounds.
The whirlwind of shadows crashed against the anchor’s note.
Reality shuddered.
As both Suryel and Samael grasped for the last page.
Samael’s fingers were elegant, confident, like he already knew the ending.
Suryel’s hands were shaking, desperate, stubborn, like she refused to let anyone else hold the pen.
Helel rolled, slashing, sending a fragment spinning into oblivion.
His blade didn’t just cut shadow.
It cut intention.
Suryel lunged, polearm skimming Samael’s shoulder.
It wasn’t a deep strike.
But it was enough.
A line of pain.
A reminder.
A hiss tore from him, soft and sharp.
Not anger.
More like… surprise.
As if he hadn’t expected her to actually land it.
Then he smiled.
Yael leapt into the center, daggers crossing, cutting threads of darkness trying to envelop the pages.
He moved like a vow.
Like a promise kept.
Samael frowned at him.
Yael returned it with a silent smile.
A beat.
Not peace.
Not safety.
Just the brief pause after violence when the world holds its breath and checks if it’s still intact.
The parchment floated, humming softly.
Then it pulsed—
And Suryel’s hand closed around it.
Firm.
Final.
The hum changed.
No longer frantic.
No longer screaming.
It settled into something like… acceptance.
Already writing itself into permanence.
Already stitching itself into her book within the Archive Tower.
Suryel could feel it.
The moment the anchor became hers.
Not owned.
Not possessed.
But chosen.
Her breath shook.
She held the page to her chest for a fraction of a heartbeat like it was alive.
Like it was proof she could still win.
The shadowy remnants of the Abyss crew with Samael hissed and recoiled, not gone, but kept away by Helel’s cover flame.
Helel stepped between them and Samael’s lingering presence, sword held low now, ready to rise again.
His grin returned.
Thin.
Dangerous.
His eyes flicked to Suryel.
“You got all of it?” He asked, voice sharp but threaded with something protective.
Suryel nodded, swallowing hard. “Yup. I do!”
Yael’s gaze swept the shadows, reading the space like he always did.
“We should leave now.” Yael said quietly, no debate in his tone. “He’s not finished.”
Helel scoffed, spitting breath like laughter.
“He’s never finished. That’s his whole personality.”
Suryel shot Helel a look, breathless and furious.
“We got to leave, no jokes right now!”
Helel looked at her, grin flashing again, and it was all teeth.
“I’m not joking. I’m coping. Try it sometime.”
The three of them ran.
They didn’t retreat like cowards.
They moved like survivors who understood timing.
They ducked and rolled across the threshold to the Eternal Realm as soon as it appeared, slipping between stone and sigil, between shadow and light.
Behind them, Hellions snarled and scraped against the boundary, unable to cross fast enough to grab what they wanted.
Suryel and Helel breathed, hearts hammering.
Air burned in their lungs.
Sweat cooled too fast on their skin.
They were far from safe.
And yet— They had each other.
They had… choices, however sharp its edges.
The humming note of the parchments softened into something quieter, stitched back and absorbed like aether into her spine.
She was now something stable.
No longer frantic.
No longer trying to flee.
“We made it, damn.” Suryel muttered.
Helel sighed and tapped her shoulder. “Yeah.”
Yael remained silent.
For a moment, it felt like the Realm finally remembered how to breathe.
