It was like the cityscape had been flipped on its head, suspended overhead as the spires of the formless, clustered skyscrapers pierced down through the sky like rainfall. The grimoire growled agitatedly and Seraphina decided to continue despite the intense curiosity gnawing at her stomach and broke into a mad dash as she hurdled through gauntlets of silver trees. Blazing stars had ebbed and the way forward was indistinct; a labyrinth with no perceivable end, blindly twisting and turning and running until she was heaving grossly, but it was interminable. Retracing her steps culminated in false hope and she had no choice but to stagger to a halt when the exhaustion caught her in a chokehold, causing the girl to hunch over and wheeze for breath, perspiration submerging her flushed front. 

 The golden book wrestled against her unbending grip, and she quietly cursed it out under her strained breath, which surprisingly convinced it to quiet down. Now that Seraphina had retaken control, she banished the sweat from her brow with the swipe of her wrist and prepared herself for the long haul, breaking into a clumsy sprint that was immediately foiled when her feet stuttered to a screeching stop, narrowly missing the golden javelin that had burst from the sky to obstruct her path.   

At first, Seraphina struggled to identify the form its wielder undertook. It was as if her brain was subconsciously trying to protect her, purposefully smudging that undecided, unfocused blob; a fragmented traumatic memory. But once she stubbornly banished the shroud of obfuscation by firmly blinking her eyes, the blurriness subsided, she saw a cradle of wings. An untold wingspan that enhaloed the broad humanoid shape like a valiant cloak, pockmarked by rows upon rows of countless, flustered eyeballs that erratically flitted across their surroundings like a nervous schoolgirl who was unable to make proper eye contact with her crush. Intertwined with intricate gold plating with silver embellishing, greaves, vambraces, and a sleek mask with distinct moldings for the eyes, nose, and mouth— but discernibly lacking the pockets needed to breathe normally.

The creature recalled the javelin as it dislodged itself from the ground before flying back into a gauntleted hand. Seraphina carefully crouched back, rechecking the edges of her sightline for any such viable means of escape, then glanced downward when the book began to rattle in her arms as if it was— afraid. The inexplicable urge to reassure it overwhelmed the girl as she squeezed it tighter and refocused her attention on the mysterious, gold-clad entity. When it spoke in its monotonous timbre, it was in an abstruse language similar to the cryptic scripture delineated within the tome, and like before, Seraphina was able to latch onto each and every ambiguous syllable like it was all but second nature for her.  

“... How was a mere mortal able to penetrate the veil and traverse unwittingly into the Gallery of Recollection? This is an unprecedented phenomenon. The boundary is tightly maintained to inhibit the likelihood of a leak. Otherwise, the equilibrium between the Shores could be tainted irrecoverably, threatening our long-held pact with the Witch Realm...”  

“What? I don’t understand, if this isn’t merely a dream, then... were those memories real?”  

Her pressing questions were ultimately brushed off albeit as the entity instead zeroed in on that infernal contraption, shaking passionately between firm fingers. Gauntleted hands clenched tightly around the elongated hilt of its weapon. “... That device... that isn’t possible— it should have been apprehended following the destruction of the Witch Capital... I can perceive that it is no fraud— was the truth concealed from us footmen? And you must be an agent sent by those foul magi in disguise to upheave the stability as your brethren had ten years ago!”  

Seraphina sheltered the tome behind her back as she attempted to argue her case as if she was in court. “No, listen to me! I must have been led here by mistake... I had no intention of sabotaging... anything, I promise! If it’s the book you want, then...” Though it would have served her better to drop the blasted thing at their feet and scurry off while they were distracted, she pulled it back out to scrutinize its glimmering cover as if she could practically sense it sobbing with enthusiastic fright, and she hesitated— hesitated between sacrificing the child because it was what the gods commanded or enduring their penalty for her unlawful disobedience. 

However, the jurors were not too keen on hearing out her plea bargain, anyway. “Our objective is clear,” and when Seraphina looked back up, she jolted when she noticed that the number of enemies had quadrupled, uncountable, piercing eyes peering out through the apertures of the surrounding greenery one by one like a descending pack of vicious wolves. Their chieftain braced their lance and signaled the cannon fire with a clarion order: “... Charge the villainous usurper and return the Grimoire to our Lord Ascendant’s hands!”  

