"Confusion is an ally. Once they doubt their beliefs, make them doubt their own thoughts, their own instincts. Keep them in a haze where the only clarity they find is you. Reinforce the uncertainty and let them wonder if they ever truly understood themselves at all. If done well, when they look back, they won't recognize the person they were before you."

-Excerpt from The Infernal Guidebook: The Art of Unraveling a Soul

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

I keep myself steady. "Why?"

Azrael puts some distance between us by leaning back in his chair, but his eyes never leave mine. "Why?" he repeats, almost to himself. For a moment I wonder if he's going to dodge again by giving me another vague half-truth or deflection.

"Because, you saw me." His eyes darken, but not with malice, there's something almost... pained behind them. His expression is burning with something I can't name. "Not the version of me I wanted you to see, not the role I was playing. You saw through that. And I-I don't know how to want things in halves. I never have. And I don't know how to want you without wanting all of you."

"What does that even mean?"

"When I go after something, I take it. I consume it. I bend it to fit what it needs to be. It's instinctual at this point. But with you..." He looks frustrated. "With you, I don't want to take anymore. I don't want to twist you into something else, and that should be simple, right?" His lips curve slightly, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "But it's not. I don't know how to want you without wanting all of you, including the parts I'm supposed to take and twist. I don't know how to want you without it swallowing me whole."

"That's... a lot." I let out a slow breath, sitting back in my seat, giving myself space to think amidst the blaring alarm bells. "And kind of terrifying." My eyes search his, but he doesn't look away. "What happens if you get all of me? Wanting something isn't the same as caring for it or keeping it safe, so are you warning me, or yourself?"

His eyes don't waver, but I can see the battle inside him. "Maybe both." The words are quiet, but there's no hesitation. "You think I don't know how to care for something?" His lips twitch into a bitter smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "I do. I just didn't expect to care again." The confession only leaves my thoughts spinning faster as I search his face for any sign of sincerity. The terrifying part is, I think I see it. Still, it does nothing to untangle the knots tightening in my stomach.

I feel naïve, painfully so. For once I realize I'm not really the author of my own story. Authors are supposed to know every possibility of every path, both the ones taken and the ones not. They can lead the worst decisions to happiness and the best decisions to despair. Me? I'm just a character who can't see the plot twist coming even though the clues are all there.

"What happens if you get all of me, Azrael?" I press again, sharper this time.

"I won't know who the hell I am anymore," he taps his fingers on the table restlessly, "and the one who sent me here to find you isn't going to like that."

My eyes widen, "Sent you? Who sent you here to do this to me? That sounds like some dark web mental assassin thing... but I can't imagine there's someone who hates me enough to pay for something like that?!" I can hear the tremble in my own voice, despite trying to sound composed. My hands tighten around my coffee cup, but the warmth does little to steady to cold panic pooling in my chest.

"It's not like that, Nadia," he mutters, but even he sounds unconvinced.

I push on, ignoring the tight knot forming in my throat. "Then what?! Who sent you?" I can almost hear myself spiraling as the questions spill out faster than my mind can keep up.

"It's..." he hesitates, then runs a hand through his hair and breathes out, "complicated."

"You think?!" I snap, my fear now twisted with anger, "I just found out I'm some... some undercover assassin group's target, and despite you saying you came here to explain things, you're telling me it's complicated?" My voice rises enough that the barista glances over, but I couldn't care less at the moment. He looks like he's going to lie again. I can almost see the practiced answers on the tip of his tongue. But then his expression crumbles.

"I wasn't sent from the deep web. It's not a secret agency. Think... darker."

I feel the world tilting beneath me, but I need him to continue.

He exhales slowly, almost like it pains him. Please. "I wasn't sent by anyone human. I was sent to tempt you because of who you are, because you're strong in your identity and conviction, and that..." he gestures at me vaguely, "light you carry? It draws things like me."

"You weren't sent by anyone human..." I repeat, narrowing my eyes. "I may like writing about unicorns and vampires but that doesn't mean I believe in them. I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Deep down, I think you already know there's more to the world than what your eyes can see."

A chill creeps up my spine. "Tell me." I demand. He used the word tempt... which is very specific, but if that's what he's implying he's not going to make me be the one to say it out loud. He's not going to make me sound like the crazy one after all he admitted about wanting to twist me.

