At first I don’t think I’ve heard Death right, but I look at Famine and Conquest and their clear shock lets me know that I did, in fact, hear her right.

“Wait, so all of this...this bullshit was for nothing?”

“This is the boy, then?” says the angel who I can only assume is Michael.

He doesn’t look the way I expected. For some reason, in the back of my head, I’d imagined he’d appear armoured, dressed in a traditional jeonbok. Instead, beyond the glowing, the only hint I see at him being a general is the sword strapped to his back in addition to the knife at his hip. The aura of authority that pours out of him, however, would let anyone know he was in charge of something.

“Yeah, I’m ‘the boy’,” I snap, “and my name is Hyun, if you at all care.”

The entirety of his reaction to my bravado is to lift one eyebrow and continue his unimpressed once-over of me. I feel hot from my face and ears down to my shoulders.

Someone nudges my knee and I glance down at Coach, whose head is bent while he ties his trainers. His shoulders, however, are still. If Michael weren’t an archangel I’d tell him to watch it before my coach shows him just how much a human can cause hurt and damage with nothing more than their own body.

“Death claims you are not what I believe. So tell me, Hyun,” he adds my name with as much condescension as possible, “are you not the son of the Fallen that has moved Heaven and Hell to such action that the seals have cracked and splintered, the sun turned dark, and the Four have abandoned their code in pursuit of more primal desire?”

Well when he puts it like that...

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“I didn’t mean to be?” I say.

“What one intends and what one does or is,” he says in a less harsh voice, “are not always in harmony.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you and your intentions.”

I didn't mean to say that out loud.

Death and Conquest stare at me, horrified; Famine giggles; and Coach snorts from where he’s still crouched -- he looks up to flash me a grin and a wink.

“I will cut out your tongue, antikhristos,” Michael snarls, pulling out his sword to point it at my face. “And then I will end your life, as Death should have done days ago, and stop this madness before it is irreversible.”

“Like Hell you’re laying a feather on him,” Coach stands from his crouch to step out from behind the Horsemen; I make a grab for the back of his dobok, but Conquest is in the way. I think Coach knows I want to stop him, because he turns his head to check me out in his peripheral vision. His lip is curled back in something like a sneer, but his shoulders are way more relaxed than they were a second ago; he slowly folds his arms across his chest.

“Coach, are you insa—”

A flash of gold flies through the air at Coach’s head, and I barely have a moment to breathe let alone yell before it pauses, mere inches from his face, caught easily, but tightly, between fore-and-middle-fingers. That sneer tugs higher up the side of Coach’s mouth.

“Hêlêl ben Šāḥar,” Michael growls, and I can practically hear the skin of his hands rubbing together as they ball into fists.

“It’s been a long time, Mikha’el.”

Something’s different, and wrong -- like the entire energy of the room has changed. If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t know, but I’ve known Coach most of my life and he looks relaxed, but...it’s like waves are radiating off of him, and it’s hard to keep him in focus.

Like looking at something really bright.

Like looking at Michael.

Like looking at a fucking archangel.

Holy fuck.