The stained-glass windows of the abandoned church cast fractured light across the dust-laden floor. Rain pattered against the roof, each drop echoing in the oppressive silence.
Inside, Hokila adjusted the strap of his worn messenger bag, the leather creaking like a bone. He wasn't sure what had drawn him to this forgotten place.
It had called to him, not audibly but with the quiet force of a tide pulling at the sand. A chill that wasn't from the weather seemed to seep into his bones.
He moved toward the altar. It was defaced, graffiti scrawled across its once-holy surface, but there, at the very center, was something out of place.
A feather, ivory white against the faded wood, lay so perfectly. Hokila picked it up.
The feather was unnervingly soft, lighter than air, yet he could feel a strange heat coursing through his palm as he touched it. He ran his fingers across the barbs, feeling an inexplicable connection to it.
A cold draft kissed the back of his neck, not coming from a door, window or any other source of wind. It had come from seemingly thin air.
He turned, heart pounding a little too fast, but there was no one. Nothing had shifted except a sense of dread tightening his chest.
He brushed it off and assumed it was merely his over active mind. "Maybe I should leave."
As he made to move from the altar, the space seemed to bend. It rippled and shifted like an oil slick, an unseen wind causing dust devils to rise and dance.
An almost impossible brightness emerged. It was blinding for a few seconds before dissipating just as suddenly.
In the center of the distorted area, there was now a figure. It stood with impossible poise, taller than a man should be, wrapped in robes of silver light.
He squinted through the spots in his vision. The figure was humanoid but also unearthly, possessing a face of severe, ethereal beauty that caused Hokila to both look in awe but in utter dread.
From the figure's back emerged enormous wings, so white they appeared to hold all the light of the world, making it difficult to look. It felt unreal.
The feather, warm in Hokila's hand, suddenly felt very cold, like ice. A voice resonated, not through the air but somehow in the very core of Hokila.
It was neither kind or malicious, but sounded as if all of the sounds from a thousand suns collided together. "Human," it said.
It did not even seem to move its mouth. Hokila's words caught in his throat; He was not certain if the being wanted to hear his trembling response, so he said nothing.
The presence felt oppressive, vast and impossible all at once, making his own being seem terribly insignificant. "Your kind has strayed too far."
"The blight has taken root, poisoning this Earth you believe to be yours." Uriel stated, still sounding like suns being born and died.
A shiver went through Hokila as the pronouncement filled his head; He could almost taste the words, metallic and acidic, clinging to the insides of his mouth.
This being wasn't merely talking, but forcing this awful message upon his soul. He tried to swallow, but the effort was pointless, his body not following his mind's request,
Uriel continued, "The All-Father's patience has thinned." His tone wasn't angry. Rather, it held a terrible weariness.
The tone added to the disquiet Hokila felt, not knowing how to react to such impossible events and ideas. It left a feeling as though every possible choice of his would only lead to misery.
He wondered if it was just himself being self-loathing again. "Humanity has shown itself unworthy."
"Your greed, your hate, your endless transgressions have earned you but one fate." Uriel seemed to look down on Hokila with eyes that burned but emitted no heat, leaving an icy, awful feeling in the boy's bones.
The cold that lingered inside Hokila from just a few minutes ago, grew colder still. It had become a dreadful winter, and he seemed to be in its cruelest clutches.
Hokila, his body finally finding movement, stumbled backward as Uriel stated: "Total annihilation."
The two words echoed around the building, bouncing from the decaying walls, causing the building to shift and make noise. This didn't alleviate the icy chill that had taken up permanent residence inside of Hokila.
He couldn't tell what feeling of awful doom he was truly focused on. Uriel moved a step closer.
The intensity of the light surrounding him grew more pronounced, its almost holy gleam a horrifying indication that what he said could certainly be real. Hokila tried to raise his hands to his face but found that he could not.
Fear had completely petrified him and made all muscles as hard and immovable as rock. "It starts at the next sunset," Uriel continued as if he was reading out a menu rather than the mass murder of every single person.
He slowly, with unearthly grace and composure, extended an open hand and gestured to his side. From seemingly nowhere, a longsword formed, made entirely from the same silver light that covered the rest of his body.
It emited even more radiant power. "The cleansing will be absolute."
Hokila felt all hope leach from him. A cold panic washed over him, like ice being poured into his veins.
Every instinct told him to run, but Uriel's presence kept him locked in place, completely vulnerable to anything, unable to do anything. He could do nothing, not at this moment.
Maybe if he played it cool, it would pass, or this all would end quickly and he wouldn't suffer. It wasn't even a real choice to choose these silly ideals, they came naturally.
Every awful decision of his life. He almost expected this moment; maybe in his life, he could do nothing right, why would now be different?
He had a natural tendency of losing. With what sounded almost like a sigh, the great angel started to retract his glorious wings, bringing the space he inhabited back to normal.
Yet this felt so strange, as all else had happened felt like a normal walk in a park, rather than the doom and the coming war that Uriel had mentioned, it had begun.
"You have been informed, Human. I suggest that you accept this reality. Fight it or don't, it will change nothing."
Uriel rose into the air as effortlessly as dandelion fluff dancing on the wind, passing through the church roof without any indication of any impact, like his body was not that of anything tangible.
