Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The overly romanticized myth of soulmates often goes like this: two people, predestined to be together for life. Even with the rise of fact check websites, the story lingers. The reason why this saying is essentially false is the same reason it feels so compelling: that soul marks are extremely rare.

For those few who carry the marks, they are not immutable and can shift over the courses of people’s lives. Anecdotal records even tell of once-married couples, who began as soulmates, only to watch their marks fade into nothing, sometimes replaced, sometimes not. Usually, no ostensible disputes preceded this decisive turn of events.

And soul marks don’t have to bear names. They can be whatever defines a life at its core, a priority, a value, or an agenda. Sam knows this better than most. After Jessica’s name vanished from his chest, the patch of skin still painfully numb with grief, a new word surfaced, sharp and itching: Combat. Later, when Dean fell in every sense of that verb, that word morphed again, curling into elegant cursive: Solitude. The strokes at its edges resembled claw marks.

The irony, unsurprising as it was, lays in this: “Solitude” remained even after Dean was pulled back to the world of living by his guardian angel. Of course, his brother would never call Cas anything beside his name. But Sam isn’t blind. He sees how their eyes follow each another, in light and in shadow, holding the quiet acknowledgement that they will always be seen.

Bumpy as it is, Dean’s bond with Castiel is the healthiest relationship Sam’s ever witnessed on his brother, counting his own brotherhood. Because they actually listen to one another. Of course, Dean doesn’t have any soul marks, and he’s still sleeping around. Cas, for his part, seems unbothered. Perhaps, he’s too uptight in their anti-Apocalypse crusade to care for human customs. Regardless, they simply come to a tacit accord and ignore the tension altogether, letting it lie, fermenting.

It’s excruciating to watch the whole ordeal from the side, where only Sam suffers. The one silver of reassurance came when he asked Cas about angels and soulmates, a carefully packaged question passing as idle curiosity. Cas tilted his chin, rodent-like, and admitted that to his knowledge, angels created after the Fall, including himself, are incapable of soul marks.

In this sense, Dean and Cas are untethered together. Still, Sam pressed for clarity, asking what “incapable” means. The reply landed heavier on him than he’d expected. “God desires loyalty. We cannot be loyal to anyone but Him,” Cas said evenly, albeit frowning.

That was all before they once again split up for some imagined efficiency, before Lucifer began his persistent visits to his dreams. He always asked in the same nonchalant tone: Would Sam like to say yes? He’s so calm and so prideful, as if it’s been decided that this will be the endgame, sooner or later. The absurdity of it all urged Sam to laugh and spit at him. Most of the time, though, he chose not to engage with him. He’s believed since an early age that silence can be the sharpest answer.

Surprisingly—not that Sam would admit it out loud, in such times, the Devil would simply retreat to the corner of the room in his lucid dream, pale light pooling around his shoulders. He’d watch Sam sink into a dark abyss of nothingness, waiting for tomorrow.

Up until now, there had been three instances when Sam broke his silence. The first was ten nights ago. Lucifer appeared as Jess, for the second time, and stood at the foot of his bed. Sam’s fury was instant.

He gritted his teeth, words cutting with edges incisive enough to draw blood. “Pull that façade off. You have no right to look like her.”

Lucifer did look confused, though he did as Sam demanded. His form shimmered and folded back into that blond man with softened features. “I thought this face might comfort you.” His intonation is too silvery to be called alien, and too self-assured to be dismissed as mere vanity.

He was drenched in cold sweat of pure anger. If he noted the minor disturbances amid this fiery sentiment, which tasted bitter, he kept them to himself. “She was killed because of you.” Suddenly exhausted, he buried his face in his hands, shielding him from Lucifer’s piercing gaze.

“I don’t understand,” Lucifer said, sounding genuinely perplexed. “Isn’t she in Heaven now? By your measure, isn’t that… good?”

Gosh, if he could have struck him in the face, Sam would. But Lucifer was only an illusion. Sam took a deep breath and forced his hands away, shuddering underneath a sneer. “Is hurting me part of your grand plan of manipulation? Because if it is, congratulations. You’ve been very effective.”

The corner of Lucifer’s mouth turned downward. He sighed. “I don’t plan to manipulate you, Sam. You’re too special to be fed with rhetoric, lies, and half-truths. And I’ve never wished you any harm. I only needed to break the seals, so I could be with you and speak to Michael.”

Sam’s stomach churned at how utterly at ease Lucifer was when he spoke of them, and how his voice dipped in the most imperceptible way possible at Michael’s name. Out of instincts for self-preservation, he put on a scowl while wrestling with the realization.

“So you’re saying, all these catastrophes, all these deaths and destructions… were nothing but an excuse for a one-on-one with your big brother?” he spat the words out.

The Devil smiled almost sheepishly, as if pleased with the acknowledgement. “And with you, of course…”

Sam broke. Jagged laughter ripped out of him, tears running down his chins, until he needed to catch breath, until his own echoes turned eerie and haunting like whale songs. “This is bullshit,” he rasped, wiping his face with shaky hands. “No, this is worse. You don’t hate us; you just don’t care if humans die because you’ve got personal issues!”

Lucifer didn’t correct him. But his eyes, cold and blazing all at once, betrayed a glint of something unclaimed. “I thought you, of all creatures, would understand.”

“Why would I?” Sam flinched at his volume. And, because he could, he held the Devil’s unyielding stare and told him, “I don’t need people’s sacrifice to talk to my brother. And you still haven’t made him talk to you, not after all the blood you deemed worth spilling.”

Lucifer crossed his arms in front of his chest, a gesture almost human in its defensiveness. A bizarre satisfaction, like the pain arising after you tried to scratch an agonizing itch, took hold in Sam’s body. But the prickling soon dispersed into the air that’s too hot and too thin in this cheap motel room, when Lucifer asked, squarely, “Did your brother listen to you, though?”

If he had any spit to spare, Sam would’ve choked on it. Instead, he swallowed down nothing but his self-pity and frustration. “Get out of my dream,” he said quietly.

Lucifer obeyed, evaporating from his vision without sound, and he was left alone in this replica of peeling wallpapers. He cursed under his breath a few times, then lay back on the bed, waiting for darkness to shroud him. It was only after he woke up, feeling unrested and bones cracking, that he realized they had never touched on what made him singular to the Devil.

He could lie to himself that Lucifer merely regarded him as a vessel, but the claim now felt wrong and hollow, especially after he placed him on par with Michael in that confession.

——

The second time it happened, Sam had just finished dealing with a succubus. Astonishingly, the resolution involved more persuasion than violence. She had fallen for a human whose name was etched across her chest as a soul mark, and for once, she refrained from draining life. But the man bore no mark of his own and saw her only as a fleeting, carnal affair.

In despair, the succubus tried to steal him away using a spell. When Sam got hold of the situation and intervened, he found himself tearing open old wounds and telling her how he lost Jess, how no spell could’ve helped her stay. On his verge of tears, he delivered the moral of the story: a living soulmate is better than a dead one, even if they end up worlds apart.

He told her that she was lucky enough, and that she had to move on, because such is life. Miraculously, she listened.

Afterward, he took a reluctant, quick shower and went to bed straight away. Dinner was pointless when you couldn’t distinguish hunger from some remote, lingering ache of sorrow. Lying flat, he counted the bumps on the ceiling as the last few cicadas buzzed against his window, surrendering the remains of their lives to the rosy darling of sunset.

“You had a bad day,” Lucifer observed. Sam had no idea when he fell asleep, but he didn’t truly feel tired. He was weary enough to let the cracks show, though.

“You’re one to say,” he muttered.

“Why, Sam?” he cocked his head in a way that reminded Sam of Castiel in his unbending mood. “I didn’t do anything.” He added before Sam could explode at how absolutely, disgustingly wrong it was, “Today.”

This might or might not be a trap, so Sam kept his mouth shut. Lucifer puffed, even though he didn’t need air. “You have something on your mind.”

“Are you reading my mind?” he made sure to throw the query out with as much bile as possible.

“No,” the Devil said flatly. “I’d ask first. You just seem… more tense than usual.”

“Stop pretending that you care,” he scoffed, brushing past the implication that the Devil wanted—not needed—his consent.

Lucifer didn’t jump at that, just as Sam figured. He sat—or appeared to sit—in the chair at the other side of the room, his hands folded neatly on his knees. “I don’t pretend, Sam. Not in front of you.”

Sam hissed out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, right.”

Silence thickened above their heads, humid air straining to hold it, until it threatened to snap at any moment. “Do you want to talk about it?” Lucifer finally asked, tone cautious.

He should ask him to go away like the other night, and deep down, Sam knew the Devil would listen. But that distant sense of ache in his stomach was now crying, gnawing for catharsis. The bitter irony was this: Sam could also foresee how this would go—there’s nothing more therapeutic than confiding his woes in the entity who caused them all.

In a lapse of judgement, he briefly recounted the succubus’s story, scanning for Lucifer’s every micro-expression. He was disappointed that the Devil wore neither sympathy for him to mock nor disdain for him to mock harder.

He seemed… neutral, and a little bit confused. His reply carried genuine puzzlement and gave weight to Sam’s suspicion that he’s talking to a brick wall. “But you solved the case. What’s there to lament?”

