The storm had sealed them in.
Snow pressed violently against the windows of the old church apartment, the wind howling like a warning from the heavens. There was no hospital. No doctors. No escape. Only prayer, trembling hands, and faith holding the room together.
The woman cried out, her body exhausted, overdue, fighting through pain that felt endless. Around her, church women worked quickly, murmuring encouragement, wiping her brow, guiding her through each breath.
Her husband stood near the wall, turned away, hands clasped tightly, whispering desperate prayers.
Please. Please let them live.
The lantern flickered.
And then—
life.
A soft cry broke through the room. Fragile. Brief. Almost… restrained. As though the child was arriving with intention, not panic.
"She's here," one of the women whispered.
The baby was placed into her mother's arms, and the crying stilled almost immediately. The child lay quiet, peaceful, her breathing slow and steady—as if the world had not startled her at all.
Her eyes opened.
Green.
Not the green of grass or leaves—but deep forest green, calm and ancient, carrying something that did not belong to infancy.
The room fell silent.
"She's… angelic," someone breathed.
They all stared. She looked nothing like either parent. Not the mother's soft features. Not the father's eyes. She seemed untouched by lineage, as though she had arrived whole, complete, from somewhere else.
The father turned.
The moment his gaze met hers, a presence pressed gently against his mind—warm, commanding, impossibly familiar.
A whisper, not his own.
Kyria.
His breath hitched.
"Kyria," he said aloud, the name leaving his lips before thought could catch it.
"Let's... let's call her Kyria."
The mother smiled weakly, cradling the child closer. "Kyria," she repeated softly.
The baby blinked once, slowly… and for just a heartbeat, the lantern's light seemed to brighten.
Michael stepped closer, unseen by mortal eyes, yet fully present. He looked down at the child—at the angel reborn in flesh.
"She has finally been born," he murmured.
Not to Heaven.
Not to God.
But to himself.
"Heaven has finally come to Earth."
Outside, the storm continued its fury.
Inside the room, Michael made a silent vow.
He would watch her.
He would guard her.
He would protect her—from Heaven, from Hell, and from the man who would one day remember her first.
And so destiny settled quietly into the world.
Not with fire.
Not with trumpets.
But with a child named Kyria.
——————-
The dry season usually tasted like dust and heat, but tonight, the air inside the small community church felt like ice.
The sanctuary was modest—exposed wooden beams, rows of worn benches, and a large, heavy oak cross centered behind the altar. Thirty people, the heartbeat of their small, tight-knit community, were gathered. Their voices rose in a rhythmic, feverish harmony of prayer.
At seven years old, Kyria didn't understand why they had to pray so loudly, especially on her birthday. She didn't understand the "shadow" her mother had seen in a dream, or why the pastors looked so pale.
While her mother, the woman who led them with a fierce, unwavering faith, knelt with her forehead pressed to the floor, Kyria was busy. She was sitting under a bench, tracing patterns in the dust with a small, smooth stone she'd found outside.
"Kyria," her mother's voice hissed, sharp with a fear the girl didn't recognize. She reached down, grabbing Kyria's small hand and pulling her up. "Not now. You must pray. The enemy is restless tonight. Can you not feel it?"
"But it's my birthday. I'm bored, Mama," Kyria murmured, her forest-green eyes scanning the room. "And it's cold. Why is it cold?"
Her mother didn't answer. She couldn't.
Outside, the wind began to howl. It wasn't the warm breeze of summer; it was a violent, screeching gale that battered the sides of the church.
The windows rattled in their frames like teeth chattering in a skull.
The prayers grew louder. "Cover us! Protect this house!" the head pastor, her father cried out, his hands raised toward the ceiling.
Then, the world went silent.
The wind stopped mid-shriek. The chanting died down as, one by one, the believers looked up.
Creeeeeak.
The sound came from the front of the room. Every eye turned to the great oak cross. Slowly, as if pushed by invisible, heavy hands, the cross began to groan. The wood shrieked against the nails holding it to the wall.
Kyria watched, mesmerized, as the cross began to rotate. It didn't fall. It turned, inch by agonizing inch, until the top pointed toward the floor.
God's cross was upside down.
A woman in the back screamed. The pastors fell to their knees, gasping for breath as the air in the room seemed to be sucked out by a vacuum.
Click.
The heavy iron bolt on the main door—the one the men had locked and barred—turned. It didn't just unlock; it twisted until the metal snapped like a dry twig.
Then came the red.
A single drop of blood hit the floor. Then another. It wasn't coming from a person; it was seeping from the keyhole of the door, thick and dark, pooling on the floorboards.
"Kyria, get behind me!" her father roared, his voice trembling.
But Kyria didn't move. While the adults scrambled back toward the altar in a panic, she took a step forward. She wasn't afraid. She felt a strange, humming vibration in her chest, a pull toward the door that felt more like a hug than a threat.
