The following events prior to my rebirth were told to me through my soul sight, also known as dark sense. How this sense of mine works in conjunction with my perfect memory will be explored later.

Still and silent, Azrael the Archangel of Retribution and Death floated above the sea of ash and dust where Mot’s remains had been scattered. Several pairs of wings stretched out of Azrael’s back. Each was longer than Azrael was tall, with plumage made of light.

Angels are genderless by default and with the exception of angels who take on a gendered parental role like the archangel Samael, I will be using “they” and “them” as their pronouns.

Azrael’s hooded robes concealed two brightly glowing eyes which looked past two dark swords held before them by their aura. Many glowing swords of varying shapes and sizes appeared from Azrael’s halo as it stretched out in a circle in front of them. The swords methodically moved away from their body as they followed the flow of their mighty aura. The swords in the circle pointed towards its center, at which point was a black dot less than a millimeter in diameter.

Azrael touched their mercury beard and the tip of their finger felt a slight drag toward the center of the sphere of swords. They could also feel the slight warmth of their translucent skin being sapped by whatever invisible force was emanating from the center of the swords. A chill followed as they willed their aura to bring the two dark swords, which hadn’t followed the rest, closer. Both were longswords about three-quarters the height of the average human. One sword had a hilt that extended straight forward and back, this way and that into an “X”, and the other was the same except the sword’s blade and hilts were curved. Azrael extended a finger toward one and then the other, but did not touch. Instead, a concentrated halo of light extended from their finger towards both their tips.

Nothing happened — at least nothing visible to the human eye. At the level of their energy fields, the swords’ touch would eat away at Azrael’s aura of light. These swords had once belonged to Mot, the God of Death, though they were not his primary weapons. He had dropped them in his battle with Anat.

Curious, Azrael thought. This would not be the first time that Azrael had come across the elusive aether the angels had long searched for. Nor would it be the first time it had brought them such chills.

Azrael had called on two other angels to descend from the heavens above beyond the veil of grey smoke, the holy light having rapidly blinked out behind them in the same instant Azrael became aware of their presence. Azrael’s aura extended out to merge with Zaphkiel’s before they split off a moment later. Zaphkiel broadcast a message to Azrael to indicate that they understood their wishes and would follow them through with haste.

Zaphkiel was an archangel with giant rings of concentrated mist in a halo, similar in shape to those of the planet Saturn, continuously floating behind their wings. Zaphkiel took the swords into their aura while Samael took position on the opposite side of the circle of swords to Azrael. Zaphkiel was careful not to touch the swords directly with any of their appendages, only allowing their misty halo and its extension of aura to hold them farther than arms’ length away. Zaphkiel left the other two behind with another quick blink of light and they teleported away.

Shiny feathers covered the top half of Samael’s face in a mask that extended to the side of his head like small extra wings instead of ears, and he wore plain, white robes. Samael’s eyes appeared as two-dimensional projections on two of the mask’s feathers where a human’s eyes would be and displayed strength and bravery despite their strangeness. His hands were as massive as boulders, but he carried them around effortlessly.

As soon as Samael reached a position opposite to Azrael, more feathers on his wings and body rapidly and chaotically took on the same eye image before flitting back, all studying the black dot at the center of the swords. Occasionally one would flick to look at something far below the center of the circle: a beastly, vaguely humanoid shadowy silhouette left behind, surrounded by the remains of a great battle which left a permanent scar in the sea of ash, compressing that particular patch of dust perfectly flat. He didn’t give the silhouette more than a few glances.

‘Get ready,’ Azrael said to their comrade telepathically, their voice like a faraway echo.

Samael opened one out of two of his oversized fists and held the other back. He knew Azrael’s orders instinctually and immediately, as had Zaphkiel, and that was all the information either of them needed, for their minds were connected through the Allaya.

‘Kill it, kill it,’ repeated the other voices in the Allaya.

The Allaya is the mechanism by which all angels throughout the multiverse commune with each other, something like a hive-mind.

The two angels stayed completely silent as they both kept a close watch at the center of the circle. The black dot pulled smaller swirls of dust toward itself while the larger tides were pushed away, creating a large, empty space in the sea of ash. There was debris here and there moving slowly, most notably a flat rock that seemed to be cleanly sliced from the ground. They continued to stare at the small black dot, which had, in the meantime, grown ever so slightly.

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Noticing a significant change in the dot’s size, Samael’s eye-feathers all flipped over at once. At the same time, Azrael’s swords of light started blasting the dot with laser-fire. Samael followed through, shooting fiery plasma from his oversized hands. The intensity and colour of the lasers started off low red, but soon they alternated till they were continuously hitting the dot with high-energy gamma rays and plasma from all sides precisely. Before too long, Azrael and Samael stopped as the dot and space around it pulsated till it suddenly grew ten-fold to fit in the palm of a human hand.