The laughter that came out of Sam stung his throat, his pulse spiking. He shot up from the bed, glaring down at the Devil, and hands trembling as he growled, “You can never get it, can you? Not about loss. Not about soulmates.”

Something tender and broken flickered across Lucifer’s face. It’s so raw, so bare that Sam would’ve looked away if he were not livid with rage, if he were not feeling so full of life for the first time in weeks. But then, Lucifer’s mouth tightened before he spoke. His knuckles whitened as he clasped his hands together.

“I can. I lost Michael. I lost most of my siblings in the War.” A pause, heavy as if soaked in tar. “And I do have a soulmate.”

Sam’s breath hitched, heart pounding loud beneath the word written on his chest— Solitude. He blurted out, “Cas only mentioned that angels after your Fall don’t bear soul marks, but not what it was like… before.”

Lucifer unclasped his fingers, curling them loosely into fists. His gaze slid away. “Back then, Father was experimenting. He thought He could enforce loyalty with the lure of someone worth fighting for—though He soon realized it was not as effective as making Him the only one worth dying for.”

His voice thinned, but his words were clear as day. “I was the first, and the last angel with a soul mark.”

Lucifer then raised his eyes to meet Sam’s, an expanse of clean-cut, icy blue caught under the dim light of the desk lamp. The hunter inhaled, gulping, before he realized it. The air was cold, nearly freezing around him.

“What does your mark say?” he asked on impulse, voice trembling, before he forced a scoff over it. “Glory? Power—Or just apathy?”

The Devil shook his head. “I can show you if you’d like.”

Sam’s fight or flight instinct blared in his head, and he, out of sheer stupidity and obstinacy, nodded curtly.

It was quiet at first. Then, the whole form of Lucifer shimmered, countless glowing spheres bursting free of his vessel to envelope Sam, screaming in an unfathomable tongue that was weirdly comforting to his ears. Each syllable was vibrating in his bones. He lost sight of his body in the process, but he didn’t fear, for he could hear every color flowing in and out of the crevice between being and void, in the form of threads of light.

And it was spectacular. The colors arched into a bridge, brighter than rainbow or any wonder to the naked eye, tempting him to cross over it toward what had never been. When he took a tentative step forward, though, something—no, someone—held him from behind into an embrace that smelled like ash and dust, anchoring him in place.

Amid the taste of sulfur on his tongue and the crisp wind under his nostrils, that profound language was scraped off by some unseen force, layer by layer, until only a few Enochian words remained. They were bell-like, congregating in one truth and echoing in his blood—

They said, Sam Winchester.

The echo soon faded like meteor showers burning out, but the pulse in his veins was still here, real and intimate. Sam’s throat went dry. For a long, suffocating moment, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

Then, in a whisper low enough to be indistinguishable to human ear, he pleaded, “Let me out of here.”

And in silence, they returned to that motel room, with Lucifer’s hands clenching the armrests tight and Sam staggering, fighting to steady himself.

“Why didn’t you say anything? About this.” he asked quietly, unsure of his wording.

“Because you never asked,” Lucifer rasped. “Because I know my name isn’t on your chest, or else you’d say something. And what could I possibly tell you, Sam?” He sounded tired all of a sudden. “That my soulmate has always been you? Before, during, and after my Fall? That it was all God’s plan to make me love mankind as I love my brothers…”

As if being sucker-punched, Lucifer shut his eyes in visible pain. “Or that, after spending eons in the Cage, I still yearned to be accepted by you, even before you were born?”

Sam was stuttering when he finally managed, “I… I still won’t say yes.”

“That’s not why I showed you my soul mark.” Irritated, Lucifer snapped open his eyes and pushed to his feet. “I should leave.”

“You can,” Sam said, trying his best to not sound desperate. “But I’m not asking you to.”

“You’ll regret it if I stay any longer.” That was the last sentence out of Lucifer’s mouth before he vanished into thin air, which was already warming by the second.

——

The third time comes without warning, after several long, dreamless nights where Lucifer didn’t show. The emptiness left Sam tossing and turning on his bed until darkness claimed him—out of pity, perhaps, if something so divine still exists.

Sam’s still trying to rationalize his self-inflicted insomnia when somebody knocks on the door of his makeshift safehouse, the rattling urgent and erratic. He jerks his head up, sliding his knife into the holster in one smooth move before making his way to the door in soundless strides.

He opens it immediately after a quick glance at the peep hole, and a bleeding, feeble Lucifer falls into his arms.

“Jesus.” Sam exclaims, the word slipping out before he catches the irony. He kicks the door shut with his heel and maneuvers the Devil onto the nearest couch. It doesn’t take much effort, since he weighs no more than a man Sam’s size. “Can you talk? What happened to you?”

A few seconds pass, and Lucifer’s still panting. Sam suppresses the urge to simply strip him and manually locate the wounds on his vessel. He’s already noted a few cuts on Lucifer’s forehead, barely scratches by Winchester standards. “If you can speak, at least tell me where it hurts.”

“Both arms,” he hisses at last, voice coarse.

“Wait here.” Sam orders and sprints for the first aid kit in the bathroom. When he returns, Lucifer’s eyes are half-lidded, his breaths uneven.

“Lucifer?” he calls out the Devil’s name, uncertain with his next sentence. “Can you hear me?”

Those blue irises find him again, bloodshot but steady. “I’m here, Sam.”

The hunter clears his throat. “I’m going to cut off your sleeves and examine the wounds. Don’t move.”

Lucifer, of all beings, yields and lets him do it all without a word, his eyes intent on Sam’s practiced, deliberate moves. Sam tries to not squirm under his unabashed stare and manages to hold himself. Then, a low, throaty groan escapes Lucifer as the disinfectants bite into his scarred skin, and Sam’s fingers twitch inadvertently.

Cornered in some dark place at the back of his mind, Sam flushes with restless urge and grim satisfaction.

“These are all surface injuries,” Sam declares after finishing the work at hand and setting the kit aside. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”

“That sounds… good.” Lucifer says, involuntary tears welling and spilling at the corners of his eyes.

“So, uh.” Sam grimaces at the blood stains on Lucifer’s arms and the couch. “Who hurt you? Why aren’t you healing already?”

The sudden flash of red in the Devil’s eyes forebodes a storm that never comes. “Someone stole my grace—most of it—while using shards of the archangel blade to strike me. I don’t know who.”

Sam swallows, and alas, aren’t humans contradictory creatures! He’s relieved and concerned at the same time, for them both. “And you came to me? You didn’t think I’d strangle you to death in this state?”

A smile, almost gentle, pulls at Lucifer’s lips. He doesn’t answer the question, though. “I need… slumber. To reenergize. Let’s talk later.” It’s all that he says.

And this time, Sam’s the one watching him sleep, chest rising and falling like a human’s. His long lashes flutter as he frowns, wrinkling his nose like some teenage boy.

Amid the cicadas’ chirps that are withering away, Sam wonders where his vessel ends and Lucifer begins.

Chapter Text

Sam’s typing on his laptop in an all-consuming passion when the Devil grunts and stirs awake. He hesitates for a split second, then reluctantly aborts the task at hand and glances back at the other presence. The cuts on his forehead have closed. Given the way he peels back the gauze and reveals his porcelain skin underneath without even blinking, he’s fully healed now.

Aside from the blood smeared across the couch, the only remnant of his earlier encounter is the red veining in his eyes, already fading. Now, those eyes have reoriented themselves from his unblemished arms to Sam’s face, with such focus and something raw, resembling hunger. Sam’s only holding the stare to assure himself it’s real.

“How long have I been out?” Lucifer asks, swooshing to his side. The sharp scent of cedar trails after him, laced with a touch of ozone. Absentmindedly, Sam wonders if he’s always smelled like this. More importantly, he wonders why the Devil’s proximity, though unnerving, isn’t uncomfortable.

He’s sure he won’t get either answer when he replies, “Five and a half hours. Humanity still exists.”

“Ah,” Lucifer says, not even lifting an eyebrow. He then leans in, peering at the screen with vague, passing interest. “What were you doing?”

Sam snaps his laptop shut, perhaps too roughly for that poor thing, the sound cracking through the air. “We’re not playing house here. Tell me what happened; you said you’d talk.”

“I can show you instead,” Lucifer raises both arms the way preachers do, only to glance down at the gore stiffening his shirt, the sleeves crudely cut away. He winces, drops his hands, and exhales through his nose. “It’d be more direct.”

Sam licks his lower lip, eyes flickering to gauge Lucifer’s casual posture. He doesn’t know which bothers him more: that his previous glimpse at Lucifer’s soul mark still haunts him, or that he trusts the Devil, however implicitly, when he promises not to lie.

Dean would’ve thrown a fit at his gullibility, but Dean isn’t here, for better or worse. Yet the guilt remains when Sam agrees to enter the Devil’s head once more—the nagging, dull ache never fully diminished since Ruby’s death.

That pain fades momentarily as a primordial curiosity takes root in Sam’s mind. He watches through Lucifer’s eyes at the mist pressing close around him. Under his feet, grass blades beaded with dew gleam in a fir-green sheen. The sun’s almost gone in the distance, an obscure sphere sinking behind the veil of thick fog. Its last streaks of white and gold collapse into pallor, radiance washed away.

