B.A.Voce

ANGEL – REIMAGINED

CHAPTER ONE – The Thief of Light
The first sound that didn’t belong in the Arctic night was a whisper—sharp, thin, and impossible. The kind of sound that slips under your coat and sinks its teeth into your spine before you can say what it was.
I froze mid-step. The cold burned my lungs as I looked up into the clear, star-salted darkness.
What the hell was that?
I turned toward Jennifer, my wife and field partner, hoping she’d caught it too. She walked a half-step ahead, breath fogging into the wind, cheeks flushed from the cold. When she noticed me staring, she frowned.
“You good?”
I opened my mouth to say Yes, absolutely, let’s pretend nothing weird just crawled across the back of my neck, when the sky tore open.
A streak of electric blue ripped overhead, so close it seemed to skim the crowns of the ice ridges around us. Not lightning—too clean. Not a flare—too fast. Not natural—nothing in nature moves like intention clothed in light.
The snow around us lit up in ghost-blue, then fell abruptly back into darkness.
Jennifer’s eyes snapped wide.
“Go,” she said.
We broke into a sprint toward the dog sled tied off near the temple’s entrance. Snow sprayed up around our boots. Behind us, the ancient ice structure loomed out of the dark—black stone wrapped in frozen ribs of white. It had always felt like it was watching. Now I knew it was.
Thirty yards felt like three miles. Jennifer launched herself into the sled, yanking the bearskin over her legs as I jumped onto the runners at the back.
“Hyah!”
The whip cracked, the dogs lunged, and the sled rocketed across the snowfield.
Only when we had put a good hundred feet between us and the temple did I dare to look back. The entrance glowed faintly, like breath fogging on glass.
Then a voice curled out from the dark—crisp, cold, and intimate, as if spoken directly into my ear:
“The thieves will pay with their lives.”
I staggered on the runners but held on. No echo. No source. Just a sentence hanging in the air like a blade.
I touched the pack strapped to my chest, feeling the hard outline of the ancient photographs… and the artifact wrapped in thick cloth.
At least we have it, I told myself. At least we’re gone. At least we won’t ever have to go back.
The night didn’t care what lies I told myself.
Because I felt it—something old, something patient—watching us flee.
And knowing exactly who we were.

CHAPTER TWO – The Story No One Believes
By the time I finished telling it, Matthew was smirking at me over the clutter of my desk.
“Oh, come on, Dad. You always do this. You take your dull, uninteresting little field trips and turn them into end-of-the-world horror flicks.”
The study lamp carved out a warm circle around us, pushing back the late afternoon grey. Photos were spread everywhere—ice walls, carvings, fragments of symbols. In the middle of it all, wrapped in cloth on a felt-lined stand, was the problem I’d brought home.
“Think what you want,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “That’s what happened.”
He kicked at the leg of the desk. Fifteen, full of sarcasm and hunger he thought no one saw.
“You know this kind of thing doesn’t scare us. We’re basically impervious at fifteen.”
“Right,” I said. “Fifteen. Totally invincible. Totally innocent.”
“That’s right,” he said, pointing at his own chest like a lawyer making a closing argument.
His eyes flicked toward the stand.
“How’s the translation going? The sword thing. And the pictures.”
I sighed, rubbing my temples. Sleep had not been a frequent visitor lately.
“Slow. The temple inscriptions are half a dozen systems mashed together—hieroglyphic, proto-Latin, something that looks like Coptic. The only clear sequence I’ve untangled shows… this.”
I slid one of the photographs toward him. The flash had caught a section of wall in the temple’s inner chamber: a ring of tall, stylized figures, wings carved in delicate curves, heads bowed toward something in the center.
At the center: a long, double-ended weapon. And a shape like a flame—no, a crystal—fixed at its core.
“A bunch of angels bowing to a weapon,” Matt said. “That’s comforting.”
“‘Angel-like,’” I corrected quietly. “Nothing about that place felt particularly holy.”
He squinted at it. “Occult? Egyptian? Catholic fan fiction?”
“Closer to Catholic iconography,” I said, “if Catholicism had ever made room for… whatever this is.”
Impatience leaked into my voice. He noticed. His gaze slid to the stand again.
“Is it okay if I pick it up?” he asked.
The instinctive answer in my chest was no.
But this was my son. The kid who’d grown up on my stories, on maps and artifacts and dust and myth.
I exhaled. “Yeah. Just be careful.”
“Always am,” he said.
Which was demonstrably untrue.

CHAPTER THREE – The Lance
The thing on my dad’s desk wasn’t really a sword, but “ancient apocalyptic double-ended lance” didn’t sound as cool.
Up close, it was even stranger than the photos.
The central grip was about two feet long, smooth and dark, the metal so cold it seemed to siphon heat from the air. From each end, a double-edged blade extended, narrower than a broadsword, wider than a spear—like two elongated diamonds of steel that caught almost no light.
And in the middle, embedded in the grip like the heart of the whole thing, was the crystal.
Red. Glowing softly, like an ember that never quite went out.
I reached for that, because of course I did.
“Easy,” Dad said, voice tight.
“I got it,” I said.
My fingers closed around the crystal. It was warm. Warmer than the air. Warmer than my skin.
The moment I lifted the lance off the stand, the floor fell away.
There was no time to drop it. No time to shout. No time to do anything.
Something hooked me from inside my chest and yanked.
My vision tunneled, blurred, then stretched, as if the room had been painted on rubber and someone was pulling it in all directions at once.
Then it snapped.
The desk, the lamp, my father—they were gone.
I was standing in snow.
Wind knifed past my ears. Ice crunched under my boots even though I hadn’t moved. The air smelled sharp and metallic, like the inside of a freezer and a bloodstained coin at the same time.
