Under the yellow glow of the lamp sitting on the old wooden bedside table, Nulla stands over the white porcelain sink tucked into the corner of the room. The long rectangular mirror sitting above it reflects his movements back to him on its surface spotted with desilvering.

The coolness anchors him and wets the tips of his bangs, making the already loosely curled trends curl even tighter. He doesn’t pay any mind as the water droplets dot little damp spots on the white short sleeved t-shirt he’d woken up in.

He’d asked the woman to give him a moment, and she’d left with the promise of rustling up some kind of food. An indication that she’s been briefed on what to do on his awakening.

‘But she didn’t introduce herself as my new Watcher…’ he murmurs.

Though he had woken up ahead of schedule. It probably caught her off-guard as much as it’s caught him. But that means he hasn’t slept the full fifty years—so his last Watcher, Ignácio, should still be here. He shouldn’t have passed yet.

Nulla rests his hands on the edge of the sink and closes his eyes.

He should be used to the grief by now.

He looks at his reflection.

Not much has changed since the last time he’d been awake. His brown skin looks pallid but that’s not unusual after a long bout of sleep. The pale blond of his hair remains the same. It would take several hundred years for it to grow further. He always keeps it longer in the front. His eyes make people uncomfortable.

Starburst scars mar the skin around his eyes, and the unnatural blue of his irises doesn’t make it any better. People have always had a hard time meeting his gaze head on since the moment he set foot in the human realm.

Well. There have been a few in his life who learned to move past it.

Padding over on bare feet to the wooden chest of drawers tucked still in its spot on the opposite corner of the room, he opens one drawer after another until he finds a set of towels. Drying his face, he takes stock of the rest of the room.

Nothing has changed here either.

He’d moved into this church centuries ago. It had been nothing more than an abandoned husk in a quiet corner of Northeast London. All places of worship turn the earth they sit on into sacred ground, and despite the building having been burnt to almost nothing, its frame remained, and he’d been able to rebuild it into a universal sanctuary. At the time this was a quiet working-class neighbourhood and beyond that, an unsavoury part of London that most would steer clear of. By the lively sounds of night life he can hear now, it seems things have changed.

For as long as he’d lived here, he’d stayed in this attic chamber. The only thing he’d replaced during that time had been the bed and the lights. Everything else has remained as it was when reconstruction first finished. The same sink, the same clawfoot bath. The same stack of books resting atop the chest of drawers. 

He steps out of his room and into the corridor, the air here cooler than in his room and heads for the stairs at the end, his steps silent on the chequered black and white floor.  Streetlight floods the spiral staircase through the narrow, pointed lancet windows. He peers through them as he goes and sees a street very different to the one that had been there when he’d last gone to sleep.

How long has he been under then?

As he descends, he trails his hand along the curved stone wall, feeling for the protective wards they had embedded into the building itself during its reconstruction. The wards were basic ones, meant to hold out against the types of supernatural predators that were able to cross into the human realm. There are only a few creatures capable of crossing over through the Boundary and most are barely a threat to Nulla, but for when he’s asleep, he’d wanted to make sure the sanctuary—and anyone who might be within it—would still have some protection.

It's not just the face of the street that has changed. The sound of the traffic outside is steady, as are the number of voices nearby. It’s become busier, more populated.

When he reaches the ground floor, the sound of singing swells, much closer. A choir, it seems, coming from the direction of the nave.

He’s curious but he makes his way towards the back of the building. 

The sanctuary has a small serviceable kitchen at the back which looks out onto a large garden not accessible to the public—they have a courtyard in the outer area for that—and it had become one of Nulla’s favourite spaces here before he’d gone back to sleep.

The kitchen light is on, and there’s a mug of tea and an open notebook and pen on the small square table tucked up against the wall with a chair sitting a little further away from it.

At the counter, slathering some toast with butter, is the woman who had burst into his room ten minutes earlier.

She glances over her shoulder at him when he walks in.

‘Sorry, I wasn’t ready for this, so I didn’t really prepare, and I’ve been studying and don’t really have the time—’ her words are running into each other, going a mile a minute and as she seems to realise this, she snaps her mouth shut and her cheeks mottle red.