Seraphina gave her subsequent action little thought. She skidded in the dirt when she clumsily swiveled around, breaking into a maddening sprint. She did not dare to glance back, adrenaline pumping through her arteries as she catapulted into the depths of the overgrowth. “There... there has to be something in here,” ignoring the burning sting of the pagefaces, Seraphina urgently flipped around for some manner of feasible clue, and the grimoire sputtered weakly, dying embers escaping leather like it was but its last hurrah. It was exhausted. Or too scared? She was not sure why she could readily communicate with and apprehend what this gadget was thinking, but she tried to empathize with it, nonetheless, for the sake of survival. Survive.  

In an unforeseen twist of fortune, she absolutely had to survive.  

Seraphina reached a dead end. A cliff stood between her and the depthless abysm, and she stuttered to a stop, fingers continuing to dance fitfully through the glossaries, earmarked by indecipherable sigils and symbols. “Please,” she begged, voice shot as enervation burned in her chest. I don’t want to die, she realized and she wished that that telltale moment of clarity could have been as breathtaking as she once imagined, anticipating the triumphant day that she could safely reach that place— that place she was always meant to be, no longer holding fast to bleak, unsubstantiated obstinance and embitterment and at last celebrating her life simply for what it was. To find her way “home”— 

— To the boy in her dreams.  

Excruciating pain tore through her stomach. She was forced to teeter forward from the momentum; her heart soaring with escalating dread and her throat coagulating as a thick geyser of blood erupted across the pages: a complex, mantic pentagram, the outer ring dotted by hieroglyphic lettering that distinctly spelled out a name of some kind. The spear unscrewed itself and retreated to its owner, and she lurched, splashing bodily into the grass as the book was flung from her grip, skittering out of reach.

For a moment, she was paralyzed from the sheer anguish; her body working into overdrive to compete with the gross amount of blood that had been ejected from her guts, but her stubbornness ultimately came out on top, forcing the girl to weakly dig her uncut nails into the ground, peeling back tangles of grass as she crawled toward the precipice inch by inch.  

She blearily reached out her hand, embracing the waiting chasm, her vision spotting at the edges. A rain of lances deluged from the heavens and lodged themselves in her back one after the other, skewering her insides and effectively killing the urge to fight. She threw up blood. Her hand slackened, limply suspended over the brink, mocked by her unacquainted chance at freedom.  

The winged entities dropped from the air and crowded around her like preying vultures. “Repent for your heresy,” the chief recited as it lifted its weapon to deal the coup de grace. “... And be expunged, witch.”  

The ensanguined invocation smoldered with red-hot light, surging like an uncontrollable blaze.  

A growly, bodiless voice reverberated in the back of her skull, clawing a pledge:  

“Then I shall help you reach him... I shall help you live.”  

And from the pages burst a vortex of dark feathers. 

An obstreperous whirlwind. Like a sheer curtain, trapped behind, the detectable, monstrous outline of a ferocious beast was perceived; a scorching, scarlet gaze bleeding through the eye of the cyclone. The winged creatures turned their attention away from their initial target to distinguish their newfound threat, and her fading conscience seized excerpts of alarm: “Demon! How can it manifest in Paradiso; it shouldn’t have been able to bypass the—” Which was followed by a series of anguished, guttural screams when the demon thereby pounced, cloaked in a pelt of black plumage, obfuscating grotesque features as a gargantuan, taloned hand escaped.  

Blood spurted behind a crushed mask as knifelike fingers coiled around a skull and crack— the telltale thud of armor clanking against the ground. War cries and screeching steel compelled by brazen bravery resulted in strangled gasps for mercy when talons tore through breastplates as easily as carving butter and slashed out throats with the alacrity of a seasoned assassin.  

The chieftain ordered one of its lackeys to escape the scene. ”Go! Alert the Holy Consortium that backup is necessary. A disreputable archdemon has thwarted our temporary truce with the witches. This means war!”  

Before wings could take said underling to safety, the archdemon extended their own and took pursuit, razor-sharp teeth animalistically gnashing into the back of its throat as it screeched and thrashed helplessly before succumbing, released— plummeting lifelessly into the nothingness. The angels ducked when a great, dark wingspan enveloped the sky as the archdemon returned to gather both the tome and Seraphina, motionlessly scooped into a feathered arm as she foggily searched for a face through the fogginess clouding her vision but alas, her faint life was hastily tapering away.  

The last thing she experienced before her consciousnesses capitulated was the sensation of a hot brand to her chest and protective hands wrapped around her small body; a murmured voice reinstating the oath:  

“And in return, I will have your everything.”