The air was quiet. Too quiet.
Not the peace of stillness, but the silence before something sacred arrives.
Gabriel stood at the edge of a cliff, wind brushing his cloak like soft fingers from another realm. The stars above shimmered more intensely than before, almost as if they were blinking—alive and watching.
Below him, the world slept unaware of the storm building within the heavens. His tattoo, once dormant, now pulsed faintly with silver flame beneath his skin. Not painful. Not chaotic. Just… present.
"Something's calling," Gabriel murmured.
Merlin stepped forward, his gaze fixed on the shifting constellation above. "Not something," he whispered. "Someone."
Gabriel turned, confusion on his face.
Merlin didn't blink. "The Unwritten One. He's speaking to you again."
That night, Gabriel tried to sleep—but dreams were invaded.
He stood in a place with no sky, no earth—just endless parchment stretched in every direction, covered in glowing glyphs that moved like liquid fire. Symbols danced, faded, rewrote themselves.
Then, he heard the voice.
No sound. No words.
Just… understanding.
"You are not finished.""The trials continue. But no longer through pain. Now, through truth.""Come find me—not as a warrior. But as a soul."
Gabriel opened his eyes with a gasp.
The tattoo on his back burned, spreading new lines—complex sigils curling across his shoulders and spine.
By morning, the others noticed.
"Gabriel," Nyra said carefully, "your aura… it's changing again. What is it now?"
He stood, flexing his fingers. "It's like the voice is no longer distant. He's... within me."
Merlin nodded slowly. "The Unwritten One is drawing you closer to the source of all beginnings. You'll need to leave the mortal realms."
Aziel frowned. "Where are you going?"
Gabriel turned to him. "To the place where gods were afraid to look."
With Merlin guiding a spell older than any known to angels, Gabriel tore open a path—not through time, but through unreality. A fracture beyond dimensions. A slit into the Abyss Before Light.
Nyra stepped close. "Be careful."
He looked back, smiling softly. "I will return. Whole. Ready."
Then, with one step, he vanished into the unknown.
He fell.
Not through space. Through memory. Through concepts.
Falling past names that were never spoken, past civilizations that only existed for a heartbeat of thought.
Until he stood on something that wasn't ground, but was.
Before him: a vast void. And within it, eyes—countless, spinning, forming patterns and collapsing them just as quickly.
A presence formed—a shadow of light.
The Unwritten One.
He said nothing.
He simply opened his hand—and Gabriel remembered.
He remembered his first death. The moment his soul was splintered from a universe that ended before creation began.
He remembered being chosen—not by destiny, not by fate—but by refusal.
Refusal to accept divine tyranny. Refusal to kneel to order.
And the Unwritten One smiled.
"You were never meant to succeed the throne," the thought echoed."You were meant to break it."
When Gabriel returned to the world, his eyes glowed with starlight.
His voice carried the weight of galaxies.
And behind him, the sigil tattoo was no longer dormant.
It was alive.
Writing something new.
Something even the gods could not read.