When the Redeemer had asked for a new body, she had told Gerry that it did not matter to her what it looked like. Young, old, pretty, ugly—none of it mattered to her. Still, he wanted to gift the angel with the most beautiful body he could find.

The body was a girl with long brown hair and large green eyes, and freckles dotted her skin. She had always looked at him with a motherly tenderness, so different from the derisive looks everyone else had always given him. It made her the perfect gift for the Redeemer, the Mother of Rebirth.

Long slits were the only thing marring the girl’s skin. The freckles had disappeared as blood had drained from her body. Gerry cleaned her body with holy water he had stolen from a nearby church. There needed to be as few impurities on and within the empty body as possible, and filthy river water would not have done the job.

Once the body was clean and dry, he dressed her in a white gown he had stolen from a nobleman’s daughter. Neither the girl nor the Redeemer were “nobles.” Nobles were less than cattle compared to a warrior from Heaven. He just wanted to gift her with the finest of things, to show his gratitude for his rebirth.

Satisfied with his gift, Gerry gathered the empty body in his arms. There was a smile on his face as he carried into an abandoned temple in the side of a mountain, where he and a group of twelve other men would sacrifice their blood to bring the Redeemer, the magnificent Azrael, to Earth.