XI. A Wandering Prophet
Days turned to weeks, and Adriel—ever the humble teacher—traveled further from the Rhine, into lands scarred by war and plague. His band of four had grown as word of his resurrection spread: farmers and artisans, beggars and knights, all drawn by the promise of healing. Adriel ministered to the lepers in Metz, sat with weeping widows in Tours, and walked the pilgrim roads toward Compostela, his footprints marking springs of living water.
But with each miracle, the balance of mortal faith shifted. The Church, threatened by his independent following, dispatched inquisitors to silence him. Bishops excommunicated entire villages that offered him sanctuary. Rumors flew that the Devil walked behind Adriel's kindly smile. Crowds alternated between worship and suspicion, uncertain whether he was Christ reborn—or something far older and stranger.
One quiet evening, as Adriel prayed alone beneath the vaulted sky near Poitiers, a group of black-robed monks confronted him. Their leader, Father Eudes, bore a crucifix twisted with iron. He accused Adriel of blasphemy and demanded he renounce his gifts.
Adriel looked at the crucifix—and saw in its twisted wood a mirror of his own sacrifice. His voice was gentle:
"You bind your mercy in iron. Yet mercy is the breaking of chains, not their forging."
The monks recoiled. Eudes raised a chalice of holy oil to anoint his forehead, but Adriel shook his head and pressed his palm to the oil—absorbing it rather than anointing. The oil burned like ice. Eudes dropped the chalice, and the oil seeped into the earth, turning to a flower of midnight blue.
Silence fell. The monks fled into the night, their faith broken by the unspeakable mercy they could not condemn.
XII. The Trials of Flesh
Adriel continued toward Compostela, where he planned a final sermon to unite the fracturing Church and the yearning masses. Along the way, he suffered mortal trials that mirrored his divine paradox:
Hunger and Thirst:At Poitiers, he fasted for a week to share the villagers' suffering. His body grew gaunt, flesh hollowed over bone. Yet on the seventh dawn, he stood before them, unbroken, offering loaves of bread that multiplied in their hands.Betrayal:In Bordeaux, a lieutenant in his band betrayed him for gold, luring a band of brigands to steal Adriel's meager supplies. The brigands attacked under cover of night. Adriel greeted them barefoot in the clearing. They expected terror; he offered forgiveness. Most fled in confusion. The lieutenant, struck by remorse, knelt and returned every coin.Doubt:By the Pyrenees, heavy mists clung to the passes. Memories of Azrael's laughter echoed in Adriel's mind—mocking his kindness as weakness. For a night, he could not pray. His voice cracked, and he wept beneath the stars, questioning whether mercy was a gift or a curse.
Each tribulation wounded his mortal flesh but deepened his empathy. The people's stories—the dying mother, the homeless child, the dishonored knight—became as real to him as the slow fracture of his sandals upon rocky mountain paths.
XIII. The Crucifixion of a Prophet
At last he reached Santiago de Compostela. The cathedral rose like a dream against the dawn, pilgrims clustered at its doors. Adriel mounted the steps, sandals worn thin, cloak frayed. He clasped his hands and addressed the throng:
"Brothers and sisters, you have wandered far to seek a relic of bone… but the true relic of hope is living among you. Let no man shape your faith by fear, no church command your heart by law. Walk in mercy, sow kindness, and you walk in the footsteps of the Divine."
Gasps and applause echoed through the plaza. But at the back of the crowd, black-robed figures watched with cold eyes: the Papal Legate and his inquisitors, sent to quell this unlicensed prophet.
They approached as Adriel descended, swords drawn. The legate's voice boomed:
"By the authority of Rome, I condemn you as a false Christ. Submit, or be cast out as heretic."
Adriel's eyes softened upon the legate. "I have no throne but your hearts, no kingdom but your compassion." He offered no resistance as they seized him.
They dragged him to the cathedral's cloister, chained him to the cross of stone that marked Saint James's relic. There they intended to burn him by bonfire—purging heresy with fire.
XIV. The Resurrection Reclaimed
As sparks were lit beneath the pyre, Adriel endured the flames in silence. The smoke curled around his feet, licking at his robes. His followers wailed beyond the guards. Sophia pressed her palms to the iron bars, tears steaming her face. Hugo helplessly bashed the iron gates with his breastplate. Beatrix fainted; Matthias prayed in fevered whispers.
At the fire's height, when wood crackled and stone glowed red, Adriel lifted his head and spoke in a voice not his own:
"This death you demand is but a fleeting breath. Truth outlives flame."
He closed his eyes. The smoke parted. A lotus of pure starlight blossomed in the flames, quenching them in a single pulse. Adriel opened his eyes to behold himself unburned—robes intact, flesh unmarred. The crowd fell silent in awe.
But before joy could rise, the starlight lotus parted to reveal a second shape: a twisted shadow, darker than the deepest smoke, hissing through charred air. It was the echo of his own death—the void that had momentarily claimed him.