‘It’s okay,’ he says, gentling his voice as her gaze stays just a little to the side of his face.

His eyes aren’t the only thing that make people feel intimidated. He towers over most humans, and his frame has a heft to it that can feel oppressive to those smaller than him. He has always been this way. What they don’t know is that ever since being permanently exiled from his home, from the Veil, he feels shrunken. Smaller.

He has never stopped feeling the weight absent from between his shoulder blades.

Beyond the partially lifted window and the reflection of the kitchen lights, the garden is shrouded in shadows. Nothing but the kitchen light to illuminate the outdoor space. He can see the shapes of trees and the outline of two benches. The structure of the greenhouse is merely a gleam of glass in the night. He wonders if the seeds he planted long ago have grown and feels something inside him settle at the thought of being back inside that little space, surrounded by peace.

‘Can I?’ he asks and gestures to the second chair which is still tucked into the table.

Her eyes widen and she rushes to close her notebook and move it aside. ‘Of course, take a seat.’

He almost tells her not to worry and leave things as they are, but he doubts it’ll make a difference considering how she seems hyperaware of his presence. She’ll probably be jumpy for a long time.

So, he simply thanks her and takes a seat.

‘Here,’ she says and sets a plate of toast in front of him and a mug filled to the brim with a creamy looking broth inside it, with tiny little cubes of bread floating in it. It smells a little like chicken. ‘Uh,’ she clasps her hands together, but stands her ground, ‘like I said, I wasn’t prepared but I had some cup-a-soup stashed in there and uh. I’ll get some groceries first thing.’

He sighs. Then nods. ‘Thank you.’ He reaches for the toast and takes a bite. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Hope. Liang. Hope Liang,’ she says. She hesitates for a moment and then sits on the other chair she’d probably been using before he’d woken up. ‘I’m supposed to be the new Watcher, but I was told you wouldn’t be waking up for another ten years so… I just wasn’t expecting…’ she opens her hands like she’s at a loss.

‘What about Ignácio?’ he asks.

Since the establishment of the sanctuary there has always been a Watcher. Though it hadn’t quite started out that way.

His first sleep had lasted nearly 300 years and when he’d woken up, the ones that helped him then had long since passed. Humans who thought the being that fell from the skies, shedding feathers, was a divine creature.

Little did they know he’d been cast out and thrown down to the human realm.

Unlike that family, Ignácio isn’t entirely human. He’s a mediator. All the Watchers were. 

There were three kinds of mediators. Those who were born of relationships between humans and celestials, those born of a human and a demon parent and the third kind is where those mediators went on to have children themselves. Alongside gaining special abilities descended from their celestial or demon parent, they also lived longer than their human parents. Much longer. First generation mediators were known to live well into their mid-hundreds.

Ignácio is still young by mediator standards, he should be in his sixties now. He had become the sanctuary’s Watcher when he was only twenty-two.

‘I’m not sure where he is,’ she says, ‘I haven’t heard from him for over a month. Hang on. He left you something.’ She gets up and he hears her going back up to the first floor.

He takes a sip of the soup in the mug and peers down curiously at it. He thinks it’s supposed to taste like chicken. It’s not great but it’s still better than most of the things he would have made for himself. By the time she returns he’s finished it and put it to the side. He realises the singing he’d heard earlier has continued, there in the background, and it’s coming from inside the sanctuary.

‘Here,’ she hands him an envelope and resumes her seat. This time she scoots the chair in close to the table and rests her folded arms on it. She’s clearly trying her best not to be too obvious about her discomfort which he appreciates.

‘From Ignácio?’ he asks, as he tears neatly through the seam of the brown envelope and sees a folded piece of paper inside.

‘He said if you woke up before he returned to give you this.’ She shrugs. ‘I was confused at the time because he’d said you were consistent in your cycles and you rarely ever woke up before you were supposed to, but he said it was just in case.’

It’s only a single sheet and when he unfolds it, he recognises Ignácio’s messy writing in the almost violet blue words. ‘And when was this?’

