Having watched Myriam receive her mana, and my turn coming soon, I lost myself in thoughts. This liturgy felt very different to the last one I remembered.

For one thing, I didn’t take part in the ceremony ten years ago. I was merely a bystander, watching as Seika and Smyrna, my two sisters, received their mana.

Come to think of it, the facts were not all that different. Granted, the setting was not the same, but the ritual was.

I was different though. I had been a child, engaged in games of my own making, not truly recognizing the weight and significance of that moment. Now I knew better.

I appreciated the liturgy for what it really was—the day that would change our lives and the day when the new generation would accelerate everyone’s hope for a better future.

My mother used to say Myriam was the most shining example of everything that could go right in the world. And I could not blame her.

Seeing her now, her blue eyes shining with anticipation and my mother’s arms wrapped around her, I would not even fathom being jealous of her. I could only do my best to help pave her an easy way toward the future she had in store for us.

And little Kai… He wasn’t perfect, but for every selfish act he committed—for every lie he had told, and for every childish act he’d performed—he had more than compensated with his kind and just nature.

No doubt this had been so because of the strong influence of Myriam, but even she could not have made such a beautiful flower bloom if the soil was not fertile and receptive.

A collective gasp pulled me out of my thoughts. I saw Kai still drawing mana and The Divine struggling to hold Itself standing. This was wrong.

The archangels, seeing this, began to move toward their Lord. The strong emotion that had settled on the crowd when The Divine appeared began to twist in me. Morph to a feeling of hopelessness and despair.

This was not just something out of the ordinary, I realized. It was something that should not be.

The mana flow began to strobe in extremely bright flashes, accompanied by loud and deep thumps. The archangels were almost upon Kai.

The last flash was so bright that everyone had to crouch and cover their eyes. A high-pitched whistling noise made it impossible to keep my balance.

The hearing was the first of my senses to gradually return. The intense ringing faded and I was able to hear cries and screams in all directions.

I felt scared and my despair piled up as my mind ran circles around thoughts of eternal blindness. I quickly moved in the direction of the platform—perhaps too quickly, as I managed to hit my shin hard upon the granite stairs.

I fell down on all fours and reached out to feel for the edge of the first step with my right hand. I started to blindly climb up.

My left leg had become slippery, probably from the blood coming out of my newly created wound. As I climbed, I finally started to regain my sight, and was able to see shapes and movement.

Contrary to what I was hearing, I could not make out much movement in front of me. Everything was very blurry. I rubbed my now watery eyes and made another attempt at seeing what was happening up on the platform. Nothing could have prepared me, or anyone of us, for the sight I saw.

Kai was holding the dagger, its blade still plunged into the body of The Divine. It was now lying on its back in a pool of golden blood and its eyes had faded to gray like the clouds that had started forming above.

It was dead. The Divine had been killed and It. Murdered by a little boy.

One by one, the archangels who were weeping around Its lifeless body stopped their unearthly cries and stood up. More people came to their senses and saw what was happening.

So much confusion and anger had built up in such a short amount of time.

“It is dead,” shouted a voice from the gathered people.

“The Divine is dead,” cried another.

“Stop!” I heard Myriam’s voice, and turned around to see what was happening.

An archangel had a greatsword in its hands, poised to strike Kai’s head, but the blade never touched his skin. A golden flash appeared just as the blade was supposed to hit the boy and the celestial being was thrown back, high in the sky.

The archangel rebounded in midair, spreading its gargantuan golden wings, then it looked at Kai and dived back toward him.

The angel was so different now. A furious face had replaced the emotionless mask that it had been wearing just minutes ago. I would have never imagined that a creature as beautiful and pure as it, would be able to possess all this fury.

How different it seemed now, with all that rage directed at a little boy. A little boy that killed its father, The Divine Itself. I struggled to catch my breath.

By now, the rest of the archangels had unsheathed their own greatswords and were charging toward him as well. Kai finally let go of the dagger and seemed to take notice of what was happening.

His face, blank out of shock, did not even make the subtlest of movements. He took a step back and threw his hands in front of his face as two large blades came crashing down from the hands of the first archangels that reached him.

The same golden flashes appeared the exact moment the metal was supposed to touch his skin and the flying creatures were repelled.

Seeing this, the rest of the archangels formed a circle around him and began chanting a spell that was unknown to me. The spell was 32-words long and had no somatic components but I saw them all cut themselves while casting it. This could only mean that the spell required angel blood, if not specifically archangel blood, to be cast. It had to be powerful.

The gray clouds that had appeared now completely covered the sky above, and they started throwing thunderbolt after thunderbolt down on Kai. There must have been at least two scores of lightning strikes that hit him before the spell and its consecutive flashes were over.

We had all heard stories of celestials smiting mortals, but stories were all it was for us… until that moment. Crescendos in stories of good angels against spellcasters of the unholy arts.

This was something else. This did not look like divine justice at all. It did not even feel like judgment and execution. It was more like a spiteful and hot-headed revenge.

Yet Kai was still there. Not a single scratch on his head, crouched and still holding his hands up to shield his little body.

All went silent as he stood straight again and dropped his little hands. It was clear that he was not quite himself. His expression was not one of a frightened child as I might have expected. It was still void of any emotion. As if he was sleepwalking.

“Your kind will pay for your sin, mortal,” came the thunderous voice of the first archangel.

A deafening trumpet sounded and the archangel plunged towards the crowd, sword first. Ched did not have time to even register the incoming attack, much less defend against it.

The greatsword cut him clean from his left shoulder down to his ribs.

“NO!” Myriam cried, wrestling herself out of my mother’s grasp as she jumped off the platform and ran to her adopted father.

When the archangel drew its massive weapon back, Ched half-turned his surprised face to his wife, letting his body drop as the light faded from his eyes. Immediately, the golden celestial used its empty hand to grab Nessa by the neck and raised her in the air as if she was only a doll.

It squeezed her tightly but even as Nessa’s face took on a purple hue, she grabbed its hand and with a loud explosion, severed it from its body. Golden blood now flowed from where its wrist once was.

“Run for your lives!” Nessa shouted, empowered by the hit she landed on the angel.

Her victory was short-lived though, as another angel came crashing in, sword first, and took her down. It pierced her chest just below her throat, all the way through to her lower back.

My parents were already casting a ritual I did not recognize. Myriam, on the other hand, was running toward the crowd, through the gathered kids that were frozen, still in line, seemingly waiting for their turn to receive their mana.

With a crack, a purple semi-transparent dome appeared around us, covering everyone in front of the platform and some parts of the platform itself, including Kai and myself.

An angel, which was about to attack Krysha, tried to pierce the protective dome and seeing that it was unable to, turned back toward my parents. Krysha stumbled back in surprise, her black witch hat falling to the ground next to her.

My father sent a blue ball of fire at the incoming angel while my mother worked to cast a longer spell with her grand staff raised high. The fireball barely grazed the angel, as it shifted just in time to parry, but this was enough for my father to try and evade the sword slash.

He was not completely successful and the sword still pierced his shoulder deeply forcing him to fall to his knees.

My mother’s eyes grew wide and she almost lost her concentration but continued to cast her spell, even as her husband lay bleeding on the ground.