The temple towered in front of me. Exactly like in Dad’s photographs, but more. The details cut at my mind—carvings of faces in the ice, lines of symbols spiraling inward, a sense of weight so old it made my bones feel like plastic toys.
The sky was wrong too. The stars were too bright. The northern lights hung low and still, like they were waiting.
Someone stood between me and the temple doors.
At first, I couldn’t focus on them. My eyes kept sliding away like the figure existed at the corner of my perception. Then, all at once, it sharpened.
Tall. Human-shaped, kind of. Cloaked in a soft white light, edges blurred. Wings—suggested more than seen, folding and unfolding behind it like a slow breath. Something glowed where its face should be, not a face exactly but a presence.
Angel. My brain decided without asking my permission.
It looked at me.
Not my body, not my clothes, not even my face.
Me.
The sensation of being seen like that made me want to drop to my knees and apologize for everything I’d ever done wrong, including stealing my sister’s Halloween candy when I was eight.
A voice came—not from its mouth, but through the air, through the snow, through my skull.
“Bring back what is ours, and you will be forgiven.”
The word ours rang through me like someone had hit a tuning fork against my ribs.
Before I could answer—before I could even inhale—blue fire erupted around the figure. Pure, roaring flame, wrapping it in light.
The voice warped.
“No, boy.”
It was deeper now. Rougher.
“Give it to me, and I will conquer the earth… and make you a god.”
The last word twisted, dragged out, the promise thick as poison.
Images slammed into my mind: cities burning, oceans boiling, people screaming. My family, my friends, strangers—everyone—falling on their knees before a shape of fire and shadow holding that lance in its hand.
I tried to let go of it.
My hand wouldn’t obey.
A scream built in my chest.
The world blinked.
I hit the floor of my dad’s study hard enough to rattle the bookshelves.
“Matt!” Dad hovered over me, his face blurred, then sharpening.
My heart jackhammered.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I think so. What happened?”
“You grabbed the lance,” he said, voice tight. “There was a flash, a pop—like a massive static discharge. It threw you back seven feet. You’ve been out for two, three minutes.”
I sat up slowly. My hand still tingled. The lance was back on the stand, inert and innocent.
“That’s impossible,” I whispered.
“What is?”
“I… I remember everything. Like it actually happened. Every detail. The snow. The temple. The—” I cut myself off.
Dad watched me, eyes narrowed in that way that meant he was filing this under “Potential Data” and “Possible Delusion” at the same time.
“Tell me what you saw,” he said. “It might match something in the inscriptions.”
Panic rose fast.
If I tell him, I thought, it becomes real.
“No,” I said, too quickly. “I think I just need to lie down. Sleep it off.”
He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “All right. But if you need to talk—”
“I know,” I said, already standing. “Thanks, Dad.”
As I left the study, the glow of the lance’s crystal seemed to pulse once in the corner of my eye.
When I looked back, it was just metal and stone again.

CHAPTER FOUR – The Cross
Two weeks. No more visions. No voices. No random teleportation to ice temples.
I tried to convince myself it was a one-off—a weird neurological event plus Dad’s creepy stories plus my overactive imagination.
But something lingered. A tightness in my chest. A sense that something had marked me and then gone quiet.
Today was Sunday. Also the day of my confirmation at St. Andrew’s. My mother called it “a sacrament of maturity.” I called it “dress clothes and kneeling.”
Part of me—some desperate, half-embarrassed part—thought: maybe I can talk to a priest. Not about everything. Just… enough.
The mass blurred by in the usual swirl of incense and stained glass and echoing Latin responses. My parents beamed from the pew. My little sister swung her legs and tried to look solemn.
Afterward, we were each sent to confession.
“Your priest will be Father Elijah,” one of the nuns told me, checking her clipboard.
“Never heard of him,” I said.
“He’s very kind,” she replied. “Came down just last week from up north especially for this confirmation.”
“Up north?” I asked, pulse skipping.
She smiled. “Alaska, I think.”
Ice moved through my veins.
I told myself it was a coincidence. The world was big. Alaska existed. Priests moved.
But part of me was already bracing.
The confessional wasn’t the old wooden booth with the little sliding window. It was a small side room—two chairs, a low table, a cross on the wall. More like a quiet office than a booth.
The priest sitting there stood as I entered. He was older, but not ancient. Hair silver at the temples, eyes bright and warm. His face was… pleasant. So pleasant it almost felt designed that way.
“Matthew,” he said, like he’d known my name for years. “Please, sit.”
I sat.
“Do you have any sins to confess?” he asked, voice gentle.
I shifted. “Honestly, Father, it’s only been a week since my last confession. And I’ve actually been… pretty good this week.”
He chuckled softly. “Good. Then confession is simple. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing on your mind.”
He studied me. I looked away.
My gaze caught on the cross hanging from his neck.
It was small, silver, but not like the ones in the church gift shop. The metal looked older. The design was slightly off—two intersecting lines, yes, but with an extra circle intersecting the center, almost like a keyhole.
It swung gently as he breathed. As it moved, the light caught it just right, flaring off the surface and into my eyes. Something in me jolted.
I’ve seen that before, I thought.
No. Not seen. Felt.
“You like my cross,” Father Elijah said. His hand brushed it, breaking the light.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “It’s… different.”
He regarded me for a moment, then unclasped the chain and held it out. “Here. I’d like you to have it.”
I blinked. “I… I can’t take that. It’s yours.”
“I insist,” he said, smile widening just a fraction. “Consider it a confirmation gift.”
He stepped closer and draped it around my neck, the metal cold against my skin.