With each step the ground, which had not taken on his weight to begin with, sunk a centimeter. The church became silent again except for the continued patter of the rain and Hokila's trembling breaths.
It was like his breath was the loudest thing in the world at that moment, how long would that remain that way, if the being's plan is what was true. Would anyone hear that breath, will they ever hear any breaths from anyone else again.
Was that it, that is how humanity's story would be written. All gone because one being deemed them to.
Would someone tell of how the human race was too sad to deal with themselves or others and so that it had given way and given in to such awful conditions as its just ending. He backed away until he found the rotting pews.
Each a constant threat to not have the strength and support he needed from their age, falling upon each one for safety before sinking down against it. The icy dread began to take on a very physical feeling in his stomach.
He felt sick to his stomach, not at the mention of death, or annihilation but in this reality. The reality that so many people were now, just in this very instance, experiencing everything they had in life just so suddenly end so terribly.
This felt too awful to really fully grasp, like the universe had thrown its worse upon Hokila, only for Hokila to say, 'is that all?' or 'what do I do now' without a notion. He could barely breathe.
His hands trembled as he looked at the feather he held. Its white had a terrible meaning now.
All of its impossible beauty, now twisted into such horrifying finality. Every breath after the realization became more strained, knowing all others would have this experience right before the moment of doom would come.
This terrible burden; an awful experience only one person would experience while billions, all the souls who inhabit this earth would experience this, but at once, without the awful burden of realizing what doom.
That, he could understand so fully, lay ahead. Why him, and yet everyone else, only at the final hour, and would it feel as awful as this?
Why did this experience exist? Is god simply a torturous being for simply being all powerful?
If I was able to hold such impossible power, would I even know how? I think of such, but my life would also never come into that, that of being that powerful, it makes me sad but makes the power that exists beyond us so dreadful.
He didn't know how long he stayed there, huddled against the pews, staring at the feather as rain slowly came to a full stop. He had felt it pass from a soft patter to nothing.
Leaving an uncomfortable ringing in his ears, the absence, far too profound, making the reality even worse. This was to become the last time the sky wept on Earth.
What do people experience just before dying. Will it feel so long, or just the blink of an eye, will I ever understand if this entire ordeal makes any actual sense?
His body was on the cusp of giving into it all; the emotions that swirled felt like it was sucking him deep inside the core of the planet itself. Why was all this for him.
How do you even, understand why one person lives a different, sadder life than that of all other? As the sunset approached, a horrible red covered the horizon, bleeding its terrible hue into the landscape.
Hokila made it out of the church; His every movement now felt mechanical and without reason. Like some puppet on very weak strings that barely have the ability to keep this human alive and breathing.
Hokila reached out towards it. This strange power, in his mind, at the final seconds was drawing him like some awful magnet.
The sky roared. Hokila watched as the clouds tore apart like paper.
It became so much lighter as great shapes fell to earth; Hokila realized they weren't falling. He had been pulled towards them as much as they seemed to be going for him, his awful fate was now coming into terrible fruition.
Something worse than even death, now seemed far more real. His blood turned into cold, dark ice, in every vessel and vein of his.
Everything that he once was began to drain and dissolve, the power he sensed was taking him as much as it seemed like he was being made available to it. Each light touched parts of his flesh, starting at his toes before, reaching his shins.
Each movement upwards turned into something more and more terrible and dreadful than he could ever fully come to the reality of. The final seconds arrived at the same moment that the sun disappeared completely.
Hokila could feel as much, now, as could a new born child; this entire experience had stripped so much. When the light finally washed over him entirely, Hokila let out a breath and found himself on something terrible.
That wasn't quite the Earth and wasn't quite not, where reality shifted with every impossible moment and every painful shift to his structure that was beginning to happen. Hokila was beginning to not know how he felt.
Was he screaming internally or not; was he truly this afraid or something else, some deeper pain and sensation of absolute dread and terror? His bones bent and broke under some strange pressure.
Yet the bone wasn't quite bone and also somehow was, making each instance the next become worse. His muscles unraveled like thread, flesh dissolving into the strange and cold light.
Every structure of him being transformed and reshaped with a terrifying purpose; He was, somehow, not only still conscious, but hyper aware. He watched himself morph and change with every single agonizing moment.
As it stripped him to something far less, and made his core more than that; He could feel more dread and power. A feeling like absolute power and dread filled the very place where Hokila's core and very soul remained.
He knew he wasn't even just being torn down but reshaped, repurposed. This whole plan; that it all wasn't so simple and this had never actually even been a plan of pure, absolute end for everyone, or for even him.
He finally understood; his was a role, not an end. This was to be a transformation.
An individual to stand between the awful divide between god and his creatures; now, the newest face to the forces being wrought; this human will, now, finally do something important and truly and dreadfully fulfill his true and awful destiny.
He could feel what they felt. The hatred of a man or woman for such injustice being bestowed on such individuals, even now the hate and scorn were his and somehow also never, making this moment even stranger, awful, with such great meaning.
Every piece of all life now surged within, making each moment so terrible but great at once. As a god he stood with the understanding of an immortal but all the trauma and suffering of a mere man.
Who always lived his awful days until, now, the very last day and moment he existed, he stood as something in between. Not simply angel or man, not human nor deity.
A thing now tasked and set out, in-between worlds; he became it all.