It’s not a long letter. It doesn’t even fill the first half of the page. He hadn’t bothered to use the lines themselves, the writing slanted.

My friend,
There have been some changes whilst you’ve slept. There is a rumour that the Boundary is weakening, and the presence of the celestials has thinned over the past couple of months. There’s also been an increase in demons crossing. Hope is a skilled ward caster and a fierce protector of our community; you can trust her in my absence. I’m going to the Night Market to ask for a meeting with the Ascendant and see what else I can find out.
Ignácio

‘He wrote that in August,’ she says, ‘it’s coming up on six weeks since he’s been gone.’

Nulla looks up from the letter. ‘You said it’s been a month since you’ve heard from him. Did he meet with the Ascendant?’

The Ascendant, despite the grandiose name, is more of a connector than anything remotely ascending. The daughter of a demon who had been around for some time. She trades on information. Something she has in abundance thanks to her ability to be… very persuasive.

Hope shrugs, looking a little helpless. ‘I don’t know. I’ve kept close to the sanctuary. We’ve had more people coming here lately. People are unsettled and I haven’t seen any celestials on patrol in two weeks. Demons are moving more freely.’

The Boundary is the corridor between the three realms in existence. The Fade, where demons reside, the human realm and the Veil, where the celestials exist. It has been that way since before Nulla’s fall.

Originally there had only been the Grand Celestials and the Prīmus Celestials.

But with the growth of humankind, came the birth of demons.

Balance, the Grand Celestials called it. And so, the New Celestials had been created.

The celestials existed to maintain balance and to keep demons where they belonged.

Nulla had been a Prīmus, one of two Guardian celestials. He’d had a name. They’d taken that from him though. It’s gone, wiped from his memory and forever out of reach to him. The Grand Celestials had taken it all when they’d torn his celestial core from him.

He lost the concept of time back then. His wings had slowly withered, and his powers had leeched from him. His sword, an extension of him and his soul, had ceased to exist. His eyes lost their ability to see.

He lost a lot of things that day.

And then slowly, the shapes and colours returned.

Eventually he realised he retained some things from his celestial existence. His strength. His ability to heal. And his immortality.

His healing had slowed. But he always healed, even if it left scars now. His body is littered with them. From his continued clashes with demons.

Just because he’s no longer a Guardian celestial doesn’t mean that his purpose needs to change.

He’s still able to protect this realm. It gives him something to hold on to. Something to keep him from the whispers that try to pull him into his descent.

If the Boundary is weakening and there’s been a rise in demon crossings without celestials here to keep them in check then maybe his early awakening is well timed.

That gives him pause.

He’s sure that it was the death of a Prīmus that woke him.

Add to that issues with the Boundary and a lack of a celestial presence… Ignácio is right to be worried. Coincidences are very rarely ever just coincidences.

The Ascendant always lives up to her reputation. Nulla has only spoken with her a handful of times. He’s sure she would have had information that would have been useful for Ignácio.

So why hasn’t he returned?

Nulla folds the paper back together and returns it to the envelope. ‘The last time I was awake people were reluctant to use this space,’ he says and sits back in his chair. They had been. They’d been mistrustful of a place where mediators of both sides were welcomed. ‘The choir?’ he asks.

Whatever reservations Hope has about speaking with him drops away and her face softens, eyes brightening. ‘Their voices are lovely right?’ She leans forward. ‘They come every Wednesday and practice together. Most of them are in their teens, a couple of them are first gens but maybe because they’re young they’re more tolerant. I’ve launched a few programmes and they’re making a little headway in the community.’

At that Nulla feels a quiet glow of warmth and despite the situation, he can’t help the small smile.

That’s something at least.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘their music is lovely.’

Then, in that quiet reassurance, he hears it. Beyond the sounds of every day life, beyond the hearing of any mortal. A rupturing of the walls between the realms, something dark and filled with malintent travelling fast. Whatever it is isn’t using the Boundary. It’s burst right through.

And whatever it is, is homed in on him.

He stands and looks out the window at the garden.

‘Hope. Please close all the doors and stay with the choir. Something is coming.’