"I was sent from hell," he says, barely above a whisper. The nausea is rolling hard, but I'm frozen to my seat. "It's not about you specifically; it's about what you stand for: your faith, your light... People like you who still believe in something bigger, who still hold onto hope and spread it to others, they're dangerous." His jaw clenches harder as though his words taste as bad as they sound, "So they send people like me to test that, and then to break it." His eyes meet mine again, haunted now.

"So what now?" I ask, barely holding it together while everything inside me is screaming.

"Now?" he echoes, "Now I don't know what side I'm on anymore."

"I'm confident about what side I'm on, and it's not the side of hell."

A slow, bitter smirk curves at the corner of his lips. "I know."

I narrow my eyes, "How old are you?"

He blinks at that, clearly caught off guard. His lips press into a thin line, the tension in his jaw visible as he leans back in his chair. "Older than you can comprehend," he says at first, but I keep staring at him, unflinching. He exhales, "A few millennia," he admits finally, waiting for me to react.

"That just makes it harder to believe little old me in 2025 is the one apparently making you question everything, so do you have proof you are what you claim to be?"

Azrael watches me carefully. "Proof," he repeats. The smirk that appears next is slight but sharp. He pauses, but when I don't flinch, he raises his hand slowly so it hovers above the table. At first, nothing happens and I feel the slightest spark of irritation, waiting for him to say Kidding, or for myself to accept he's actually delusional.

But then the air between his fingers begins to ripple like heat off pavement on a summer day. It thickens, warping slightly as the world around us dims to pitch black, even out the windows, revealing the glow of a dark flame flickering between us.

I lean forward instinctively, watching the space between his fingers as the glow sharpens and shifts into strange, delicate shapes in and out of focus like they aren't meant to be seen by human eyes. There's a whisper to it, and somehow I feel it all around me.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, Azrael clenches his fist, snuffing it out. The room snaps back to normal. No one around us even noticed. My heart races and I can hear the blood pounding in my ears.

"Proof enough?" There's no trace of his usual self in his face anymore.

"I guess so..." I trail off, blinking. There's no way that was a trick... but still, I've spent years writing stories about the supernatural, not being in them. I don't even know how to react properly.

"I know," he says gently. "It's a lot."

"What's your life like?"

"My life?" he echoes. There's a long pause before he leans back and looks out the window, watching the city life move on as if none of this is happening. "It's hollow. I exist in the spaces between things, between people's thoughts, their fears, and their doubts. I'm there when they spiral, when they falter. Even with all the voices and chaos, it's isolating. We manipulate, we seduce, we twist, but it's always a performance. There's never anything beneath it."

I swallow hard. Part of me wants to feel sympathy, but another part reminds me of the danger in that.

"If it's hollow, why have you kept doing it? Why don't you... go back?"

"Back isn't really an option," he says roughly, "There's no going back when you've fallen. The moment I became what I am, there was no return ticket."

I shake my head. "You said it yourself, you didn't expect to care. That means something's changed. So why?"

"Because there's no way out. Forgiveness and redemption is for humans, not those like me. I made my choice knowing exactly what it meant. I knew what I was giving up, and I knew exactly how it would end. I accepted all that."

"If it were possible to go back now, would you?" I ask.

"I don't know," he says finally, "but I do that I don't want to hurt you."

I let out a breath, trying to steady myself. "So, what now then? What about your boss... isn't he expecting you back with me left broken in the background?" I ask.

The same conflicted look stays in his eyes, the push and pull between what he's supposed to do and whatever this is now. "As for what now, that's up to you," he finally says, "He's expecting me back with the mission completed. The thing is, he knows. He always knows. He's been watching and waiting. The longer I drag this out, the more attention I'm pulling. If I leave without breaking you, there will be consequences, both for me and for you."

"What consequences?" I ask.

He runs a hand down his face. "If I leave you now, unfinished, every dark thing that's been waiting on the sidelines gets an invitation to step in. You'll be surrounded by things that pull at you when you're alone. The worst part? Even if you fought it, it wouldn't matter. They'd just keep coming until something gives."

The thought sends a chill down my spine.

"That's the consequence. You either break the way they planned, or get torn apart slowly trying not to."

"Great," I sigh, pushing my empty coffee cup to the side, "I guess I'd better trade my lattes in for holy water."

Azrael lets out a low, humorless chuckle. "Wouldn't hurt," he mutters, leaning back in his chair, watching me carefully. "Though, holy water's more of a deterrent than a fix, like slapping a band-aid on a wound that needs stitches."

