The cold winds howled against the crooked shingles of *Saint Merel's Home for the Lost*, carrying with them the scent of rain and rot. It was well past midnight. The world outside was quiet, but within those crumbling stone walls, silence had a different weight—like something waiting to be broken.
Obil stood at the edge of the courtyard, cloaked in black. His presence melted into the shadows. He didn't need divine power for what came next. He had spent lifetimes mastering death. This night was not an improvisation. It was a culmination.
His hand brushed the hilt of a curved blade strapped beneath his coat—custom-forged, the steel darkened to reflect no light. A tool of silence. Of finality. "The floor plans were precise. Too precise. Someone wanted this to happen. The cult always kept its promises."
He moved through the rear entrance, bypassing the old lock with practiced ease. The corridor was dimly lit by a flickering bulb. He walked it like a ghost.
The first to die was the night nurse. She sat slumped at her desk, flipping through a worn Bible, its pages curled and damp from years of handling. She didn't even see him. One fluid motion—his blade whispered across her throat. A stifled gasp. Her blood painted the desk and soaked the scripture beneath her dying fingers.
Then came the security guard, young and overconfident, scrolling through his phone in the eastern wing. Obil didn't even use the blade. He slipped behind, wrapped his arms around the boy's neck, and twisted. The sound was soft. Almost respectful. The body dropped without grace.
Room by room, hallway by hallway—he moved like a shadow of wrath. Children stirred in their sleep, unaware. He chose quickly. Efficiently. Slitting throats, stabbing hearts, breaking necks with precise force. No screaming. Only the sounds of bodies slumping into sheets and the quiet drip of blood pooling on cracked tile.
In the boy's dorm, one child woke.
A six-year-old. Pale. Wide eyes.
Obil hesitated for half a heartbeat.
The child opened his mouth to cry out—but Obil was faster. A hand clamped down. The blade entered beneath the ribs. A soft exhale, and then silence.
He left no room untouched.
When it was over, the air was thick with iron. Blood soaked the halls like spilled ink, the walls painted with shadowed streaks. The dead lay draped over mattresses and desks like broken dolls.
Obil moved to the chapel, the ritual site. He had already prepared the floor—an ancient sigil carved in the stone with chalk, ash, and the blood of the first victim. It pulsed faintly now, as if aware. Waiting.
He knelt in the center and spoke the forbidden rite—a guttural language older than Babel. The candles around him flickered violently.
The ground trembled.
And then *he* appeared.
Azazil.
Wreathed in smoke and crimson light, the demon stepped through the veil—his form shifting, face both beautiful and rotted. A thousand eyes blinked and vanished along his arms, and wings of shadow flickered behind him.
Obil rose, blade still in hand, his coat slick with blood.
Azazil's voice coiled around the chapel like a serpent:
**"I have spoken with my Lord… and he is pleased. The deal is confirmed. Continue. Kill more of them. Await my next command."**
Obil smirked, his tone mocking:
**"I already knew he would accept it. Don't twist it, Azazil. I don't take orders. We're partners. We both gain from it. Phrase it correctly."**
Azazil narrowed his gaze, lips twitching in disdain, but his voice remained cold:
**"Such arrogance... It will either crown you, or destroy you."**
Then, like smoke pulled into a vacuum, the demon vanished.
The air felt heavier in the silence that followed, thick with iron and incense. Obil stood alone in the bloodstained chapel of Saint Merel, the altar drenched in innocence. Moonlight filtered through the broken stained glass above him, casting fractured rainbows across his face—mocking color in a place so empty of it.
He glanced at the blade in his hand. It was short, curved, worn. Not ceremonial, not grand—just efficient. Real. He dragged it slowly across the sleeve of a child's uniform, wiping away the blood with quiet reverence, not for the dead, but for the work.He could almost hear a child's laugh from another life. A memory? A ghost? It vanished before he could place it
Then he spoke, not to anyone in particular, maybe to himself. Maybe to the silence.
"It begins."
He turned and walked into the night, leaving behind only the sound of dripping blood and the stench of something ancient awakening.