‘Wait,’ Azrael commanded.

The angels watched closely as the small sphere’s surface pulsated to form a very basic humanoid face, arms, legs and wings. More details unfolded from within my body as it continued to slowly grow and look more humanoid. Light started bending around me once I was large enough, and then immediately Azrael was above me and the sea of ash. With sword in hand, Azrael stabbed downward into my left eye, and an intense light pulsed through the sword into my skull.

A scratching screech resounded from my tiny mouth before the outward explosion of dust suddenly bounced inwards into an implosion, creating a deafening silence instead. The surrounding ash pulled toward the black mass while the ash across the plane became still and flat as far as Samael’s many eyes could see. Light in the area bent around my body. Azrael flapped their wings powerfully to get away, while all matter and energy on my opposite side was blown away. The impact hit me, the singularity baby, so forcefully that it pushed the surrounding space-time back into place as Samael’s blow connected. His large fist had punched a hole in the surrounding dust and vapour.

Samael’s hand encased me as I wailed, his knuckles and palms being crushed by my remaining gravity in the process. It matters not, he thought, as tendons extended out of his arm and twisted around until his fist was three times as large and fully healed. He grabbed the ground below with his free arm outstretched to an impossible length and pulled. Samael built up energy and mass in his wings and body in an attempt to slam me downward. I stayed firmly in place as Samael simply tore his hand free and rocketed himself below.

Azrael, meanwhile, was forming an arsenal around themself and pointing every other pair of wings toward their target. Suddenly, clones known as “superpositions” burst from their body as they divided their seven-thousand wings to take only a single pair per superposition, each grabbing a nearby light weapon and going to attack me directly. Those with short-range weapons made several sweeping slashes and stabs at near light speed before suddenly disappearing after each attempted run. Two Azraels were left behind, overlapping each other. One continued to make clones while the other, floating slightly ahead, glowed more brightly as light gathered in the tips of their metallic feathers and more wings folded out of existence to point toward the baby.

As Azrael readied to fire again, a chunk of earth as wide as an asteroid emerged from below the sea of ash to come crashing into me. Azrael’s clones all merged back into place instantaneously, once again taking on one form with many wings. Their body’s light dimmed as they stood up straight and removed their hood, revealing their black eyes and white irises. Their face finally showed an emotion: surprise. Samael was below, and had thrown the rock, but that was not what had surprised Azrael. Samael had not immediately known Azrael’s communicated thoughts to cease the attack and study the anomaly instead.

My mass tore halfway into the chunk of earth, then my gravity field expanded and started to suck up the surrounding matter once again. Samael, seeing this, grabbed a nearby pebble and held it in his still enlarged palm. It glowed bright hot, then seemed to merge with his hand as both living and dead matter burned luminously. Samael grinned.

‘No!’ Azrael shouted with the last sliver of doubt in their mind. At that moment they had decided that I should be studied instead of destroyed.

Samael’s hand pulled back too late, and a solar flare shot out of where the pebble once fit into his palm. Instead of obliterating the stone with me inside, the whole mass was simultaneously flattened and knocked back. It reached the moon. Though there was no atmosphere, the shockwave from that resulting crash and following explosion could clearly be heard.

Azrael calmly approached the explosion, despite the raging fire and debris. It only blew their mercury hair back and undid their hood, revealing their handsome face. Any debris seemed to naturally miss them. Samael was behind them shortly, and they both soon felt the sudden lifting of a haze and a weight off their shoulders. Something in the air had changed.

Azrael communicated the situation, again without saying a word, or moving their lips this time successfully conveying exactly what they should do with little more than a thought through the Allaya. Samael proceeded ahead, and he stretched out his hand before a hole opened up on his elbow. Samael’s halo grew brighter as the raging fires around the angels started to dim, and before long they were completely out. Some rubble was still moving away, but that was of no concern to Samael. He approached the cracked ground and shoved his fist deep inside as it morphed to fill cracks and open a passage. Their head jolted slightly in surprise, and Azrael knew immediately what he had found.

As the final bits of rubble were moved around, Samael’s hand retracted back from its amoeba-like shape. What they found was no longer a foetus, but a newborn baby with wings and a tail… well, a baby with a crack in its face and its entire skeleton broken and flattened. Still, I cried once light shone on me.

Azrael held a hand solemnly over my head, and light began to fill my eyes and entire nervous system. The light fed into the broken bone fragments throughout my body, revealing the skeleton underneath my spectral flesh. Strings formed between the fragments as they were pulled back together, all as my dry wailing continued, apparently no longer dangerous like before. Once they stopped, the light in my nerves flushed out and into my bones, sealing them completely. As the light in my skull released outward, it pooled where my eyes would be, as well as within the now large scar left behind by Azrael’s sword.

The two angels watched on as my crying faded, no longer a danger to them. Whatever force that was protecting me in my foetal stage had subsided.