Sister Melissa stood beside him, her hand wrapped around his forearm. Her beautiful, innocent eyes fixed on his, the same eyes that had looked at him with exasperation in the Paladin academy, that had scolded him about Elvish and knowledge and preparation.

Her lips moved, forming words he could barely hear over the crowd's celebration. "Gabriel, stop. You can't save her. It's too late."

The words registered somewhere distant in his mind, processed but not absorbed. His focus remained fixed on the scaffold, on the figure swinging from the rope, on the failure that had led to this moment.

Red smoke began seeping from his hands, sluggish at first, then faster, wrapping around his fingers like living fog. The crimson mist coiled up his arms, spreading across his chest and pulsing with each heartbeat.

His eyes began to glow, deep ruby embers igniting in the sockets. Should have made everyone notice.

But the crowd remained focused on the scaffold, on the spectacle of death, on the woman swinging from the rope. Their celebration continued, indifferent to the demon forming in their midst.

The noise swelled around them with voices lifting in approval, parents explaining to children what justice looked like, vendors calling out their wares to the captive audience.

Melissa's grip tightened on his arm. Her voice rose, urgent now, cutting through the noise that separated them from the surrounding mass of bodies.

"Gabriel, please. Listen to me. You need to stop. There's nothing you can do now. She's gone."

He turned to face her fully, his movement slow. His expression hadn't changed, still the same cold mask he'd worn since entering the square. No anger twisted his features. No grief broke through. No recognition sparked in those glowing eyes.

Just emptiness, flat emptiness.

The smoke writhed between them, creating a barrier that seemed to separate Melissa from the rest of the world. She could see his face through the crimson haze, could see the way his eyes had lost everything that made them human.

"Gabriel, it's me. It's Melissa. Remember? The Academy? You used to roll your eyes at me when I made you study."

No flicker of recognition passed through his empty stare. No change registered in his expression.

His free hand shot forward.

Fingers closed around Melissa's throat, lifting her slightly as her feet scrambled for purchase on the cobblestones. The movement was fluid, the kind of motion that came from training so ingrained it bypassed conscious thought.

Her eyes widened with the recognition of something she'd never seen before. This wasn't the boy who had sat in the library complaining about Elvish grammar.

This wasn't the student who had laughed with her after their arguments. This was something else entirely, something wearing Gabriel's face like a mask.

She gasped, her hands immediately coming up to claw at his grip. Her nails scraped against his skin, drawing thin lines of blood that welled up and ran down his wrist. The red mixed with the crimson smoke, indistinguishable from the fog that surrounded them both.

But his hold didn't waver.

His face remained unchanged with no emotion registering as she fought for air. No flinch came at the pain her nails caused.

No hesitation showed as her struggles grew more desperate.

He held her with the same detached efficiency he might have used to hold a training dummy, something to be gripped and controlled rather than a living person fighting for breath.

The illusion around him shattered.

The borrowed distance that had made the world forget to care collapsed, dispersing in the wind.

His red eyes blazed openly now.

The crimson fog billowed around them both, thick enough to obscure their forms from anyone who might have glanced their way.

But the crowd didn't notice.

The hanging had their complete attention.

Someone shouted approval near the front. Children pointed at the scaffold, asking questions their parents answered with simplified explanations of crime and punishment.

Life and death occupied the same space, and the crowd saw only what the Church wanted them to see.

Melissa's struggles grew weaker. Her hands still clawed at his fingers, but the strength was fading with each second that passed without air.

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled from water, trying to form words that couldn't escape past his grip.

Trying to find the boy she'd known beneath whatever this had become.

Her vision began to darken. The sounds of the crowd grew distant, replaced by the rushing of blood in her ears and the desperate, failing rhythm of her own heartbeat.

Her eyes pleaded with him, not for mercy but for recognition, for him to see her, to remember who she was, who he had been.

Gabriel stared back, unblinking.

The red smoke swirled faster, responding to something inside him that had broken free of restraint, of control, of everything that had kept it contained.

The fog took shape around his body, forming tendrils that reached toward Melissa, toward the crowd, toward the scaffold where the woman's body still swung.

His fingers tightened fractionally.

Melissa's face began to pale beyond the flush of suffocation. Her lips turned blue. The clawing at his hands became weaker, more sporadic, her body's automatic response to dying overriding conscious thought.

A few more seconds was all it would take.

Her hands fell away from his wrist, dangling at her sides. Her eyes started to roll back as consciousness faded and her brain was starved of oxygen.

Then something crashed into the side of his head.

The impact was immediate. Wood striking bone with enough force to shatter thought, to interrupt the flow of whatever had taken control.

The sound was sharp, audible even over the crowd's celebration.

His vision exploded into white, then red, then nothing.

His grip released.

Melissa collapsed to the ground, gasping, her hands immediately clutching her throat as she dragged air back into her lungs.

. Her whole body shook with the effort, ribs heaving as she forced oxygen past her bruised windpipe.

The red smoke dissipated instantly, pulled back into Gabriel as consciousness fled. The crimson fog that had surrounded them both simply vanished, as if it had never existed.

He dropped.

His body hit the cobblestones hard with his arms sprawling and his face turned toward the sky he could no longer see. Blood trickled from his temple where the club had connected, a dark line that ran down the side of his face and pooled on the stones beneath his head.

The crowd's celebration continued around his unconscious form. No one had noticed the violence. No one had stopped their cheering. No one had seen the demon that had nearly awakened in their midst.

The woman on the scaffold swung gently in the morning breeze, her body turning slowly on the rope. Cathedral Square carried on with its scheduled death, with its lesson about justice and consequence, indifferent to everything except the spectacle the Church had prepared.

Melissa remained on the ground.

Her breathing was steadying, the desperate gasps becoming more controlled, but her eyes never left Gabriel's unconscious form.

Behind her, someone stepped forward from the crowd with the club still in their hand.

The execution was complete.

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