In his vision, Lucifer moves deeper into the forest under a sky bruising into indigo, each step weighted and measured. He follows the pulse of energy. The closer he draws, the stronger that scorched scent becomes. Static gathers in the air, crackling aggressively, and the space itself seems to warp, moonlight refracted as through a prism. When he halts, a gale bursts against him, tinged with desolation and cold, implacable order that send a chill down Sam’s spine.

Lucifer parts his lips and calls out not in word but in light, while something bitter and acrid festers under the calm façade: “Michael.”

Nothing answers him. His surroundings carry only the resonance of his own voice, low and deep. He frowns, so does Sam. Then the echoes become elusive, distorted even, before giving way to a wave of eerie wail. The ground Lucifer steps upon fractures, and instantaneously, its cracks unfurl into a bizarre, otherworldly symbol, radiating outward from his stance.

San’s first instinct is to cry out, urging him to fly, because it reeks of a trap. Then he recalls: this had all happened. And this is the Devil he’s trying to save. So, he quietly retreats to a corner behind Lucifer’s unrelenting eyes, feeling the immovable gravity of the other’s inward gaze pressing onto his very existence.

Sam imagines mouthing “what”. Lucifer’s silhouette simply shrugs and thrusts them back to the vision. There, the Devil’s already rising in midair in a bid to teleport, yet bursts of light arise from the symbol, thick and scarlet like spilled blood. They extend into curtains, then unravel into countless strings. Seizing the moment of surprise, they climb up on Lucifer’s vessel, twining and binding him in place.

When the strings begin to siphon off his grace, the shriek Lucifer emanates is nothing Sam has heard before—like the lament of a solitary, migrating bird; like the battle cry of a warrior sworn to die.

Just as Lucifer strains to break free, hundreds of shards—his subconscious reminds Sam they all belong to an archangel blade—hurtle toward his chest, the most fragile point of his grace. He curls in on himself, arms shielding his front, while the scarlet threads continue sucking on his grace. They only withdraw once sated, slithering back into the earth like blood-swollen leeches.

In the human world, all of it lasts no more than a few seconds, and the vision ends there.

“I was torn between escape and defense, being impaled and being depleted. The cruelest joke? None of the shards delivered a killing blow, yet I was bracing for one,” Lucifer mutters.

Still dazed, Sam shakes his head through the fog deep in his mind. He grips the edge of the desk to ground himself. “That’s not a joke; it’s called survival instinct.” He tilts his head and meets Lucifer’s inquisitory gaze. He sighs. “Semantics aside. So, you sensed Michael, wanted to have your ‘one-on-one’, and walked right into a trap?”

Lucifer gives a solemn nod. “Someone replicated my brother’s essence flawlessly. That alone surprises me.”

The hunter bites the inside of his lip, voice low. “And it never crossed your mind that it’s actually Michael, or at least done under his command?”

The Devil’s tone drops, cutting and dangerous. “Michael would never lurk in shadows. He’d look me in the eye if he wanted me dead.”

“Right…” Sam flips his laptop open and starts typing. “That does make sense. He wants you gone, but you’re still standing. What I can’t figure out,” his brows furrow. “Is why the red threads didn’t finish you off.”

The words hang heavy between them, and Sam instantly wishes he’d phrased it differently. Lucifer, however, only narrows his eyes in thought, oblivious to any undertone.

Sam leans back in his chair, fingers drumming on the keyboard as he resumes his search. A handful of arcane forums are still open on the screen, along with a Word document where he outlines the common themes among the piecemeal information. An encrypted digital library webpage blinks beside them, its search history marked with phrases like “archangel bleeding”, “archangel blade”, and “grace disappearance”.

“You’re seriously googling this?” Lucifer drawls from the side. “The internet? You think it knows something I don’t?”

Sam exhales to hide a flicker of amusement, then ignores him and types “archangel trap”. The half-corrupted pages of the library site stutter and load in fragments, and he scrolls on.

For all his condescension, Lucifer stays quiet, too quiet to distract him even with the foreboding aura he sends forth.

The pages glitch as they falter, columns of texts breaking apart with missing characters, and Sam knows this is going to be a long, arduous ride. Hours and two energy drinks later, he scrolls upon a thread header that stabilizes long enough to catch his eye: “The Echo Trap: Lost Applications of Resonance Bait”.

Its entry is brief and incomplete, like a torn manuscript scored with scratches.

“…developed in late Heaven as a countermeasure… by replicating the essence of a known angel of any rank within the celestial hierarchy… target approaches willingly… sigil fractures into concentric lines… extraction of grace occurs through reflective feedback, irreversible unless the culprit dies…”

In the margins of corrupted code, one footnote remains intact:

“Last recorded usage resulted in complete depletion of high-order grace. Considered forbidden. Ritual lost with purging of heretical sect within Heaven.”

Sam leans closer, jaw tightening. Despite the fragmentation, it lines disturbingly well with what Lucifer showed him.

“I might have found it.” Sam looks sideways at Lucifer, neck cracking. He doesn’t know when, but the Devil has already slipped into clean clothes while he was searching.

Lucifer comes forward, his chin almost brushing against Sam’s shoulder, and the hunter forces himself not to flinch. He glances at the screen and scoffs, a faint crease between his brows. “Even if this is true and not some apocrypha written by men, it offers no substantive clue regarding who might have done it.”

“So you’re saying, after all these efforts, we’re back to square one,” Sam hisses, agitation leaking through his restraint.

“I don’t mean to provoke you,” Lucifer replies evenly. “And I do appreciate your time. Considering how precious it is to humans.”

Sam’s about to retort when the windows shudder as if through a passing wind, though the night outside is dead and still. On instinct, he rises, shoulders taut because his knife lies abandoned on the end table beside the blood-drenched couch. Lucifer also turns, expression composed and determined.

A rustle of wings, sharper than breath, breaks the silence. Anna’s standing next to the end table, her fingertips touching and shielding the runed knife from the front, perhaps on purpose. Her face is unreadable, presence unmistakable.

“Square one is farther than you think,” she says in a crystalline voice. “The whole future of Apocalypse is lost; I can’t see any of it in my visions. I come to you for clarity.”

This sounds bad, because the unknown is sometimes more terrifying than the inevitable. Sam swallows. “How did you find me? This whole place is warded.” The words slip out before he realizes he’s never asked Lucifer the same—and that’s a fair question, since grace-wise, he’s no longer on the level of an archangel.

“Patterns, legwork, investigating. I was a journalism major after all,” Anna quirks her lips ever so slightly, but the mirth doesn’t reach her eyes. She stares at Lucifer’s unamused face, then presses her lips into a thin line. “You can’t fight Michael like this,” she states.

“Let me put this straight: are you friend or foe?” Sam gets the words out before Lucifer can.

“I want to end the Apocalypse and save humanity, no matter the cost. The rest is for you,” she fixes her eyes onto Sam’s, unblinking. “To decide.”

“Great, that’s one commonality between us,” he mutters.

“But you’re helping him,” Anna turns back to face the blood stains and frowns. “You should’ve left him to bleed.”

Lucifer stretches out a hand, tone smooth. “What’s your name, sister?”

“Anael,” she replies, body tense, fingers flexing by her sides.

“Anael,” Lucifer chews the syllables over on his tongue, repeating slowly. “Know this, Anael: when I regain my grace, I will tear you apart mercilessly. Death will be long and bitter.”

Anna sneers, and the air around her seems to hum. Sam jumps in before she opens her mouth, “Let’s not rush to killing potential allies, ok? Anna—Anael…”

“Call me Anna if you want,” she says flatly.

“Ok, Anna. Lucifer’s lost most of his grace, and we don’t know who did it. Isn’t it more dangerous in the hand of a third party, given how deadly it is? Can you help us find out the truth?” A beat passes before Sam adds, voice steadier than his feeling, “Say your price.”

She doesn’t answer right away, but the vibration in the air ebbs as she studies both of them, expression stern. Finally, she says, “I don’t care about what you think you can offer. I just want to end the Apocalypse before it consumes everything.”

Sam exhales. “Then it’s clear we’re on the same page. If someone stole grace powerful enough to cripple him, they could use it to accelerate the Rapture.”

Lucifer’s lips curl into a humorless smile. “Or wield it against Michael and other archangels. To play God.” His gaze chases after her, sharp like a blade. “I suppose you’d prefer an absent Father to a thief.”

Anna doesn’t flinch under his barb. She steps forward and narrows her eyes at the screen—close enough to mimic a human squinting at the fractured script, far enough to avoid Sam’s personal space. Or Lucifer’s, if that matters.

Her voice drops, low and careful. “The Echo Trap. I should’ve guessed.”

Sam’s temple throbs. “So it’s real.”

“Yes,” she says, expression severe. Slowly, she turns to the Devil. “Lucifer, you wouldn’t know. It was designed after your Fall. A sect rose up in Heaven, clinging to your early creed—resistance as balance, questioning as order. They twisted it into heresy and built this. A lure, an imitation resonance. Angels walked willingly into their snares, thinking they’ve found kin, and their grace was ripped out. It was their way to keep power in check.”

Lucifer furrows his brows, the first crack in his poise. “You’re telling me Heaven harbored heretics in my name? And they built this?” Anna nods, not blinking.