"Kyria! No!"
The walls began to drip; no, they wept.
Thick, iron-scented blood bubbled from the plaster, soaking the holy scriptures painted on the stone. The thirty people in the community were no longer praying—they were screaming, a discordant choir of pure terror.
But Kyria didn't scream.
She stood in the center of the aisle, her small hands hanging loosely at her sides. Her forest-green eyes weren't fixed on the bleeding walls or her sobbing mother. She was looking at the doorway.
A figure stood there, draped in a cloak of midnight silk that seemed to swallow the flickering candlelight. He moved with a predatory grace, stepping over the threshold as if he owned the very ground the church was built on.
As he tilted his head back, the hood shifted.
Kyria saw them: a pair of eyes, bloody and glowing red, burning like embers in the dark. He didn't look like a man; he looked like a shadow given teeth. When he saw her, his lips curled into a slow, mocking smirk.
His teeth were wrong. His canines were elongated, sharp—fangs that belonged to something that had forgotten the taste of bread and only knew the taste of souls.
The man tilted his head, his red gaze locking onto Kyria. He paused, his smirk faltering for a heartbeat. He expected her to cower. He expected her to hide behind the pews like the others. But she stood her ground, a tiny, stubborn pillar of defiance.
What a brave little girl, he thought, his mind echoing with a strange, dissonant hum.
Something about her felt… jagged. Familiar. Like a song he had heard a thousand years ago but couldn't quite remember the lyrics to. It made his cold heart itch, but he shook the feeling away. He wasn't here for curiosity.
He was here for what was owed.
He turned his attention to Kyria's parents, who were huddled near the altar, clutching each other as if their faith could form a physical shield.
"Seven years," the man in the cloak rasped. His voice sounded like dry leaves skittering over a gravestone.
Kyria's mother looked up, her face white with a sudden, sickening realization. She remembered the nights of weeping.
She remembered the desperate, silent prayer she had sent into the dark when God wouldn't answer her cries for a child. She had whispered into the shadows that she would give anything—and the shadows had answered.
"Please," her father choked out, holding his Bible like a weapon. "We are people of God!"
The cloaked man laughed, a sharp, barking sound. "God didn't give you that child. I did. And the contract has reached its sunset."
He stepped toward them, the floorboards blackening under his boots. The red in his eyes flared, reflecting the blood now pooling at the parents' feet.
Kyria watched as the man reached out a gloved hand toward her mother. She didn't understand the words "contract" or "debt," but she saw the way her mother's soul seemed to wither under his gaze.
"You got what you wanted," the man whispered, leaning over the trembling woman. "Now, I take what I'm owed."
Suddenly, a blur of silver sliced through the air.
Kyria's father had dropped his Bible, but Kyria had been faster. She had snatched the small ceremonial dagger he kept tucked into the altar—a blade meant for rituals, sharp and cold. With a strength that shouldn't have belonged to a child, she flung it at the cloaked figure's side.
The man didn't flinch. He simply raised a gloved hand, and the dagger froze mid-air, trembling as if it had hit an invisible wall of stone.
Kyria's eyes widened. She didn't run. She didn't hide. She stepped forward, her small chest heaving.
"Stay away from them!" she shouted, her voice ringing through the bloody sanctuary. "Go away! You're a bad person! Who are you?"
The man turned his head slowly, the red embers of his eyes glowing brighter. A dark, twisted smile spread across his face.
"I am the Devil, little girl," he rasped, the words vibrating in the floorboards.
"I rebuke you!" Kyria yelled, the words she had heard the pastors say a thousand times spilling out of her.
The man's smile vanished. With a flick of his wrist, he used his power to seize the frozen dagger. He didn't just drop it; he turned the blade around and sent it whistling back toward her with lethal speed.
"No!" her parents shrieked, reaching out in a desperate, useless crawl.
The blade was a blur, aimed straight for Kyria's heart. But as it reached her, Kyria didn't flinch. She simply raised her small hand, palm flat against the air.
Clang.
The dagger stopped dead.
The pointed tip hovered mere millimeters from her skin, trembling against an invisible force field. It didn't pierce her. It didn't even scratch her. The blade stayed perfectly still, as if it were a loyal pet obeying its master.
Kyria stared at the metal, then slowly lowered her hand. As her fingers dropped, the dagger clattered harmlessly to the wooden floor.
Silence fell over the church—heavier and darker than before.
For the first time, the man who called himself the Devil felt a jolt of genuine shock. His red eyes widened, the mockery gone, replaced by a stunned, piercing intensity. He looked at the fallen knife, then back at the small, forest-green eyes of the girl standing before him.
What did he just witness? No mortal child—no product of a dark contract—should have been able to stop his hand.
He stared at her, his mind racing through eons of memories, searching for a light that should have been extinguished long ago.
"Kyria…"