"Well, unless you've got a better plan I'm working with what I've got."

"I do," he says quietly. "It's a risk, but there's a way to break their attention."

"What's the catch?" I ask, already bracing for the worst.

"A tie between us was forged the moment we met, a tie that was supposed to dig in and pull until you shattered. To help, I have to give up control over it completely. That means unraveling the connection from my end, but also pulling out everything I've... put inside," he grimaces at his own words, "the doubts, the cracks, and the darkness I've planted. The risk is, if I mess up, if I lose focus for even a second-" he stops, "It could make things worse."

"How much worse?" I ask, wondering now how much of what I've felt in the last few weeks weren't entirely mine.

He hesitates before answering. "It's not easy to pull a weed without breaking and leaving behind its roots. If even one root breaks off and stays inside you, it could open you up to anything waiting in the shadows ready to jump in immediately when my... claim is gone. And not all of us come down to tempt, some of us come down to possess, or worse." There's a heavy silence, allowing some time for my thoughts to settle as best as they can. "But if I do it right, the tie breaks and you're free. There will be no more whispers, no more cracks, and you go back to your life."

"If we don't?" I whisper, staring at him.

"Then you've got a countdown running."

The one thing that could save me could also make things worse. Convenient, I scoff. Who's to say this isn't his final play? His final desperate ploy for all my trust and my sense of self? Who's to say he won't pull carelessly, let me be destroyed, and then move on to his next assignment tomorrow?

"I'll take my chances with the tie then," I decide.

A flash of frustration hits his eyes. "I get it, It sounds like a setup, like I'm trying to scare you into trusting me," he lets out a hollow laugh, "but it's not."

"How will the others come for me with the tie between us still intact?" I ask, ignoring him.

"Like I said, my job was to work on you from the inside out. To tempt, to plant doubts, to make you question yourself slowly. They'll come at you from the outside in. They'll twist your senses, distort your environment, and make you doubt your own reality. They won't have to touch your mind to break you if you're the one unraveling it yourself."

He looks like he knows exactly what's awaiting me, and he looks unsettled about it. Still, I don't trust that it's not just a mask.

"How soon will they come?" I ask. Maybe I'm already going crazy, but there's something about this whole situation that turns the corners of my lips up into a smile that probably looks amused from the outside. At its heart it's not, though. It's the kind of smile that comes when the weight of something is too heavy to carry, so I choose defiance instead. It's a reaction to the absurdity of it all, and maybe my mind's last-ditch effort to grant me quiet acceptance of a situation I can't control, because if I don't laugh, I might just break after all.

His eyes flick down to my lips. "You really are something else," he mutters under his breath. "It's not like there's a calendar somewhere with your name scribbled on it, but it'll be small at first, a shadow in the corner of your eye, or a voice that sounds like yours but isn't. The more you ignore it, the harder they'll push."

"Fine. At the very least, if I make it through this it'll make a great story one day," I figure.

"You're unbelievable," he mutters, shaking his head. "You're staring down the literal forces of evil, and you're already planning how to turn it into fiction. That's probably what makes you so damn hard to break. You don't just endure, you reshape. You turn every shadow into something you can use."

"There's no point in feeling doomed or they'll win before they even start."

"Exactly," he nods, "But you know, you don't have to face this alone."

I let his offer sit with me, but I'm not ready to rely on him, or admit to myself that I may need to.

He continues, "I'd know they were around before you would, no matter what form they take. If they come too close, I can stop them, at least until I'm forcefully pulled back to face my own consequences for failing."

I feel sick again realizing that this might be the rest of my life now, my whole life, and there's no guarantee how long either of us can hold them off, and what it will cost Azrael to do so.

"So," he continues, "are you sure you want to choose facing them?"

"Yes," I repeat.

"Either way, they'll see it as a challenge now, but I'll stay close enough to keep an eye on things whether you want me to or not. Just be careful, even the strongest can slip when they least expect it."

"See you around, then," I say, gathering my stuff and trying not to think about what lies ahead.

He nods, and I feel his gaze follow me out the door.

Everything still feels normal, but now I know better. They'll start small, right? I refuse to let the little things shake me. If they want to test me, fine. I'll treat the small stuff like little dumbbells and use it as resistance training for my mind. Let them pile on. I'll only get stronger for what's coming next.