Chapter 36.1

 

The architecture is trembling around them, half‑collapsed, half‑revealed, the world’s bones exposed in shimmering scaffolds of logic and intention.

Roisin stands at the centre of the revelation. Astaroth and the Riders at her side. The Nephilim trembling with awareness. Mortals, post-mortals, gods, demons and angels are arrayed around them in splashes of soul fragments and collections of polyhedral prisms, and they are all looking at Hasmed.

Hasmed who is no longer collapsing the world but collapsing himself. His wings fold inward. The void coils circle tight around his chest like the tornado no storm chaser will ever witness. His outline flickers between mortal, angel, function, absence and purpose, and his face reflects every angel, mortal and demon who has ever been erased by him. They are all part of him now, each of their shards added to his own in reverence and remembrance, for once something is created it is never truly lost; even if its soul is consumed, it will forever be part of that new, composite being. He whispers, his voice thin as a dying star as it collapses into a singularity: “I am the Seventh Seal.”

Roisin gasps. It is no wonder he was so desperate to stop the Sixth Seal from being broken, for it heralded his own destruction, for unlike Roisin, who contained the Sixth Seal inside her, Hasmed himself is the Seventh and final Seal, and to break it he must also be broken.

Astaroth curses under his breath. “Oh no. No, no, no— Hasmed, don’t—”

But the angel is already unravelling. His form begins to split along invisible seams; not tearing of breaking, as one would expect an object to be opened, but splitting into component discs an opening, like a flower bud under the unblinking stare of the sun, or the chrysalis of an insect after seven years underground, or a truth held for a lifetime, revealed upon a deathbed.

Inside him -- for what is a cliché if it has no foundation of origin -- the void inside him shines out not with light, but with the brightness of resolution and with meaning. He looks at Roisin, his face already split into multiple pieces with his features on separate pieces, so that as his lips move one way his eyes slide another. It is very disconcerting for someone who was mortal – was it still yesterday? His words appear in her head as a susurrus of self-pity, and she can tell that none of the others hear it. “I was never annihilation. I was the end.”

Roisin steps forward, except as the literal centre of the universe, her thought to step forward causes the universe to move through and around her but still has the effect of closing the distance between her and Hasmed. “Hasmed—stop—”

He shakes his head and speaks aloud this time. “I cannot. This is the culmination of my creation. It is my function. I was made to open. I was made to release.”

Astaroth’s voice is raw, hoarse, as if he’s spent an eternity shouting and can no longer sustain it. “Hasmed, listen to me—God is dead. There is no judgement to release.”

Hasmed’s wings flare. “There must be. The Seventh Seal must open. The Final Judgement must come.”

Roisin brings him forward until she is as close to him as the touch of a priest to a penitent. “Hasmed… there’s no one left to judge.”

Hasmed looks at her as his wings burn with the intense flame of magnesium, but Roisin can feel no heat from them. The flares start with the wing tips and burn inward toward his body, which ignites with the flare of American napalm on the South Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng. His face, the parts of it still visible, is the last thing to burn and as it catches, he smiles and speaks for the last time. “Lord. Into thy hands I command my spirit.”

His look of despair as nothing happens breaks Roisin’s heart.

The moment the flams wink out, the architecture stops. It does not collapse, but all motion ceases. Every beam of logic freezes. Every thread of meaning stills. Every membrane of possibility holds a breath. The world enters thirty minutes of silence.

Not literal minutes, although the Roisin it feels like an eternity. It is a silence so vast it feels like the universe has forgotten how to think; a silence of awe and terror, of expectation and emptiness. Thus it was before Creation and thus is it Afterwards.

Roisin feels it like a weight on her chest, pressing her to her knees, as do, judging by the collective movement throughout the universe, all the other products of Creation, but despite the pressure of expectation holding them down, nothing happens.

Nothing at all.

Because God is dead and the throne is empty.