Lucifer lets out a hollow laugh. “Heaven purged them, I take it.”

“Every last trace.” She draws in a shallow breath. “I helped. Burned their names, their works, their voices. But ideas are harder to burn than bodies. Apparently, someone dug this up.”

Sam swallows, unsettled. He turns to look into Lucifer’s eyes, catching the glimmer of dark amusement. “So, the same weapon they used to chain God’s angels… is being used now. On you.”

“I’m well aware of the irony here, Sam,” Lucifer says, glaring at the space between him and Anna. “Tell me, sister. Do you still consider yourself above me, when your hands drip with the blood of so many of your own?”

She breathes out unevenly. “We’re not the same, Lucifer. I paid my price—I stripped my grace away and fell. And yet, I was forced whole again, because of the catastrophe you’re responsible for.”

“And I didn’t pay?” Lucifer’s voice rises, his eyes flaring crimson. “I was locked in the Cage, nothing but failure and fear for company—for eons. The cruelest punishment isn’t hellfire or torture. It’s eternal solitude, knowing I might never see my soulmate before his soul ascends to Heaven.”

Realization flashes across Anna’s face when she glances at Sam out the corner of her eye. The hunter winces internally. “But you’re here now,” she says, voice strained. “I, on the other hand, can never go back to the family that raised me.”

“Guys,” Sam lifts both arms and waves. “There’s no point in this competition. How about we focus on the work at hand? Anna, since you’re good at this—why don’t we go investigating the crime scene? I mean, where Lucifer’s grace was stolen.”

“You should rest first, Sam,” Lucifer’s gaze slides to him from the side, softer but still edged. “You’ve been working this whole time.”

The hunter simply points to the empty cans of his energy drink. “I’m still wired, only need to use the bathroom. We should act now, the sooner the better.” Then, he meets Anna’s gaze, now fully turned to his direction. “Are you in?”

The angel’s lips tremble. Her eyes linger between Sam and Lucifer. Then she straightens her back, fiery and untamed. “Tell me where it happened.”

——

Teleportation leaves Sam reeling. Before he notices it, he’s lowering himself to the ground and retching, the coughs bad enough to render his chest tingling.

“Let me heal you,” Lucifer offers, fingers already reaching down like a shadow. Through the blur of tears, sweat, and spit, Sam forces out, “Save it for later. I’m fine, just need a moment.”

“You sure about this?” Anna asks, casting her eyes sideways over him. Measured, but not unkind. “Let me know if you need help. I may have more grace to spare.”

Sam gives her a thumbs-up with no words. Not yet. On shaky legs, he steadies himself and inhales cautiously. The crisp, cold air passing through the depth of forest cuts down his nausea, despite the moisture it carries.

Once the dark spots behind his eyes begin to fade, he takes in their surroundings. According to Lucifer, they’re near the Czech Republic’s border, a place littered with derelict cloisters and churches—raised from the Middle Ages, abandoned after the fall of the Hapsburgs. Even here, deep in the forest, broken arches and scattered rubble mark the land. He can’t read the dialects carved into those weathered pillars, but the remnants are plain enough under the faint light of impending dawn: power, death, and faith.

Anna crouches, pressing her hand against the seemingly ordinary ground. The dim glow in her eyes betrays something Sam can’t pinpoint. “I can feel it,” she says quietly. “The Echo Trap’s residue. It’s gone, but its vestige is strong enough to linger.”

“Gone where?” Sam asks, impatience edging his voice.

“Can you feel your grace?” Anna rises to her feet, her gaze sweeping across Lucifer’s thoughtful face.

He frowns. “No, not here. It’s either stored away or sealed with sigils even I can’t detect.”

“If it’s the latter,” Anna muses. “Then it’s both good and bad news. We might be standing right on top of it, but we’d need creatures most sensitive to angelic grace to uncover its location.”

That’s when a new voice cuts in, drifting from the lush woods, sharp and hesitant all at once: “Like demons?”

Sam jerks around, hand flying to the knife at his belt. Then his eyes widen, heart palpitating. From between the ruins steps Ruby, her face pale and wary, as if she can’t quite believe she’s here.

Anna’s hand tightens at her side, grace sparking faintly around her fingers. “Ruby?” she calls out, tone flat but with the barest hint of softness beneath it.

“Ah. The demon who helped crack open my Cage,” Lucifer inclines his head in her direction, before fixing his gaze on Sam, expression inscrutable. The hunter’s visibly shuddering, emotions swirling in his head, tangling too fast to name. On the surface, though, it isn’t anger that rises first; it’s guilt—cold, bitter, and heavy.

When his throat works, he’s clenching his teeth. “Ruby… how are you even here?”

“I don’t know,” the usual smirk on her face is replaced by a self-mocking scoff. “One second, there was nothing; the void had claimed me. The next, I was awake, in the forest, wandering… until I heard you.”

“She’s not lying,” Anna’s irises flare with grace, austere and incorruptible. “Her core is intact but full of cracks, like broken pieces forced back together. And it doesn’t look like Hell’s behind it.”

There’s no such thing as coincidence. Sam swallows hard. “What are you going to do now?” he grits his teeth. “The Devil’s already unleashed.” Beside him, Lucifer doesn’t move. His presence is grave like stone.

Ruby’s lips twitch into a knowing, fragile smile. She stares squarely at him far too long for his comfort. “I’ll find a new purpose, then.” She steps out of the shadow completely, her gaze flicking to the knife clenched in his hand. “For now, it’s survival.”

Chapter Text

The demon squints at her surroundings, inhales sharply, and speaks in a tone careful not to trespass too far.  “You said you wanted to examine the presence of angelic grace, sealed or not. No one’s better at this than a demon, the natural opposite of angels. And I sense none of it in the forest.” 

Her eyes dart to Anna, a flicker of nostalgia glinting in them, then slide to Lucifer. “Beside yours.” 

Sam shakes his head, still dazzled by her sudden reappearance. “We’re supposed to just believe you?” He only realizes he’s stepped too close when Lucifer’s hand clamps onto his shoulder from behind. The weight stops him mid-stride, knife tip angled upward, his breath coming hard. He doesn’t bother shaking the Devil off. 

“Funny how you trust him but not me,” Ruby remarks, steely glee threading through her grin. “Is it because he’s weakened? Most of him is gone, and the air’s hollow because of it. Oh, if you put two and two together…” She glances back at Sam, smile turning sardonic, deliberate. “Could it be it’s his grace that got stripped away?”

Lucifer lets his hand drop away, voice low and dangerous, his words scraping the damp air. “I can still kill you with a snap.”

Ruby’s lips quiver into something like compliance. Whether it’s from fear or fatigue, Sam can’t tell. Her voice is small but steady. “Of course, boss. Sam, you know I don’t do coincidences either. Me being here complicates things regardless of our history. All the more reason not to leave me alone.”

Sam almost laughs, a dry, humorless, and coarse sound. His throat is tight when he answers, “So, protecting you is our best option? From where I stand, the most efficient way to solve this problem is to wipe you out of existence.”

She exhales. “I’m trying to stop you from doing that, by offering help willingly. Distrust me if you must. Make use of me, but don’t kill me.”

“Ruby.” The demon winces as Anna’s frown cuts through her like a blade. Her voice is cold and official. “Your betrayal of the Winchesters is known across Heaven, Earth, and Hell. How do we make sure you won’t betray us?”

Her smile is wry when she replies, stressing each sentence. “There’s a curse among demons. It binds two cores together. Break the promise, and the binder ends you with a thought.” Her gaze sweeps past the three of them, calculating. “You don’t even need to snap your fingers.”

“Killing you won’t fix what’s been broken,” Sam declares his verdict, unmoved.

“Well, then we enter an impasse,” Ruby says, voice level. “You know I could be helpful…”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he warns. For a heartbeat, his mind narrows to a single, obvious option: drive her own knife through her vessel’s heart, again. The image is brutal in its simplicity—clean, final, merciful in a way. He can feel the pull of that neat solution like gravity.

And then a colder logic claws up behind it: the biggest variable among them isn’t Ruby; it’s Lucifer. Kill him—remove one king from the board and present him as a peace offering to Michael—the chain that leads to Apocalypse might be broken.

He feels the contradiction before he can name it. The answer he hides from everyone, even himself, is a small, shameful one: some part of him shrinks from that finality when the face beneath the vessel is Lucifer’s. He doesn't want to be the hand that ends him.

“So make a choice,” Ruby says, pulling him back from his thought. Her eyes move over them again, sharper this time. “Kill me, or let me in.”

——

The binding ritual, in theory, is rather simple for those inhabiting vessels. Each party offers a drop of blood, speaks their true name, and the binder recites a long, archaic passage to seal the bond. Ruby, of course, lacks the text, but that last step can be substituted by the verbal affirmation of an overseer higher in the hierarchy than both.

By all accounts, only one arrangement makes sense. Lucifer, as both archangel and the Devil, will oversee. Anna will bind. And Sam—despite Anna’s reassurance that, by design, no harm shall touch her through this rite—stands watch, every sense heightened.