“Never take it off,” he said quietly. “This cross is very special. It can take you wherever you want to go… and open doors you could never open alone.”
My heart banged against my ribs.
“That’s… a pretty intense description for jewelry,” I managed.
He chuckled. “The faith is an intense business, Matthew. Now go. I think there’s somewhere you need to be.”
The words landed like a shove.
Home, something inside me whispered. Now.
I stood. “Thank you, Father,” I said, half bowing.
His eyes followed me to the door. For a moment, as I glanced back, they seemed to catch a glint of color not entirely natural.
Then the church hallway closed around me, and I ran.

CHAPTER FIVE – The Angel
Our house was only a few blocks from the church. I cut across lawns and side streets, lungs burning, dress shoes slapping the pavement.
The cross bounced against my chest with every stride, the metal growing warmer and warmer, until it was almost hot.
By the time I saw our front door, my heart felt like it would punch through my ribs.
I didn’t slow down.
I slammed the door open and sprinted through the living room, into the hall, past family photos I barely registered. My brain had already drawn a straight line to my dad’s study.
I skidded to a stop in the doorway.
Dad sat at his desk, a stack of photos in front of him, pen in hand. He looked up, startled.
“What’s wrong? You okay?” he asked.
I scanned the room. No smoke. No fire. No demons. No floating family members.
“Yeah,” I said, breathing hard. “It’s nothing. How are you?”
He frowned. “Fine. Why?”
“No reason.” I leaned toward the hall. “Mom? Sissy?”
“We’re fine, honey,” Mom called from the kitchen.
“Fine!” my little sister added, her eight-year-old voice drifting down the hall.
The tightness in my chest eased an inch.
“No particular reason,” I repeated, stepping inside the study.
Mom appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a towel. “Is everything okay, Matt? You’ve been acting a little strange lately.”
“Everything’s okay now,” I said, feeling the truth of it as I spoke. “Now that I know you’re all safe.”
Her face softened. Dad’s expression shifted into that mix of concern and curiosity again. Sissy peered around Mom’s legs, clutching her stuffed rabbit.
For a second, the house felt like exactly what it was supposed to be: normal. Warm. Alive.
I almost told Dad everything. The vision. The temple. Father Elijah. The cross. The warning that never quite arrived.
I took a step toward his desk.
He won’t believe you, a voice in my head said. Not all of it. Not yet.
I turned toward the door instead.
The air in front of me rippled.
Light gathered, not from the lamp, not from the window, but from nowhere—coalescing into a shape.
A figure stepped out of that light.
It was taller than Dad. Wrapped in a long, flowing robe that shimmered gold and white, half-solid, half-transparent. Curled hair framed a face both beautiful and terrible, too perfect to be human. A halo of pale fire hovered above its head, casting soft radiance over everything.
An angel. Any Sunday school kid would have said the same.
Mom gasped. Sissy dropped her rabbit.
The figure raised a hand—not to me, but to Dad.
“I have waited long enough,” it said. The voice was smooth, musical, echoing without echo. “Give me back what is mine. Now.”
Dad stood up so fast his chair tipped backward. “What in hell are you talking about? And what in God’s name are you?”
“God has nothing to do with this,” the angel said. The pleasant mask never slipped. “This is about your theft of the lance. Return it… or I will kill your family where they stand.”
My heart lurched.
This is wrong, I thought. This isn’t how this is supposed to sound.
My mind scrambled back to the vision.
Bring back what is ours, the first voice had said. Plural. Collective. Ancient and distant.
This one had said mine.
Dad’s voice shook. “You’re insane. I don’t owe you anything.”
The angel’s eyes flashed.
Mom and Sissy suddenly jerked upward, their feet leaving the ground. A corona of yellow light wrapped around them like electric fog. They kicked and clawed at the air, faces contorted in panic.
“Stop!” Dad shouted. “Let them go!”
“Return what you stole,” the angel said calmly, “or watch them burn.”
My skin crawled. My brain screamed that this was wrong, wrong, wrong.
The memory of the second vision slammed into me—the angel bursting into flame, the voice twisting, the promise of conquest.
He’s not an angel, I realized.
He’s the thing behind the angel.
He’s the devil wearing borrowed light.
The moment I thought it, the illusion looked thinner.
Dad turned toward the desk, toward the stand where the lance was kept. His movements had the slack, puppet-like quality of someone moving in a dream.
“No!” I shouted. “Dad, don’t. He’s not what he looks like—he’s the devil!”
I didn’t think. I just moved.
I lunged past the angel—every nerve in my body screaming—and grabbed the lance from the stand.
The metal was ice-cold. The crystal burned like a coal.
I planted myself between Dad and the angel.
The creature turned its gaze fully on me. Now that I knew what I was looking at, the halo seemed a little too bright, the smile a little too sharp.
“So,” it said. “You see.”
“I see you for what you are,” I said, voice shaking but clear. “Satan.”
The halo cracked.
Flame erupted, orange-red and violent, swallowing the soft gold. The robe blackened, then burned away. Horns curled from its forehead. Its wings became pillars of living fire.
The angelic glamour melted, revealing the thing beneath—a demon made of heat and shadow, eyes like open furnaces.
“You are not as stupid as the others, boy,” he said. The voice reverberated in my bones.
“Not even close, you piece of garbage,” I spat. “Drop my mom and sister.”
“I don’t think so.” His grin widened. “You have two choices. Give me the lance and become a god… or let them burn, and I will take it from your corpse anyway. I am generous enough to offer you the illusion of choice.”
The room seemed to tilt.
If I give him the lance, he destroys everything. If I don’t, they die. If I say yes, what stops him from killing us afterward?
