[Malach]
Malach shuddered awake in a bath of cold sweat. His lungs heaved as if he had been drowning. For a moment he did not recognize the ceiling above him or the floor beneath him. Only when he blinked did the memory return in a sharp intrusive flash.
He tried to recreate the scene he had seen, but an instinctive fear rose inside him like a hand pressing over his mouth. He tore the thought away. He had other problems to face. Even in his disoriented state, one detail gnawed at him.
He had awoken alone.
Where was Orvell? Where was Ellor? Where was anyone?
The last he had seen of them, they were shaken but alive. They had not collapsed like the others. At the very least, someone should have been nearby, tending to him, doing what servants always did.
Yet the hallway around him felt wrong.
The corridor seemed longer than before, the walls stretched by the absence of sound. The estate had always carried the faint hum of life, footsteps, quiet conversation, doors opening and closing. Now it felt empty, not simply quiet but hollowed out.
A chill ran across Malach's skin. With a sudden burst of energy he pushed himself to his feet and began to scour the manor.
It was irrational, he knew that, but every part of him whispered that something was out of place.
He checked his smartphone out of habit. There was no connection, though the screen still gave him the time. A little past one in the afternoon. He had slept far longer than he intended, long enough to miss his midday meal.
He moved through the estate in near silence, each step soft against the polished floors. The mismatched combination of rustic stone walls and polished wooden frames felt more oppressive now, as if the manor itself watched him carefully. Sunlight filtered through the pristine windows, yet even the light felt cold, as if it belonged to a world that no longer existed.
Malach hesitated at every turn, stopping his breath so he could listen. Every quiet moment gnawed at him. His hands, covered in dried blood from the rituals of the previous night, stung when he brushed them against anything. The cuts were shallow yet numerous, tiny angry slashes across his skin. He did not need to reach into his pocket to confirm his pricks were still there. He was not so desperate as to open fresh wounds. Not yet.
He retraced his steps through the memories of the previous night.
When calamity first struck, he had been in the library on the first floor, tucked away in the final door of the left wing. At first he ignored the strange weather. Storms came and went in Albion. Yet when even the bookshelves began to rattle and sway, he reached for his phone only to find it completely dead.
The moment the realization struck, a housemaid had sprinted down the hall after him.
Her name was Isabel. Malach barely knew her. She had served the estate long before he arrived and rarely interacted with him. She looked terrified as she caught up to him, breathless as she explained they had been searching for him.
Together they hurried down the left wing where Ellor found them and ushered them toward the central living room. The belief was that the room's reinforced architecture would withstand the storms.
There, Malach spoke tensely with Orvell and Ellor while the staff crowded in.
Ellor argued that the attendants needed to spread out so they would not all be in danger at once.Orvell countered sharply that the rest of the estate was not structurally sound enough. The central room was the only secure place remaining.
As they debated, more staff trickled in. The room grew cramped. People pressed shoulder to shoulder. Fear saturated the air.
A sudden cry rose from near the back. One of the cooks collapsed to the floor. The cramped room made the fall almost silent. For a few seconds no one noticed until the people around him attempted to lift him.
Orvell pushed through the crowd with surprising speed. The sea of bodies parted for him. He knelt beside the fallen man, checked his pulse, and looked up.
"He is dead," he said quietly. The words were direct but Malach saw the confusion in Orvell's eyes.
Intrigue, then panic flickered through the room, yet it did not erupt. Not yet.
Then the second death came.
The head laundrymaid turned toward Orvell, her eyes wide. She opened her mouth as if to speak but only a breath escaped. Her eyes rolled back and she dropped to the floor with a violent thud, her limbs twitching like a fish gasping on land.
The room fell into a heavy silence.
For a heartbeat, no one dared to breathe.
Then the dam broke.
People screamed. Like a mob, they shoved, trampled, clawed at each other, desperate to get away though there was nowhere to run. The room dissolved into chaos as bodies surged toward the exits. Malach remembered the terror as clearly as the angel's face.
He had been in the heart of the storm. He had watched death spread through the room like a slow poison.
It irritated him that they would lose their composure so quickly in the face of calamity.