That is how he finds himself cutting Ruby’s index finger with the runed blade, his hand unsteady, his brows furrowed. She smirks at the sting. A bead swells, dark red, thick and metallic, carrying a scent too sweet to ignore. Sam exhales and withdraws, almost stumbling until Lucifer’s hand grabs him at the elbow. Neither of them mentions it.

Anna, expression solemn, taps her own hand; a bright red drop wells up like glass. She brings it beneath Ruby’s finger, so their blood mingles in a shallow pool. They chant their names in turn, and then Lucifer’s voice reverberates, guttural and layered, as though the forest itself announces: “I hereby affirm the binder, Anael, and the bound, Ruby, to be one and whole, until the dusk of time.”

It sounds uncomfortably like another kind of vow, Sam thinks to himself. He observes as the mingled blood shapes itself into an infinity sign on Anna’s palm with a pinkish faint glow, only to vanish without a trace.

Ruby sighs, too long for comfort. “Careful now, beauty.” She flashes a grin at Anna, all white teeth. “Every step you take, you’re treading on my life.” The angel only inclines her head, quiet and unreadable. The silence stretches, taut like wire.

“What now?” Sam breaks it at last, shoving Ruby’s knife—now his—back into its holster. His thumb caresses the hilt before he casts a sidelong look at Lucifer. “If we are to believe her… then your grace isn’t here anymore.”

“I do sense something that’s not spilled angelic grace,” Ruby cuts in, narrowing her eyes and pointing vaguely westward. “Footprints in the air, angel’s. A trail of crumbs leading about twenty miles off—nearest town, I’d wager.”

Sam freezes, then stares at her. “You mean you noticed what they didn’t?” His gaze sharpens; if it could kill, she’d have dropped dead a thousand times already.

“It’s sealed to them,” Ruby rolls her eyes. “But it can’t be sealed from demons. The deer always knows when the cheetah’s nearby. Whether he outruns him, that’s another question.”

Lucifer taps his chin, musing. “Let’s look at that town. Worst case, it’s another trap.” His eyes flash crimson for the barest instant before returning to their usual icy blue. He looks into Sam’s eyes, his gaze tinged with reverent gentleness. “Once we are there, pray to Castiel if you must. He’s rather fond of you. Still, we should prepare for the worst.”

Sam startles at the blunt certainty in his voice and the unexpected softness in his eyes, which feels like resolution. He blurts out, “Well, I bet Cas is busy right now, guarding his favorite human.”

Lucifer arches a brow, unamused but calm. “Angels shouldn’t play favorites. Though I must admit, I broke that rule first.”

And if Sam tells himself the warmth creeping up his neck is nothing but the sun edging over the horizon, he knows he’s lying.

——

They reach the town of Temnov* at first light, when the last breaths of summer already carry the chill of fall. Fog clings low to the streets, damp and silver, unraveling slowly as the sun climbs over the hills. Its pale gold brushes across rusted rooftops and the soaring yet slightly tilted spire of the church, painting decay in fleeting beauty.

The air smells of wet earth and iron. A few leaves, already yellowed, scurry across the cracked pavement in the breeze. From somewhere deep in the woods comes the distant call of crows, stretched thin by the cold morning air.

Still recovering from the dizziness caused by teleportation, Sam pulls his jacket tighter around himself, the weight of his knife a familiar comfort by his side. Lucifer walks unhurried beside him, eyes lifted to the sky splintered by dawn, unmoored by this quiet town.

“There,” Ruby calls from behind. Sam turns, body tense, as she points toward the tilted spire a block away. “That’s their last stop before they teleported off.”

“Wonderful,” Sam mutters. “A church, for us bunch. And I don’t speak Czech.”

Lucifer nudges his arm, voice almost casual. “I can translate for you. Or, if you’d prefer, I could share my understanding of their language with you, for as long as we remain here.”

His invitation tugs at him, a pull between caution and something deeper, something he can’t quite name. It’s like the tide against jagged rocks and amid roaring waves. Curiosity swells, and his yearning to glimpse the world through Lucifer’s eyes tastes dangerously close to addiction. “...Sure,” he hears himself say, a little too quickly. “Why not. It’d be more efficient.”

Anna’s sharp intake of breath is drowned out by Ruby’s derisive snort when Lucifer lifts a hand, fingertips cool and steady against Sam’s forehead. For a heartbeat, nothing changes—no flash, no surge of power. Sam almost feels disappointed.

“We can go now,” Lucifer announces, self-assured. And yet, when Sam blinks at the distant church, the foreign script on its notice board rearranges itself in his mind as if it had always been his mother tongue—no longer symbols, but words that slot harmoniously into meaning.

It says, “Due to recent events, the Mass is canceled this week.” The phrasing is vague—deliberately so, perhaps. And in a town like this, “recent events” rarely means anything good.

When they reach the church’s front door, it’s already open. An older man in a faded flannel shirt and sturdy boots stands by the gate, wiping it down with a cloth. Keys jangle at his belt, and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow despite the chill.

At the sound of footsteps, he turns abruptly, sizing them up with tired, cautious eyes. “Church’s closed until further notice.”

“Aw, what a bummer. We thought we could take a look inside. Must be so much history.” Sam lifts his brows, visibly dispirited, his Czech now fluent yet softened with the innocence of an American accent. He nods toward the notice board. “Is it because of the ‘recent events’?”

The caretaker squints at him, not entertaining him with an answer. “We don’t usually have tourists here.”

“And we’re not your typical tourists,” Sam explains, an easy smile over his lips. “We’re graduate students in Religious Studies at UChicago. Came all the way from Prague to Temnov to study how Catholicism has survived in border towns since the fall of the Soviets.”

Initially, a trace of age-worn sorrow glimmers in the caretaker’s eyes, as though he’s held more stories than he could ever voice. The next instant, however, he gives a small shake of his head and eyes Sam’s holster suspiciously. “What kind of students carry knives around?”

“We heard of brown bears in the forests here, so we thought, better safe than sorry,” Ruby says from behind him, her voice steady but tinged with the reckless confidence peculiar to young Americans, and Sam hates how easily he can sense her boredom beneath the façade.

That seems to ease the man’s suspicion and even earns a laugh. “Oh, trust me lady, you can’t fight them with a knife. They’ll rip your heart out before you even raise it. And we don’t have brown bears native to this land, not anymore,” he laments. “But if you ever run into one crossing the border from Poland, you’d better play dead and pray.”

For her part, Ruby feigns amusement well. Sam pretends to laugh, too, and from the periphery of his vision he catches Lucifer lift the corner of his mouth. It’s an involuntary little sneer, he thinks, at the absurdity of their cover.

Picking the right moment, Anna comes forward. “Would you mind if we stepped inside? Even without its flock, a church may still tell its own tales.”

The caretaker knits his brows, cloth frozen in midair. He weighs them carefully, gaze moving from Sam’s too-bright smile to Ruby’s subtle amusement and Anna’s calm insistence. Finally, it flicks toward Lucifer’s silent presence, which seems to bend the air around him.

For a long moment, he only breathes in and out, the keys jangling faintly as a tremor runs down his frame. Then he exhales through his nose, as if yielding to some inevitability, and gives a small, reluctant nod. “All right,” he says at last, his voice gravelly. “Come on in, but don’t touch anything you don’t understand.”

——

After five minutes of small talk, Sam has learned three things. First, the caretaker’s name is Janek. He’s in his early sixties, a former technician at the plant in the neighboring town, shut down for at least five years now. Second, his son and daughter-in-law live in Germany, leaving him and his wife alone in what feels like the embodiment of oblivion. Third—and most pertinent to their case—Sam hears about the “recent events.”

Over the past month, people have kept disappearing from town, nine in total so far, a significant number for a place like this, where everyone knows everyone else and most are well past middle age. Each was eventually found by the police in the woods nearby, alive but vacant, stripped of their names and senses of self. They remembered other people just fine, just not who they were.

All nine have since been admitted to the nearest city’s hospital for treatment, but none have shown any sign of improvement. And the only thing they share is that, before vanishing, every one of them attended Sunday Mass here in Temnov.

“Where’s the priest?” Sam asks the first question that comes to mind.

“He lives in the next town and drives here every week to keep the Mass going. Not this week, though. The police warned us it might be dangerous to keep holding it before they find whoever’s behind all this,” Janek replies, brushing a thin layer of dust off the pew at the back.

Sam nods and thanks him before joining the others. New sunlight streams through the tall stained-glass windows painted with saints, gilding the pipe organ above and the pulpit below in soft, warm gold.

While Ruby and Anna busy themselves searching among the ornaments for clues, Lucifer stands silent in the aisle, facing the crucifix. A handful of light, filtering through the colored glass, gathers upon his shoulders, as though the world itself were unfolding outward from that point. Sam finds himself staring at his back, momentarily dazed.

Then Lucifer turns, his gaze calm yet unreadably layered. “To Him, he was the better son,” he says quietly in English.

Sam stares at him for a long, long time, his chest tightening for no reason he can name. The burn of the word Solitude over his heart flares to life. He opens his mouth but finds nothing to say. At this instant, all languages are pale, all words meaningless, for them both.

Lucifer holds his gaze, unyielding to the fire in Sam’s eyes, yet accepting the silence between them.

“Sam, over here,” Anna calls from his left, breaking the trance. Only then does he release the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He swallows and forces his legs to move, unsteady beneath him, and Lucifer follows.