Take the offer, I heard in my head. It sounded like my dad, desperate. Save them.
“Yes, Matthew,” the devil crooned. “Take the offer. Save your family.”
Mom and Sissy hung in the air, eyes wide and wet, gagging for air.
I looked at them. At Dad. At the lance in my hands.
Something in me snapped into place.
“No,” I said. “Go to hell.”
The room dropped into silence.
“You insolent child,” the devil said quietly, the flames around him flaring. “I am Hell.”
I tuned out his rage. I looked at my mother and sister like it was the last time I’d ever see them.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I love you. I’m so, so sorry.”
His heat intensified, the air rippling.
“Is that your final answer?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. Somehow, the word held.
“Son, no!” Dad shouted. “Give him the lance!”
The devil extended one burning arm toward Mom and Sissy.
Fire shot from his hand.
They didn’t even have time to scream properly.
The flames hit them and swallowed them whole.
When the light faded, the aura was gone.
So were they.
“Since you defy me,” the devil said, “their deaths are on your head.”
My mind went blank.
Then it filled with one thing.
Hate.
CHAPTER SIX — Crossroads of Fire
For a moment after their screams cut off, there was nothing—no sound, no breath, no thought. Just the outline of where my mother and sister had been, burned into my vision like afterimages from staring at the sun too long.
The air trembled around the space they’d occupied, the devil’s fire leaving a faint crackle that faded into the carpet fibers.
My dad made a sound I’d never heard from him before. A strangled, broken gasp that wasn’t quite a cry and wasn’t quite a breath.
I didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
The world had narrowed into a tunnel, and the only thing at the end of it was the devil’s face.
“You see?” he said, voice smooth again, almost gentle. “Stubbornness is suffering. Defiance is suffering. But obedience… obedience could have saved them.”
The fury that rose in me wasn’t hot. It was cold. A deep, soul-cracking cold that felt older than I was. My fingers locked tighter around the lance.
My chest heaved once.
Then something clicked in my mind.
Father Elijah’s words.
Never take it off. This cross is very special. It can take you wherever you want to go… and open doors you could never open alone.
My hand flew to my chest.
The cross wasn’t hot anymore.
It was burning.
Not painfully—urgently.
As if it wanted my attention.
I grabbed it in my left hand.
The lance pulsed in my right.
Dad staggered toward me, half in shock, half ready to kill something with his bare hands. He grabbed the base of the lance, anchoring himself to me like a lifeline.
The devil tilted his head, mock-curious. “And what do you think you’re doing, boy?”
I met his eyes.
“Leaving.”
“What?”
I thought of the ice temple—not just the picture, but the place. The way the snow tasted. The cold on my cheeks. The sound of the wind. The massive stone ribs. The weight of its age. Every detail I could squeeze into a single moment of memory.
And then—
The world folded.
It didn’t tear or explode or vanish. It folded, like someone had pinched the edge of reality between their fingers and bent it like paper.
The study dissolved.
The carpet beneath us turned to frost.
The air thickened, sharpened.
The roar of distant wind swallowed the fading echo of the devil’s laugh.
Then—
We were standing in front of the ice temple.
Exactly where I’d been taken during the vision.
Exactly where the lance had wanted to go.
Dad stumbled, nearly collapsing in the snow. He grabbed my shoulder, panting, eyes wild.
“What… what just happened?”
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t have words yet.
Because a flicker of fire bloomed behind us.

CHAPTER SEVEN — The Temple of His Domain
“I knew you couldn’t resist, boy.”
The devil materialized behind us in a ripple of heat, as if the air itself had been pulled inside out. Flames licked at the corners of reality around him like living things.
I groaned. “You again.”
He rolled his shoulders, amused. The fire around his wings dimmed, then flared brighter, casting monstrous shadows across the snow.
Dad stared at him, wide-eyed. “Jesus Christ…”
“Not here,” the devil snapped, and the temperature seemed to drop further.
The temple loomed behind us—massive stone arches, black ice etched with symbols older than anything in Dad’s textbooks. The sky above churned with auroras frozen in place, like someone had paused the world mid-breath.
“How did he follow us?” Dad whispered.
“He didn’t,” I said.
Because it was obvious now.
This was his place.
His domain.
Either a throne room or a prison—and I wasn’t sure which one was worse.
“You cannot fight me here,” the devil said, voice swelling through the icy air. “This is where your kind stole the lance. This is where I was bound. This is where I will reclaim my power.”
His fire flared blue at the edges—unnatural, electric.
I swallowed hard.
“That’s what you think,” I said, lifting the lance.
My hands shook.
He noticed.
“Oh, boy,” he sighed. “Always with the bravado. Haven’t you learned? Insolence is an endless river, and it only ends in pain.”
I felt the truth of it in my bones.
My stubbornness had cost my mother and sister their lives.
But this wasn’t about saving them anymore.
This was about stopping him.
I didn’t answer.
I just stared at him.
Calmly.
Coldly.
The way you stare at a monster that is finally, undeniably real.
He scoffed. “Silence? At last? Perhaps some clarity has come to you—”
He raised his arm.
The fire surged.
I barely had time to shout before a blast of heat slammed into me.

CHAPTER EIGHT — The Lance’s Trick
The impact hit like a truck made of magma and hatred.
I flew backward into the stone wall of the temple.
The ice shattered behind me, the sound sharp enough to cut skin. I hit the ground inside a chamber I hadn’t seen before—dark, wide, the floor covered in a thin sheet of frost.
My vision shook.
My ears rang.
The devil stepped through the hole, flames trailing off him.
“It’s about time,” he said, strolling toward me. “Thank you for bringing it home.”
He lifted something.
