The normalcy made what he had to tell him even more heartbreaking.
Cael lingered, memorizing this last moment of Damian's peace. The way his hands moved with practiced gentleness, the soft murmur of his voice, the small smile when the healing took hold.
Soon, everything would change.
Finally gathering borrowed courage, Cael stepped into the light and allowed himself to be seen. The patient had gone, leaving them alone in warm candlelight.
Damian's face lit up with joy. “You're early tonight. I wasn't expecting you for another hour. Not that I'm complaining.”
The smile began to fade as he registered tension in the air, wrongness that spoke of terrible news waiting.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice shifting from welcome to concern.
The words felt like swallowing glass: “Oris is gone. They killed him for information about your network.”
Damian went very still, his face cycling through confusion, denial, and growing horror.
“Killed him? Who? Why?”
“Someone who wanted names. Locations.” Cael's voice was steady through tremendous effort. “He didn't give them anything. Died protecting all of you.”
“Where is he?” Damian's voice was getting smaller, more fragile. “Can I... can I see him?”
This was the part that would destroy them both.
“I had to take his soul. The cosmic order demanded it. I couldn't—I tried to resist, but I couldn't save him.”
The silence was absolute. Then, without warning, Damian's hand connected with Cael's cheek in a slap that echoed through both realms.
The violence was nothing compared to the pain in Damian's eyes. For the first time since they'd begun speaking, Cael saw him look with fear rather than trust.
“How could you let it happen?” Damian's voice broke. “You're not just some cosmic force anymore. You feel now, you care, you make choices. You could have chosen differently.”
The accusation struck like a blade between the ribs, hitting every doubt Cael harbored about his transformation.
“Oris trusted you because he trusted me,” Damian continued, his voice rising. “And you took him anyway. What was the point of any of this if you were just going to be Death when it mattered?”
Unable to bear the anguish, Cael dropped to his knees and offered the wooden talisman back with hands that shook like autumn leaves. The carved spirals mocked him, proof of how fragile hope could be.
“I am not made to change fate,” he said, his voice hollow with ancient programming. “I tried to resist, but the Accord binds me beyond my will.”
Yet even as he spoke, those impossible tears continued streaming down his face. Each drop was proof that he truly had changed, that he suffered for what cosmic law had forced him to do.
Damian's anger crumbled into something rawer. He collapsed beside Cael on the cold floor, his own tears falling freely.
“Then why are you here?” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Why give me hope if it always ends in loss?”
The question cut through Cael like cosmic fire. He placed a trembling hand over Damian's heart, feeling the rapid rhythm beneath his palm.
“Because I wanted to stay,” he admitted, his voice fracturing. “Because for the first time in eons, I found something worth defying eternity for. And now I've broken everything.”
They knelt together on the clinic floor, both shattered by the impossible situation.
“I don't know how to do this,” Damian said finally. “I don't know how to care for someone whose job is to take away everyone I care about.”
“I don't know either.”
Their grief was interrupted by chaos erupting outside. Screams echoed through Veil Row, accompanied by sounds that made no sense—footsteps moving backward, voices speaking in temporal loops, the grinding noise of reality buckling under impossible strain.