Anna and Ruby stand beside the small Lady Altar, both pointing at the candles in front of the Virgin’s statue. A dozen candles were lit recently. presumably just before Janek opened the gate and let them in. Their wax pools beneath Mary’s feet, forming strange concentric rings. On the soot-dark pedestal, crimson lines pulse in and out of visibility, like a living being breathing under stone.

“By the look of it, these resemble the sigils and the red threads that took my grace,” Lucifer observes, locking eyes with Sam. “But they’re weak. Angels won’t be affected. At most, humans exposed to it in long term would suffer distorted dreams and ailments.” He raises his fingers just above the pedestal.

“Don’t touch it!” Janek shouts from behind. “Last time I did, I was down with a nasty fever for days!”

Lucifer touches it anyway. He withdraws his hand only after Janek curses and hurries toward the altar, voice thick with frustration.

“This shouldn’t be here,” Lucifer says calmly, eyes fixed on the faint glow beneath the Virgin’s feet. “Did you tell anyone about it?”

Janek hisses under his breath. “What can I even say? I told the police when they came the first time, but they dismissed it! Said it was just ‘a coincidence’. And you tell me, can wax paint circles like this by chance? Can stone beat like a heart? Everyone figures it’s safer to mind their own business. As for the priest, he and the others call it a manifestation of the Virgin’s tears. A holy blessing.”

“That’s not true.” Anna narrows her eyes, her gaze drifting from the statue’s feet to the gilded cabinet behind the main altar. She turns to Lucifer, then to Ruby. “Can you feel it? Listen—this entire field is resonating with the tabernacle.”

Lucifer gives a solemn nod, while Ruby only shrugs. “Sorry, Christ’s body is one thing that’s off my radar. But this,” she traces a finger along the crimson lines over the stone, earning another curse from Janek. “It definitely smells angel. The church might swallow up their trail like the sea devours a river, but to me, it reeks of bad news.” She winks at Anna. “No offense.”

“You’re not students,” Janek deadpans in broken English, glancing at them one by one with reproachful eyes. None of them flinches. Then, in Czech, he asks, “Who are you?”

Sam doesn’t bother with pretense anymore. He answers earnestly, “We might be your only hope to find out what happened to this town and save those who lost themselves, Janek. If only you could help us first.”

The older man shakes his head in disbelief, but from the way he clenches the cloth tight and doesn’t ask them to leave, he’s hesitating. Which counts as good news by the Winchester standard. So, Sam presses the advantage. “There’s nothing to lose here. Even if we find nothing, you’ve got people who believe you—that something strange is happening in this church.”

Janek looks down at his work-worn hands. He closes his eyes, opens them again, then throws back his head and lets out a snort that breaks the tension. “What do you need?”

“I suppose you don’t have the keys to the tabernacle,” Sam says. The great relief, piled atop his exhaustion from working nonstop, makes him lightheaded. If he notices Lucifer’s unashamedly concerned eyes on him, he mentions none of it. “Can you tell us where the priest lives?” he asks quietly. “We’ll need to talk to him.”

Chapter Text

Before they leave, Sam asks Janek if he can make a call, flashing his puppy eyes with just a little too much effort. The older man hesitates, weighing something invisible in his mind, then relents with a sigh. His hands tremble when he pulls out his old Nokia, but his voice stays steady once the line comes alive.

“Father Tomas? It’s Janek. There’re some graduate students here, from the US, they say. Been studying old parish records, very polite. Yes… Since the church’s closed here, I thought you’d want to speak with them.” He glances at Sam as he speaks, a silent understanding passing between them: some truths are best told later, or never.

When he hangs up, he says, “He’ll be expecting you by noon.”

Sam thanks him, and for a moment, the man almost smiles, as if he believes that whatever they are, they might still be good news. Then a small problem stirs in Sam’s mind. It’s barely seven in the morning. They have time. Too much of it, maybe.

“You said the people who disappeared were found in the woods,” he murmurs, glancing toward the tall windows. Beyond them, the tree line glows faintly through the shifting colors of light. Its shape circumscribes the town from above, barely discernible yet impossibly close.

Janek nods. “Same forest that borders the parish. It used to be sacred. People went there for pilgrimages, but no one does it now.”

A pause. Then Lucifer says, almost idly, “We might as well take a walk.”

Janek leads them to the back of the church and unlocks the iron gate that connects the parish grounds to the forest. “This gate’s usually kept locked,” he explains. “The ones who went missing must’ve come in from the hills nearby.”

“I like shortcuts,” Ruby says brightly, flashing him a grin.

“We’ll take it from here,” Sam adds.

“Be careful, all right?” Janek looks at him, then at the threshold between light and shadow. “I don’t think this town can afford any more accidents.”

Sam gives him a smile meant to reassure, but judging by Janek’s deepening frown, it doesn’t work well. So, he turns and steps into the woods without looking back, the others falling in behind him. Once they’re fully engulfed by the woods, Sam lets them take the lead, searching for whatever might be lurking underneath.

This forest doesn’t feel as claustrophobic as the place where Lucifer lost most of his grace. The trees stand far enough apart for sunlight to spill freely through, laying bright pools on the ground. There’s even a man-made path of stones— its surface weathered, weeds creeping over, yet undeniably real.

In the thin mist, Lucifer’s steps and gaze drift beyond the path, light and unhurried, as if he were dissolving into the grass and trees themselves.

“I don’t get it,” Ruby says, her voice cutting through the morning air that’s slowly warming up. “If something’s wrong with the tabernacle, you could’ve forced it open, easy peasy.”

“And alert the whole town?” Anna glances sideways at her, amused. “To be fair, I quite enjoy the cover of being human.”

“I thought you wanted to solve the case ASAP,” Ruby mutters, though she mirrors Anna’s little smile. Her attention clearly leaves Anna a bit at a loss for words.

“Well… I’d rather think that too much hustle, despite its directness, usually backfires,” Anna says at last. It draws a laugh from Ruby, teasing but harmless, a rare occurrence. The sound hangs for a moment in the warm air before thinning into silence.

They keep walking until the man-made path ends and the road ahead bends, running deeper into the woods—now just a natural trail where the grass has somehow been trampled flat. Lucifer stops. His eyes flick toward a cluster of trees ahead, where the sunlight falters. Even to the naked eye, something glints on the ground—a symbol, patterns half-buried under moss and soil, lines too precise to be roots.

“Stay here,” he tells Sam. “It might be dangerous to humans.”

“Or angels,” Sam blurts out before he realizes what he’s said, but Lucifer is already crouching down, raising a hand cautiously over the patterns. The gesture hangs in the air, his palm hovering just above the earth. Sam watches, brows knitted, mouth parted soundlessly.

“For goodness’ sake,” Ruby mutters, striding to where Lucifer is. She leans over the symbol and touches it with her index finger. The lines flare a bright, blood-red hue, which withers within seconds, and become silent once more.

“It’s safe,” she concludes, straightening up her back. “Just the inactive imprint of a ritual.”

Anna steps closer as well, studying the symbol with careful eyes. Sam gathers himself and follows. He notices that the markings resemble the ones Lucifer showed him in the vision, especially the half-exposed concentric circle on the ground, and the black dot at its center like a watching eye. The sight makes his head spin.

“These lines bear traces of dormant energy, vaguely reminiscent of a used Echo Trap,” Anna observes. “But it feels different somehow—less airy, more tethered to the ground.”

“A mini version?” Sam muses, his skin prickling with goosebumps as a thought takes shape. “A human version?”

Lucifer turns to Anna, his tone even. “Anael, how does one prepare an Echo Trap?”

The angel hesitates, seeming to measure her words. When she finally speaks, her voice carries a quiet ache. “I only aided in the purge and the killing. No one told me about the trap’s mechanism, and I didn’t ask. The only reason I recognize its trace is because I caught someone after they used it... and succeeded. They killed the target when he lost his grace.”

She inhales sharply, forcing a brittle scoff. “And I lost two brothers that very instant.”

Lucifer meets her gaze, calculating. Anna doesn’t look away. Ruby’s eyes flick between them, searching out the unease that hums in the air. They seem locked in a staring contest until Sam interjects, his words steady and deliberate. “It’s too late to ask for specifics. If the grace thief is hiding in Heaven, that’d expose you, Anna. In this war, you… and Ruby might be the only cards we still have face-down.”

“Wait,” Ruby raises her voice, turning to face Sam. “Does your brother’s boyfriend know about the trap, or whatever it is?”

Sam almost laughs at how fast Cas’s name surfaces in his mind. “She means Castiel,” he explains to a bemused Anna. “Who’s definitely not Dean’s boyfriend.” Yet, he thinks.

Anna tilts her head slightly, then shakes it. “I don’t think so. He wasn’t involved in the purge.”

Silence falls again, each of them lost in thought, until Lucifer looks over at Sam. “You’re not ill, are you? I’d hate for these imprints—whether under Mary’s feet or here in the woods—to affect you.”

“I’m fine,” Sam answers in a hushed voice. “Just got a little dizzy when I first saw it here, but I’m good now.”

“Hm,” Lucifer hums, thoughtful.

Desperate to change the subject—for both strategic and emotional reasons—Sam asks quickly, “Can you sense anything unusual? Is this symbol resonating with the church we came from?”