My heart lurched.
He was holding the lance.
In my shock, in the blast, I must’ve dropped it.
He turned the weapon over in his hand, examining it like a long-lost heirloom.
“Now my powers are complete,” he said, reverent and triumphant.
I forced myself to one knee.
“Funny,” I said, breath ragged. “That’s my line.”
He paused.
“What?”
I nodded toward the floor around me. “Yeah. See… I dropped my copy out there.”
His eyes snapped wide.
“What? No. NO!”
He shot upward, blasting into the previous chamber.
I staggered to my feet and followed, climbing through the ragged hole in the wall.
Dad was standing in the center of the room—barely standing, favoring one leg twisted at a sickening angle—but holding the real lance in his hands.
Its crystal glowed brighter than before.
The devil hovered a few feet away, incandescent with rage.
“Insolent human!” he roared. “How dare you defy me!”
Dad’s face was bloodied, furious, terrified—and resolute.
“You hurt my boy,” he said, lifting the lance. “I’m not letting you take anything else.”
He thrust the weapon.
The devil caught it mid-strike, inches from his chest.
“You cannot destroy me with this,” he said, his voice swelling with certainty. “Not here. Not anywhere.”
With one hand, he backhanded Dad across the chamber.
Dad smashed into a stone pillar and collapsed with a cry.
I sprinted toward him—
—but the devil raised the lance above his head for the killing blow.
“Goodbye, Anthony,” he said.
Then the glow around him flickered.
The bright yellow aura that had fueled him in our house—gone.
“What?” he snapped. The weapon trembled in his grip. “What is this?”
The lance began to shine.
Blue light spilled from the crystal, brighter, brighter—so bright the edges of the world blurred.
“No!” the devil snarled. “NO!”
A burst of pure blue flame exploded from the lance, blasting him fifty yards back through the far wall, leaving a smoking hole the size of a truck.
The shockwave knocked me to one knee.
I blinked through the glare.
Dad lay against the wall, breathing hard.
“Dad!” I scrambled to him. “Are you okay?”
He winced. “Leg’s broken. Don’t worry about me.”
“Right,” I said, voice shaking.
He pulled himself up by my shoulder, leaning heavily against me.
“Come on,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “We have to finish this before he recovers.”

CHAPTER NINE — The Chamber of War
We stepped through the blasted opening into the largest chamber yet.
And it was… breathtaking.
The ceiling stretched a hundred feet overhead, carved with spirals of symbols that glowed faint blue. Statues lined the walls—some angelic, some monstrous, locked in eternal battle poses. Their weapons were frozen mid-swing; their wings caught in arcs of stone flame.
Murals covered every inch of the chamber—vast conflicts painted in strokes of ice and light. Battles between beings almost too beautiful to look at and creatures made of shadow and fire.
It was a history of war.
A war between light and darkness.
A war the lance had been forged to end—or unleash.
The air was thick with power, humming with resonance, vibrating with a story that spanned ages.
I felt it all in my bones.
Next to me, Dad gritted his teeth, leaning heavily on me.
“We need to find him,” he said.
But I could feel it.
We already had.
Something moved in the shadows of the far chamber.
Something wounded.
Something enraged.
Something gathering its strength.
The devil wasn’t done.
Not even close.
And neither were we.

CHAPTER TEN — The Devil in the Ruins
The chamber was vast enough for sound to disappear into it; every breath we took felt swallowed by the stone. Dad leaned heavily on me, each step sending a spike of pain across his face. His leg wasn’t just broken—it was shattered. But he still held the lance like a lifeline.
Somewhere up ahead, something crackled—the sound of fire dragged across ice.
“He’s healing,” Dad muttered.
I swallowed. “Devils heal?”
“Everything heals,” Dad said. “Given time.”
Across the chamber, shadows rippled. A smear of flame dragged itself forward, leaving streaks of soot on the frost-covered floor.
The devil was struggling to stand. The blue-flame blast had torn a jagged wound across his torso, flickering with dying embers. His face was twisted—not with pain, but with fury at having been made to feel it.
“You—” he hissed, pointing a trembling claw at us. “You dare—”
Dad tightened his grip on the lance. “He’s weak,” he whispered to me. “We have to end this now.”
“How?” I asked.
“We hit him again with the lance. While he’s still unstable.”
Right. Because stabbing the devil with his own apocalyptic artifact was a totally normal father-son bonding activity.
We moved closer—slow, controlled steps, my arm around Dad, the lance glowing like it remembered something important.
The devil straightened, his fire flaring brighter. “Do you know where you stand, boy?” he snarled. “Do you know whose temple this is?”
I didn’t answer. Some instinct told me not to. The devil didn’t want to kill us yet. He wanted to monologue.
Dad muttered, “Stall him. I need to get closer.”
Great.
I stepped forward, heart pounding.
“Why is this your temple?” I asked.
The devil smiled—slow, sharp. He spread his burning arms wide, the fire curling like wings.
“This was the forge of judgment. The place where creation’s weapons were born. Angels and demons alike were carved here, blade by blade, spirit by spirit.”
The murals around the chamber flickered to life with the blue glow of the lance—battles of impossible scale, wings of light clashing with shadows that ate stars.
Dad whispered, “Keep him talking.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m running out of ice-breaker questions.”
The devil paced, flames licking the walls.
“This temple was sealed after the great betrayal,” he continued. “When the last war ended. When the lance was taken from me.”
He glared at me with incandescent fury.
“You stole it. Your kind. You buried it in frozen stone. You locked me away with shards of power and scraps of flame.”
He slammed a fist into the ground. A shockwave rolled across the chamber, rattling the statues.
