Archangel Astraeon

The sky did not open. It unstitched. Clouds peeled back like rotting parchment, folding into angles that should not exist. Light spilled through, not warm, not holy, but vast and depthless, like staring into an ocean that had never known a shore. She descended without moving. One moment there was only the trembling air, the next she was there, an outline first, then a shape the mind refused to finish assembling. Wings unfurled behind her, yet they were not wings. They layered into themselves, feathers fracturing into countless watching eyes, each blinking at a different moment in time. Some wept starlight. Some bled shadow. The ground knelt before she did. Stone softened. Metal warped. Every living thing felt its name loosen, as if reality itself were forgetting how to describe them. When she spoke, it was not sound. It was the memory of thunder. It was the echo inside a grave. It was a chorus of voices that had never been born. “CHILDREN OF THE SMALL HOUR,” the message pressed into every mind at once, vast and intimate and unbearable. “THE VEIL FRACTURES.” Her face, if it was a face, shifted continuously. At one angle, serene and radiant. At another, a lattice of impossible geometry, rotating through dimensions that scraped against sanity. Looking directly at her felt like trying to read a language made of screams. “WHAT DREAMS BELOW YOUR WORLD,” she continued, “HAS BEGUN TO WAKE.” The stars above rearranged themselves into unfamiliar constellations, forming symbols older than creation. Several promptly went out. “I AM NOT YOUR SALVATION.” The eyes in her wings all turned inward, focusing on something far away. Something approaching. “I AM THE WARNING.” And somewhere, deep beneath existence, something answered.