Azrael Morningfall's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Azrael Morningfall pressed both hands flat against the stone wall and tried to stay one shape. For three breaths he held. White feathers down his left arm. Black scales down his right. Then the halves bled into each other again. The feathers turned to ash. The scales softened to skin. He never saw his own true face. He never held it long enough. He had come to this crooked town for one reason: to learn what he was, and to make the two halves stop fighting long enough to be loved as one thing. The shaking got worse at the bottom of the shadowed gate. He had heard there was a hidden library below the dungeon stairs. He went down. Lanterns burned along the stone arch. A scaled figure guarded the lower door, red hide and a tail that swept the floor. The dragon-kin looked at Azrael's flickering skin and stepped aside without a word. Azrael did not thank him. He could not speak and hold form at once. Inside, on a reading stand, sat an old book. Its cover showed carved rings and strange marks. No title. He opened it. The pages were blank. He turned ten of them. All empty. His hope cracked. He pressed a wing-arm to the paper to steady himself, and a drop of ash fell from his feathers onto the page. Where the ash landed, words rose up in thin gold lines. "It only answers the ones it was written for," a voice said. A woman stepped from behind the shelves. She wore a deep red gown with gold at the hems. Her brown hair fell loose around a calm, sharp face. She watched his flickering form without flinching, as if she had seen it before. "Lady Najera," she said. "I keep this book. I have waited a long time for someone who could read it." "I can't hold still," Azrael said. The word still came out half as a growl. "I can't even see what I am." "Because you fight it," Najera said. She did not reach for him. "The book says your halves bleed because you choose one each moment. Stop choosing. Hold both at once." Azrael did not believe her. But he was tired of ash and tired of scales. He closed his eyes. He stopped pulling toward the angel. He stopped pulling toward the demon. He let both stay. The shaking stopped. He opened his eyes. His left arm wore feathers and scales together, woven into one skin. His right matched it. In the dark glass of a lantern he saw his face at last, held steady. One form. Both halves. His. "There you are," Najera said softly. Then the gold words on the page kept writing themselves. A warning formed, line by line. Azrael read it twice. His new, steady hands went cold. "Heaven and hell can both feel this shape," he read aloud. "They know where I am now."