“My prison,” he said. “My sanctuary. My grave. And my cradle.”
Dad whispered, “Now.”
But before he could move, the devil exploded upward in a surge of flame.
He blurred across the chamber, faster than thought.
Then he was behind us.
Dad fell backward as the devil ripped the lance from his hands—this time for real.
“No!” I lunged, grabbing the shaft with both hands.
The devil sneered. “Still resisting? Good. I prefer my sacrifices spirited.”
He yanked the lance upward—and my father was dragged with it, clinging to the opposite end.
The devil lifted the weapon high.
My dad’s injured leg gave out.
He collapsed, still gripping the lance, refusing to let go even as he screamed.
“Let him go!” I shouted.
“No,” the devil said, “but I’ll silence him.”
Flame burst from his free hand—
—and Dad dropped to the ground just as the blast missed his head by inches.
The stone behind him melted.
The air stank of sulfur and vengeance.
Then the devil split the difference and hurled both me and Dad backward with a sweep of the lance.
I hit the floor so hard the air knocked out of me. Dad landed nearby, gasping.
The devil stepped forward, dragging the lance along the ground behind him like a king dragging a sword through dirt.
“You have something I want, boy,” he said softly. “Something you don’t even understand.”
He pointed at my chest.
The cross.
“You’re wearing my key.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN — The Key of Doors
I froze.
“What key?” I asked, though the answer already pulsed against my chest like a heartbeat.
The devil prowled toward us, fire clinging to him like a second skin.
“That cross you wear,” he said, “was forged here. Long before your species could crawl upright. It is a relic of passage. A doorway between realms.”
Father Elijah’s voice echoed in my memory:
“Never take it off. This cross can take you wherever you want to go and open doors you could not open alone.”
I felt cold despite the heat pouring off the devil.
“Father Elijah,” I whispered. “Who was he?”
A flicker—just a flicker—crossed the devil’s face.
Fear.
It vanished too quickly to be certain.
“Nobody,” the devil said. “A meddler wearing someone else’s face.”
“What do you mean?”
“Silence.”
The devil loomed closer.
“This temple was sealed so that I could never touch the key again,” he growled. “The cross opens what was bound. Returns what was taken. Restores what was broken.”
He stretched a hand toward me.
“Give it to me, boy.”
The heat became suffocating.
My vision blurred.
My skin felt like it was blistering.
But my hand shot upward on instinct—grabbing the cross tight.
“No,” I said. “I’m done giving you anything.”
The devil’s fire flared. “Then you will die screaming.”
He lunged.

CHAPTER TWELVE — The Lance of Judgment
Before he could reach me, Dad shoved himself upright on his broken leg, screaming through the pain.
He tackled the devil.
For one second—one impossible, brilliant second—my father wrapped both arms around a creature of hellfire and held him back. The flames ate into his clothes immediately. His shirt burned. His skin sizzled.
But he didn’t let go.
“RUN!” Dad shouted. “Matt, RUN NOW!”
He was buying me seconds with his life.
I didn’t run.
I charged.
The lance—still half-gripped by the devil’s hand—glowed blue again, reacting to my presence, to the cross, to the temple, to something older than all of us.
I grabbed the shaft.
The devil roared.
Dad collapsed, his burns smoking.
The lance’s crystal pulsed—once, twice—
—and exploded.
Blue fire engulfed us.
Not burning.
Not heat.
Pure force.
The devil was blasted backward again, this time through not one wall but three—each one shattering like glass.
The entire temple shook.
Ceiling dust rained down. Statues cracked. The murals flickered with the echo of ancient war.
I staggered on my feet.
Dad lay unconscious, chest still rising.
The devil’s scream echoed from the far chamber—raw, enraged, weakening.
The cross around my neck burned brilliant white.
The lance hummed with blue flame.
And the temple—
The temple was waking up.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN — The Awakening
The chamber lights surged. The spiral symbols along the walls lit like constellations coming alive. The statues trembled, their stone wings shifting ever so slightly.
The entire place felt like something buried beneath centuries of ice was suddenly remembering itself.
Remembering its purpose.
The cross vibrated. The lance hummed. A low tone thrummed through the air—deep, resonant, cosmic.
The devil staggered out of the rubble, weaker, wounded, barely holding his form.
“You…” he gasped. “You’ve awakened it.”
“What is ‘it’?” I said.
The devil screamed, “THE JUDGMENT!”
The chamber brightened to blinding blue.
The ice melted in patterns—not randomly, but in lines forming a sigil that seemed to stretch beyond the floor, as if the temple extended into some unseen dimension.
A voice—not the devil’s—filled the chamber.
A voice that felt like thunder and memory.
“THE LANCE HAS RETURNED.”
I froze.
The devil collapsed to his knees.
Dad stirred weakly, blinking into the blinding light.
“What… is happening?” I whispered.
The voice grew louder.
“THE THIEF IS IDENTIFIED.”
My stomach lurched.
For a horrifying second, I thought it meant me.
The devil shrieked, “No! Not me! THEM! THEY stole it!”
The voice boomed:
“THE THIEF IS IDENTIFIED.”
“THE JUDGMENT BEGINS.”
Blue light spiraled upward into a vortex, swirling around the lance, around me, around Dad.
The devil clawed at the floor, dragged backward by the light.
“No! No! You cannot summon them! You cannot awaken the guardians!” he screamed.
Guardians?
“Oh hell,” I muttered.
The walls shook.
The statues all turned their heads.
At the same time.
Toward us.
Toward the lance.
Toward the devil.
The devil screamed like something cornered.
And for the first time—
For the first time since he appeared—
He looked afraid.