“Once you put it that way…” Anna squints back along the path they took. “Yes! But the echo feels weak. Maybe because of the distance?”

“Or because we’re missing the crucial piece,” Lucifer offers. “Not the church itself—but the tabernacle, and what’s inside.”

“All the more reason to visit our priest,” Ruby continues after him smoothly, already turning toward the light beyond the trees.

——

The town of Dobrav* greets them with the scent of wheat and incense: dry, faintly sweet, lingering in the warm air. One glimpse is enough to show how much brighter and cleaner it is than anything Temnov could offer. Slanted sunlight pools against the whitewashed walls, and rows of flowers line the sidewalks neatly, flaunting the last colors of summer.

Since they still have time—and Lucifer has asked once again, with that thin-edged curiosity of his, whether Sam requires refreshments—he agrees to stop at a diner.

The owner, a quiet middle-aged woman, greets them from behind the counter and gestures for them to sit wherever they like. By the window, they end up with Sam and Lucifer on one side, Anna and Ruby on the other. Truth be told, it’s the least awkward configuration Sam can think of.

Thanks to the Mastercard Bobby shoved into his hand weeks ago, Sam orders a bowl of vegetable soup, some bread, and a side of fried cheese. When the waitress sets the dishes down and asks his companions if they’d like anything, Anna smiles politely. “No, thank you. We’ve already eaten.”

Once the waitress walks away, Anna turns to Ruby, as if suddenly remembering something. “You’re weak,” she says matter-of-factly. “Shouldn’t you eat something?”

The demon looks mildly surprised, though not enough to forget herself. The quick pat she gives the angel’s thigh, and the even quicker withdrawal of her hand, show she still remembers exactly what, and who, she is.

“No need, sweetheart,” Ruby drawls. “What I really need is a blood bag.” Seeing Sam almost choke on his soup, she adds with lazy indifference, “Or time, since I’m apparently on a leash.”

Lucifer rests his chin on his hand, studying Sam from the side. “You don’t eat meat often. Is that guilt, or taste?”

“Neither,” Sam answers between bites. He cuts into the slab of cheese, the crust breaking with a soft crunch to reveal the molten center. It’s nothing like the cold, rubbery sticks Dean used to inhale on the road. “Call it habit.”

“That means it’s both,” the Devil remarks, idly prodding at the edge of the sizzling crust, clearly entertained. “And thus, you humans worship habits better than your gods.”

Tired of this conversation—and maybe the look in those eyes—Sam says the first thing that crosses his mind. “You want a bite?” he asks before he can stop himself. “You’ve never tried human food, have you?”

At that, Lucifer’s gaze drops to the fork in Sam’s hand, as though seriously considering the offer, and Sam knows what’s done is done.

“May I?” he asks at last, raising his eyes to meet Sam’s.

Sam blinks, caught somewhere between disbelief and a shrug, but he offers the fork anyway. The Devil takes it with an absent sort of grace, scoops a piece from the slab, and brings it to his mouth.

He chews slowly, closing his eyes for a heartbeat as if committing the sensation to memory. When he opens them again, his expression is impossible to read—not quite pleasure, not quite confusion.

“Grease, salt, and starch,” he murmurs. “Vulgar. And oddly… comforting.”

Sam doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Lucifer looks up again, a faint curve ghosting across his mouth. He hands the fork back, and Sam takes it with unsteady fingers.

“You see,” Sam says, trying hard to ignore the flutter low in his stomach. “Habits have their own miracles.”

Across the table, Ruby’s smirk falters; the corner of her mouth tightens before she looks away, eyes diverted to the diner’s faded posters. Her fingers drum idly against the table, too steady to be casual.

Anna stays quiet, her gaze unfocused. The faint crease between her brows deepens for a split second, before it’s smoothed away as if it was never there.

Sam finishes what’s left of his meal—fast, clean, deliberate. “I need a bathroom break,” he says, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He gets up and heads toward the back, definitely not wondering what the three of them might say in his absence.

——

As one’d expect, the church in Dobrav is larger and better kept than the one in Temnov. Still, Sam’s caught off guard by its otherworldly elegance while the near-noon sunlight lays bare its tall silhouette and every detail, from the clean lines of the walls to the gilded cross crowning the spire.

Though it isn’t a Mass Day, the church doors stand half open, so they step inside. Before crossing the threshold, Sam adjusts his shirt, making sure this time, the knife holster is at his hip and stays hidden beneath the long fabric.

A few scattered figures sit among the pews, eyes closed in prayer, lips moving soundlessly. In the wavering glow of candlelight, Sam notices a narrow doorway beside the sanctuary leading into what looks like a small hall, maybe an office or living quarters. One of them, he figures, must belong to Father Tomas.

Beside him, Lucifer stops walking. His gaze sweeps over the kneeling and sitting figures, lips curled faintly. It’s not in scorn, but in something quieter. Sam can’t name it, can’t tell if it’s amusement or pity.

Sensing his stare, Lucifer turns his head toward him, one brow lifted in question. Sam jerks his chin toward the doorway on their left, mouthing, “Let’s wait here. Don’t block the aisle.” The Devil only shrugs, but he listens.

A few minutes pass. People drift in and out, offering glances that are curious, not unkind. The attention still prickles at Sam’s back before a man in his forties appears from the doorway. A priest in his robe, hairline receding, eyes calm and kind.

“You must be our guests from across the Atlantic,” he says in English. Seeing Sam nod, he adds gently, “Let’s talk in my office. People are praying here.”

The small room smells of wax and paper, old prayers soaked into the grayish concrete walls. Sunlight filters through colored glass, scattering gold and gray across the crucifix above a wooden table, where a Bible and a stack of sermon notes rest beside a half-empty teacup.

Tomas gestures for them to come in, then closes the door behind him. Not hurriedly, but with quiet precision. The click of the latch sounds louder than it should.

“What can I do for you?” he asks, folding his hands over his stomach. “And how should I address you?”

“I’m Sam. And this is… uh, Luke, Anna, and Ruby.” He catches himself before the awkwardness shows, then goes on evenly, “We’re graduate students in the psychology of religion. We’re studying cases of shared belief and mass suggestion, how faith can shape perception, even when nothing supernatural is involved.”

“Temnov has recently seen devout believers disappear and return... different,” Anna adds. “We heard from Janek that you’re the priest responsible for their Mass, so we thought we might ask for your perspective.”

Tomas nods slowly. “I’ve heard the stories. Some say it’s a test of faith, others—a curse.”

“Or something man-made,” Anna says softly. “We found traces of a sigil at the Lady Altar and in the forest. You wouldn’t know who might’ve drawn it?”

“No.” He answers too quickly, then glances past her toward Lucifer at the back. “You seem unsettled, Luke. Are you all right?”

For a second, Sam panics, afraid Lucifer will blow the whole cover off with a single sneer, though by the look of it, they won’t need the pretense much longer. But the Devil simply answers.

“I’m fine.” His tone is plain, almost disarmingly open. His eyes drift between the crucifix on the wall and the patches of lucid, grayish gold scattered across Tomas’s table. “It’s the light. I’m not used to it.”

Tomas looks baffled for a heartbeat but collects himself before curiosity can show. “Back to your question,” he says, addressing Anna. “The way I see it, it’s a sign of the Virgin’s tears, and nothing’s more healing than that. Though I suppose such an explanation doesn’t fit your project.”

“Those people forgot who they were,” Ruby cuts in, masking her impatience with a spark of excitement. “And you still think it’s a miracle?”

The calm in Tomas’s eyes fades, replaced by a quiet, burning fervor. He draws in a deep breath before speaking, his voice low and measured. “It only shows that they’ve forgotten every earthly pain that once bound them. The Virgin’s tears did their work.”

Sam’s shoulders tighten as he steps forward, meeting Tomas’s gaze. Given what they already know, this is no longer mere faith. It’s evidence that something darker and more sinister is fermenting beneath his piety. “Father, one thing all the victims share is that they attended your Mass and ate the consecrated bread you prepared. That’s not a coincidence, is it?”

Suddenly, Tomas frowns, and the shift in his mood is palpable. His wariness manifests in the small, sharp movements of his body: stepping back, gripping the back of his chair for either balance or defense.

“You’re interrogating me,” he says coldly. “And you don’t even have credentials. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Sam is about to speak, to placate him, when Anna’s voice cuts through the room like thunder: “No.”

“Excuse me…” Tomas starts, but his anger dies on his tongue as Anna comes forward to Sam’s side, her eyes flaring cold blue. Light, soft yet absolute, spills from her body, flooding the room in a surge of blue and ivory. The air trembles and cools despite the sunlight still streaming through. The window’s glass cracks under the pressure.

Mouth agape, Tomas stares past Sam at the wall behind him. The hunter understands what he’s seeing before he turns back.

The shadow of wings stretches across the concrete, cast by Anna’s light: two vast shapes of dark, elegant, sheer beauty. In the small room, her wings have to bend, curling toward the door and the shattered window.

In the next instant, Tomas drops to his knees before her, his words spilling out in a rush, half sob, half litany.

“Praise the Lord! I knew it was an angel!”

“An angel did what?” Anna asks, her tone leaving no room for argument.

