Noble title and a bag of golden coins in exchange for your family’s service, from now on, never to renounce and never to betray the emperor of night? The man nods his meaty face, pink and sweaty. Orpheus bares his teeth, endlessly pleased. 

   Candles in the village church flicker with every gust of the sharp wind as it sneaks and creeps through the cracks in the wooden walls. Almost winter, almost freezing. 

     “Seal their dreams forever, and I mean really until the end of time and ever after? For the betrayal of your family, you’ll burn in the lowest corner of hell where the greatest pain is promised? But you’ll also be closest to the emperor’s heart then and you’ll hear its steady beats. I guess that’s the most beautiful thing there is. Listen to it as it hums the sound of last-sunrise and last-sunset. Before he fell away from light. I’d call it luck, wouldn’t you?”

   A row of soldiers dressed in black, pressed uniforms line the walls, all still, all unblinking. Backs rigidly face the fading, painted faces of saints. They cast long shadows over them. 

   The man won’t have more than ten years to live and he’d give so much away to fill his remaining days with sprawling acres of land and fistfuls of jewelry and young skin to lay his gritty lips upon. It amuses Orpheus and he carefully takes in the man. Dirty, dirt poor and such a bad, bad liar. A worker of the quarries, with lungs full of stone dust. 

     “You renounce it, then? The light?” 

    “I do,” the man’s teeth chatter, his voice weak. How could it not be when he’s kneeled and folded beneath so many otherworldly presences? Being chosen hadn’t crossed his mind and his dreams don’t wonder far. They cannot, when he has three children and a sickly wife. But Orpheus doesn’t know and doesn’t care.

     “Say it again.”

     “I do.”

     “Again.”

     “I do.”

   He looks up slowly and Orpheus’ eyes burn the softest green. “You can forget about heaven now and any saintly aspirations. We bestow upon you a new name, Summerlin. May it remind you of brighter days. You will not have peace again, lord of all matters unholy.”

   Orpheus drops a ring with a liquid-black stone onto his lap. It gleams warm and golden. Heavy inside his cupped hand, its intricate moldings and engravings wrap around the large jewel. Hard-pressed upon it, a coat of arms and a word in a language he’d learn with troubling ease: Abaddon.  

   The wings and the hymn of the abyss.

     “You’ll be called to court,” Orpheus says as he slips on thin gloves. “Expect an invitation in the next few days.”

     “I understand.”

   Orpheus turns, pointy black boots echo against the wooden floorboards. Steps confident and even a little playful. He'd accomplished his task and the emperor will be pleased. His long coat bends in the nighttime chill as he opens the church doors. Outside, midnight is a curtain of darkness and he disappears softly behind it. The soldiers follow him, one by one, and the steady rhythm of their walk coils like a nest in Summerlin’s stomach. 

   Summerlin, he thinks, how it sounds like the greenest field with wildflowers in bloom. How it seems a handful of paradise.