The chamber lit up with a blinding surge of blue light, symbols flaring on every wall like constellations waking from centuries of sleep. Statues lining the perimeter—angels with lifted swords, demons frozen mid-snarl—vibrated as if some ancient breath had stirred them. The floor hummed beneath my feet. The cross around my neck burned with a steady, pulsing heat.
Dad groaned, pushing himself upright, his face twisted with pain but conscious. The devil staggered in the debris of the shattered walls, barely holding his shape. His fire flickered erratically, like a candle guttering in a storm.
“You’ve awakened it,” he rasped. “Fool boy… you’ve awakened the Judgment.”
I swallowed hard. “What Judgment?”
He backed away from the spiraling light patterns forming on the floor, clawed hands trembling. “The guardians. The creators of the Lance. The architects of war. They will not stop until the thief is purged.”
I froze. “Who’s the thief?”
“You know damn well—” the devil began, but a voice—deep, ancient, and absolutely not human—rolled through the chamber, cutting him off as cleanly as a blade.
“THE LANCE HAS RETURNED.”
The words vibrated through my bones. I felt them in my teeth. Dad grabbed my arm, trying to pull himself up despite the agony in his shattered leg. His grip was shaking.
The devil dropped to his knees, his form struggling to stay solid. “No. No no no…” he muttered, scrambling backward as if retreating from an invisible tide. “Not this. Not again.”
The light intensified, spiraling around the central floor sigil. It looked like a symbol but also a door—like the pattern itself was a hinge between worlds.
“THE THIEF IS IDENTIFIED.”
My heart seized.
For one horrible instant, I thought it meant me. I took the Lance. I held it. I carried it from its place.
But the light didn’t move toward me.
It moved toward the devil.
“No!” he shrieked. “I am no thief! They stole from me!” He pointed at Dad, then at the frozen murals. “The humans! The angels! The betrayers! Not me!”
The voice paid him no mind.
“THE JUDGMENT BEGINS.”
The temperature snapped upward and downward at the same time—a paradox of heat and frost that made my skin crawl. The statues lining the walls began to change. Their stone eyes ignited, not with fire, but with cold white light.
Then, slowly, impossibly, they moved.
One by one, they stepped down from their pedestals.
Not all of them looked like angels. Some had wings made of light, faces smooth and unreadable. Others were monstrous, horned and hulking, carved from obsidian-dark stone. But all of them moved with the same terrifying precision.
They surrounded the devil.
He scrambled backward on hands and knees, skin flickering like torn fabric. His fire sputtered with every terrified breath.
“This is a mistake!” he screamed. “I am not the thief! I was the first guardian! The first! That Lance is MINE!”
A statue with a cracked stone breastplate stepped forward. Its face split open—not like a mouth, but like a seam unzipping to reveal blazing light inside.
Its voice was the same voice that had filled the chamber.
“You were cast down for treachery.”
Another stepped forward, wings of ice unfurling like blades.
“You swore allegiance to the Light, then wielded Darkness.”
A third: half-angel, half-demon, fused into one grotesque but powerful form.
“You twisted the Judgment. Turned creation to conquest.”
The devil’s form broke apart at the edges, flames sputtering. “Lies! All lies! The Lance chose me! The Lance was MINE!”
The guardians moved as one, raising hands, weapons, wings—all glowing with the same cold, ancient blue light.
Dad clenched my shoulder painfully. “Matt… stay back…”
But the devil wasn’t looking at the guardians anymore.
He was looking at me.
“At least,” he hissed, “I can kill the boy before you cast me into the fire.”
He lunged.
I didn’t think.
The Lance leapt into my hands.
Literally leapt—my fingers closed around the shaft as if it propelled itself into my grasp. The crystal flared bright blue, brighter than it had ever been. The hum grew into a roar.
The devil froze mid-charge.
The guardians froze mid-strike.
Everything stopped.
Except the Lance.
A wind rose from nowhere, swirling around me, lifting the edges of my jacket. The cross around my neck blazed white-hot. The Lance’s flames intensified into an electric storm of light.
The devil snarled. “No. NO. He is a child. The Lance cannot choose a child!”
The blue fire flared.
The guardians turned their heads toward me in unison, eyes glowing like stars suspended in winter.
One stepped forward, towering, armored, ancient.
“The Wielder has been chosen,” it said.
Dad’s breath hitched. “Chosen…?”
My knees nearly buckled. “I… I’m not… I didn’t…”
The devil screamed, recoiling. “Impossible! He is untrained! Unworthy! He is HUMAN!”
The guardian leaned close to me—close enough that I could see the cracks in its stone skin glowing like molten gold beneath ice.
“The Lance calls to those who stand in Judgment,” it said. “Those who resist corruption when all hope is lost. Those who choose sacrifice over power.”
Sacrifice.
The word carved itself through my chest.
Images:
My mother and sister engulfed in fire.
My father’s broken body.
My refusal.
My choice.
The guardian straightened and raised a hand toward the devil.
“Your time is ended.”
The devil let out a sound that wasn’t a scream, wasn’t a roar, but something ancient and terrified and furious.
He charged again, fire blazing, wings igniting—
—and the guardians unleashed their combined force.
Blue light tore across the chamber like a tidal wave.
It hit the devil full-force.
He was ripped off his feet, thrown against the far wall, body tearing apart at the edges. Fire sputtered from his wounds.
He howled, clawing at the air.
Not dying.
But bound.
Caged.
Pushed back.
The guardians’ light formed a circle around him—a prison of pure energy.
The devil strained against it, fire flaring, weakening, flaring again.
“You cannot hold me forever!” he shrieked. “This temple is dying! The seal will break!”
The guardians didn’t reply.
They focused all their power on holding him in place.