He frowned, and the shadow recoiled. He stepped forward, hand extended, and the shadow hissed and, writhing, dissolved into motes of despair.
The legate and inquisitors fled, eyes wide with terror. Adriel turned to his followers:
"Witness, not only life returned, but the darkness that stalks the gift of mercy."
XV. The First Suspense
As the assembled pilgrims knelt in thunderstruck silence, Adriel ascended the cathedral's steps once more. The starlight lotus hovered above him, its petals rotating in impossible geometry. He raised it skyward, and the night erupted in a chorus of celestial music—stars singing across the firmament.
He spoke one final word before disappearing into the starlit night:
"Seek me if you dare… but know that I walk where angels fear to tread."
Below, every heart thundered with wonder—and fear.
XVI. The Burden of Divinity
When dawn broke, Compostela's stones gleamed under a carved sunbeam. The lotus had vanished, leaving only scorch-marks on the sedilia. Adriel's followers wept and prayed, but he was gone—lost to the wind, a phantom in pilgrim's guise.
For months, rumors trailed him like a drifting prayer: glimpsed in a leper colony on the Danube, heard in whispered sermons beneath Constantinople's arches, seen crossing the Sinai at midnight. Always he appeared at the brink of despair—warding off plague, quelling riots, restoring the fallen. Yet each miracle left a stain upon his soul—a memory of mortality he could not shed.
XVII. The Shadow Inside
One night, as he rested beneath an olive tree in Antioch, he awoke to find the shadow of his death coiled at his feet—a living wraith of darkest smoke, eyes glowing with his own pain. It spoke in a rasp:
"You cannot flee the debt you owe. I am the price of each mercy you've extended, the echo of every life you reclaimed."
Adriel rose, heart pounding. He had faced mortal death twice … but had he faced the debt? He stretched out a hand. The shadow hissed, recoiled—and then danced away among the olive groves.
He realized then that each act of compassion had bound him to the void. He had borrowed life from death, but death claimed its collateral in the form of this personal haunting.
XVIII. The Pilgrim's Test
His path brought him to the gates of Jerusalem during Lent—a city of tears and pilgrims, where the Church argued doctrine in marble halls. Adriel walked barefoot through the Via Dolorosa, retracing a path of suffering. Each station he paused: the falling beneath the weight of a cross, the compassion shown to the weeping women, the nails driven through flesh. He felt the pulse of every sorrow, every forgiveness, every scar.
At the final station, before the tomb of Christ, he knelt and listened to the echo in the stones. He heard a chorus of angels, but beneath that, another song: Azrael's low hum, like clockwork beneath creation.
"Your journey mirrors His," the voice whispered.
"Yet you are no savior—only a player in a god's theater."
Adriel rose, tears shining in his eyes. He touched the tomb's entrance—the same he had once left—and felt the old wound of death reopen beneath his fingers.
XIX. The Return to Golgotha
Compelled by the echo of his mortal agony, Adriel returned to Golgotha Hill—not as a prisoner, but as a mourner. He found the cracked cross and the empty tomb carved from stone. Grass grew between the stones; wildflowers bloomed along the slope.
He sat beneath the cross and prayed for the souls he had healed—and for the debt he still owed. The sky darkened. A sudden storm cracked above: rain like silver needles, wind like a lament.
He closed his eyes, letting the storm wash over him. Lightning split the sky, illuminating a figure at the hill's base: Brother Matthias, older, burdened, carrying a scroll sealed with his own tears.
"Adriel," Matthias called, voice breaking. "You must see this."
Adriel took the scroll. Inside were testimonies—villagers who had perished after his healings, miracles gone awry, souls left in limbo because they had not truly lived. Names he had spoken over: Miriam the child, Lucan the farmer, Titus the soldier.
"The cost of each miracle was a life I could not save," Matthias whispered. "They died believing in the impossible—and now they wander, lost between worlds."
Adriel's heart shuddered. He had healed the body, but the soul had been left unmoored. The storm's wind carried Matthias's final words:
"You offered them life, but not the blessing of mortality."
XX. The Second Suspense
Adriel rose, rain-soaked, holding the scroll to his chest. The echo of Azrael's laughter rolled across the horizon—soft, triumphant, inescapable.
He looked toward the cross and the tomb. The stones glowed with ancient runes. Then a crack ran through the hillside, splitting Golgotha asunder.
From the fissure emerged a pilgrimage of souls—faces gaunt, eyes hollow, reaching out for the one who had saved them. They drifted toward Adriel, their voices a chorus of longing and accusation:
"We are the debt unpaid."
"We are the price you cannot bear."
"Adriel… save us... or be saved…"
The storm ceased. The hillside fell silent. And Adriel stood at the edge of a chasm between mercy and judgment, mortal and divine, life and death.
In that breathless moment, he realized the true crucible had only just begun—and that the price demanded would break his heart, or shatter the world.
To be continued…