The Lance in my hands dimmed to a gentle glow, still warm, still pulsing.
The cross cooled against my skin.
Dad sagged forward, leaning heavily on me. “Matt… what the hell… are you?”
I didn’t know.
I still don’t.
The devil screamed one last time, forcing his face through the cracks of his prison.
“This is not finished, boy. I will burn your world. I will devour everything you love. You cannot run from me.”
His fire flickered.
His form collapsed inward, folding like smoke sucked into a vacuum.
Then—
Silence.
The guardians stepped back, returning slowly to stillness. Their light dimmed, their joints stiffening, returning to stone. One by one, they ascended their pedestals, locking into poses of eternal vigilance.
The chamber darkened.
The hum faded.
Snow drifted through the broken ceiling.
Dad slumped against me, exhausted. “We… we have to go,” he whispered.
He was right. The temperature was dropping. The whole temple felt unstable, like the Judgment had cracked something deep within it.
I looked at the Lance.
It glowed softly in my grip.
I looked at the cross.
It pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
“Dad,” I said quietly, “I think… I think we just woke up something that doesn’t go back to sleep.”
He nodded, grimacing from pain. “Whatever it is… we’ll face it. Together.”
But behind his brave words, I could feel it:
This was only the beginning.
Something ancient had taken notice of me.
The devil had not been destroyed.
And the Lance—this impossible artifact—had chosen me.
Which meant every power in creation, light and dark, now had reason to look in my direction.
We stepped out of the chamber, snow blowing in through the shattered walls.
Behind us, the guardians watched in frozen silence.
Ahead of us, the world waited.
And somewhere far away—
something burned
with the promise of return.

EPILOGUE
For two weeks after we returned from the temple, I slept with the cross under my shirt and the Lance hidden beneath my bed. Dad insisted on locking it in his study safe, but the Lance wouldn’t stay there. It didn’t move on its own, not physically, but every time it was out of my reach I felt a pressure in my chest, like a pulled thread stitching itself back toward me. After the third time I woke with the Lance leaning against my nightstand despite the safe being locked, Dad gave up pretending we had any control over it.
The nightmares didn’t stop. Not the normal kind—not running, not falling, not teeth in the dark. These were visions. Stone halls. Spiraling symbols. The echo of wings. The feeling of being watched by something too large to fit in a dream. And always, always, fire.
Not his fire.
Something colder.
More patient.
Dad told me not to worry, that nightmares were normal after trauma. He didn’t say the word trauma out loud—neither of us did. It hung between us, in every shared silence. My mother’s mug still sat by the sink. My sister’s stuffed rabbit was still lying on the stairs where she left it. Everything was the same. Everything was different.
People kept dropping off casseroles. No one asked how two people had spontaneously combusted in their own living room. No one asked why the walls of Dad’s study were scorched. No one asked why we couldn’t stop shaking. Grief makes people polite, and politeness is a great shield against truth.
But at night, when the house was quiet and the world shrank to the size of my room, I felt it.
The temple wasn’t finished with me.
The Lance wasn’t finished with me.
And the devil—whatever he truly was—had not been banished, only contained.
Some nights I could almost hear his voice scratching at the edges of my dreams, like a fingernail on glass.
You cannot run from me.
Dad changed, too. Not in ways other people would notice. But he watched shadows longer than he used to. Flinched at sudden noises. He researched constantly—symbols, languages, ancient myths that might explain what we unleashed. His leg was healing, slowly, but he walked with a quiet determination that hadn’t been there before.
One night, halfway between waking and sleep, I heard the front door open. I thought it was Dad until the floorboards didn’t creak in the right places. I sat up.
“Dad?” I whispered.
No answer.
The hallway was dark. Just the faint glow of the nightlight reflecting off silver picture frames.
Then—a soft knock on my bedroom door.
Three taps. Slow. Deliberate.
The cross against my chest warmed, pulsing once.
I swallowed. “Who’s there?”
A voice answered from the other side. Calm. Familiar.
“Matthew. May I come in?”
Father Elijah.
I froze.
The doorknob didn’t turn. He didn’t push. He didn’t force. His voice was gentle, almost apologetic.
“I know you have questions,” he said. “And there are answers you deserve. But not tonight. Tonight, I am only here to tell you one thing.”
Silence stretched between us.
“The Lance chose you for a reason.”
Every hair on my arms stood up.
“And the guardians are awakening in more places than you know.”
My throat tightened. “Why me?”
He exhaled softly, a sound halfway between sorrow and pride.
“Because you did what no one else has ever done. You chose mercy over power. You chose love over fear. You chose truth over deception.”
His tone changed—lower, more urgent.
“And because the devil wasn’t the only one who felt it.”
Cold washed through me.
“What does that mean?”
A pause. The cross grew warmer, as if responding.
“It means,” Father Elijah whispered, “that other forces have taken notice. Forces the temple was built to contain. Forces older than angels or devils.”
I stared at the door, heart pounding. “Then what do I do?”
“For now?” he said. “You prepare.”
Then—very quietly, as if he were smiling in the dark—he added:
“And when the time comes… you will not face this war alone.”
A faint shift of air. A footstep. The weight in the hallway faded.
I scrambled out of bed and yanked the door open.
The hallway was empty.
Only the soft glow of the nightlight remained. And a faint, cold shimmer in the air, like frost that hadn’t had time to form.
I closed the door slowly, leaning my forehead against the wood.
The Lance pulsed under my bed.
The cross warmed against my chest.
And somewhere far beyond the quiet of my room, something ancient opened its eyes for the first time in a very, very long while.
TBC?

by B.A.Voce created 11/19/1995, reimagined within the last year.