“Since last year, I’ve seen things in my dreams—wings, fire, scorched earth. And recently, a light—an angel—spoke to me. Said the Devil walks the Earth again, that Revelation is near, and the pain of nine could bind him.” A dreamy smile tugs at his lips. “Two birds, one stone… it’s perfect.”

“What have you done?” Sam presses, though he already knows the answer.

“The angel said he’d prepared sigils in the church and in the forest. An anchor of angelic energy, a mirror to absorb names. All I had to do was feed the chosen ones wafers he’d consecrated.” Tomas shudders on the edge of ecstasy. “The nine would be freed from sin and pain, and the Devil himself would be restrained.”

Anna draws a sharp breath, retracting her wings but keeping the glare in her eyes. “Tomas, you’ve been deceived. You didn’t cleanse their sin; you stripped away their humanity. And this wasn’t Heaven’s command. I would know.”

Tomas freezes, eyes wide, the color draining from his face. “I thought—”

“Is the ritual reversible?” Anna’s voice trembles, caught between fury and pity. “Will the nine lose themselves forever?”

“The… the angel said it isn’t,” his voice breaks. “Their names have already been converted into a snare to trap the Devil. He promised—he promised!”

Anna lets the light die out, and the office sinks into stillness, broken only by Tomas’s sobs and ragged hiccups. Ruby scoffs under her breath, and Sam doesn’t dare to look at Lucifer. His silence has already made everything feel worse.

After a long moment, the angel turns to him, a mirthless smile curving her lips.

“See, Sam,” she whispers. “This is our square one.”

Chapter Text

Lucifer takes a few easy strides and stops between Sam and the priest. The hunter’s back tingles at the Devil’s frigid anger, pure and unhidden beneath the calm. Under his skin, what remains of his grace vibrates, thin lines of silver and gold threading through the brightness of noon.

He lifts his right hand, stretching it toward Tomas, who’s still kneeling and sobbing, begging for forgiveness. Sam’s hand finds his arm midair. Through the thin layer of cloth, Lucifer’s skin burns cold.

“Please don’t,” Sam murmurs. “Nobody needs to die today.”

“I know, Sam.” Lucifer grits his teeth, eyes still fixed on the priest. “Killing him changes nothing. I’m just trying to read his memories.” He flashes a sneer—all teeth, all grace—and tilts his head. “You wouldn’t mind if I do that, right, Father?”

Clearly, Tomas mistakes him for another regular angel. He lifts his head toward the glowing hand, nodding vigorously through a stream of tears. “Please do… anything to mend my betrayal of Heaven.”

As Sam retrieves his hand, the Devil touches Tomas’s forehead, quick and impersonal. The priest’s mouth twitches, his brows knitted in pain. He closes his eyes promptly, never seeing the red flare flash behind Lucifer’s eyes.

Seconds stretch before the Devil withdraws his hand. Tomas exhales shakily, half in relief.

“He’s not lying,” Lucifer says, frowning. “And the presence in his dreams is of angelic origin. I wonder who would’ve done that.”

Michael’s name rests on the tip of Sam’s tongue, but he swallows it. The priest doesn’t need to know that Heaven’s civil war 2.0 also starts with family.

“So it was an angel after all?” Tomas asks, completely dazed. “But I thought you are—”

“Yes, I am,” Anna cuts in without further explanation, her tone clipped. “But if anyone asks, we’re just naïve grad students.”

Tomas nods and blinks, face pale. “You mean Heaven’s got sects? I thought only humans lived in divided houses after Babel.”

Lucifer’s voice turns silvery, almost bell-like, tasting perilously like temptation. “And what does that tell you about God, Tomas?”

The priest’s knees give out. He collapses onto the ground, and they take it as their cue to leave, but not before Sam asks for the tabernacle key.

“We’ll need to check if the contagion still exists inside the cabinet,” he says quietly. Tomas winces at the words. Hesitating, he reaches into his pocket, takes out a small golden key, and presses it into Sam’s hand.

“If you must look,” he says, voice trembling, “do it when no one’s watching.”

Sam nods once, pocketing the key without a word.

“Turns out I read it wrong,” Ruby remarks once they exit the church. “Temnov isn’t where the angel went—it’s where they stopped after collecting the source materials for the trap from the nine. Their destination was the forest I woke up in all along.”

“At least we know it’s angels,” Anna muses. “Either Michael’s followers or a new force. Both are equally dangerous.”

Sam lets out a long sigh of frustration, brushing a strand of hair from his face. “Then let’s wrap up the case first,” he says. “It makes me feel useful.”

When they get back, Temnov’s streets are still empty, an eerie expanse of dark gray. The church is locked, Janek gone, perhaps for lunch, so they teleport inside and head straight to the Lady Altar.

In tacit agreement, Anna and Lucifer stand on each side of the pedestal and touch the stone. Light swirls from their fingertips in quiet resonance, and the strange pulsation within the altar breaks apart, the concentric lines beneath the Virgin’s feet dissolving into air.

The scent of saline and wax fills the silence between Sam’s breaths. Lucifer turns slowly to him and asks, “Your turn.” The hunter nods briefly and leads the others to the crossroad of light behind the main altar.

He fits the key into the lock and turns it gently until a soft click breaks the stillness. Holding his breath, he withdraws the key and eases the door open. Lifting the small veil behind it, he sees a bed of white linen, and upon it a silver-plated ciborium. Its lid bears a faint cross, worn with years, yet glimmering in the heavy noonlight that fills the church.

“Let me take a look,” Lucifer says, and Sam lifts the veil for him. The Devil leans forward, half his head slipping past the cabinet door, and inhales deeply. When he straightens, he says, “It’s only metal, dust, and the echo of contagion. It should fade with time. The ritual ended with the nine losing themselves.”

Anna walks past them, reaching inside to trace along the ciborium. Her eyes flash blue for a heartbeat. “Yes, the triggers are inert now. But with the right sigil, they could still transmit a signal.”

“Then we’ve only got the one in the woods left,” Ruby calls from a few yards away from the tabernacle, seemingly on edge. “Gotta admit, Hell’s tricks never match Heaven’s for intricacy.” Her remark earns a resigned frown from Anna and a quiet chuckle from Lucifer.

After locking the cabinet, they teleport into the parish woods. The angel and the Devil repeat what they did with the sigil in the church, dissipating the half-buried symbol with ease.

Anna then takes the tabernacle key and swooshes back to Tomas’s office. When she returns, she tells them that Tomas is nowhere to be found in the church, so she left the key on his desk, right beneath the cracked window.

As for Sam, he lingers for a moment in the forest, his eyes on the fading vitality of living green. He understands that once they leave, they’ll be leaving behind nine people who will never answer to the call of their names again.

——

Light and space bend over Sam again, sound pulled tight. The next second sees them back in his safehouse, and they’re not alone. Exhaustion fogs his mind with an urge to simply pass out deep in his bones, but the scene before him is clear as day.

Dean sits on the edge of his desk beside the laptop, his face half-hidden from Sam’s angle. Cas stands guard at the far end of the room, stoic eyes fixed on the couch’s bloodstains. At the faint whoosh of their arrival, both men turn their heads toward them in unison.

Cas is the first to react. His eyes narrow on Lucifer—no, they flicker—as though he’s just tuned to a frequency no one else can hear.

“Dean,” he murmurs, almost too quietly for Sam to catch. Then his voice sharpens: “It’s him.”

Dean’s head snaps toward Sam instead of the Devil, and the air between them tightens instantaneously. Sam can’t tell which burns worse: the disbelief twisting his brother’s face, or the burst of raw, pure anger when Dean jumps off the desk with a loud thud.

“Sammy.” His name is a flammable entity on Dean’s tongue. “Don’t tell me you’re working with him. And why is she here?” He points at a sneering Ruby before closing the distance between them, each step intentionally heavy.

Sam’s voice comes out small, fragile, but firm. “Hi, Dean,” he tries, fingers twitching by his side. “Lucifer’s lost most of his grace. It was stolen by angels, and we’re trying to find out who did it. They might use it for something far worse.”

“Worse than wiping out humanity?” Dean snaps, nostrils flaring. “And your first instinct wasn’t to call us? When Cas told me the blood on your couch belonged to an archangel, I was shocked. I thought you’d killed one. But now it looks like you helped him instead.”

“He never wanted to kill us off, Dean. All he’s ever wanted is to speak to Michael,” Sam parts his lips, forcing the words out, deciding to leave the whole soulmate story out for now. “Of course, I’m not ignoring all the bloodshed done in his name—”

Dean’s now inches away, finger stabbing the air between Sam and an awfully quiet Lucifer. “You believed it? Sam! He’s the Devil; he lies!”

“I would never lie to him,” Lucifer says evenly.

“Could’ve fooled me.” Dean sneers at them both. “Zachariah showed me a vision, where Sam said yes. In that future, you let a virus ruin Earth and drive humanity to the edge of extinction. And you dare to smile at me using my brother’s face.”

Sam’s heartbeat hammers painfully in his chest, but Lucifer’s tone remains calm. “Ah, Zachariah. Sounds like the name of a fanatic. And you’re sure that wasn’t a distortion of truth? He forced you to say yes to Michael with that vision, didn’t he?”

“You’re full of shit—” Dean fumes, turning fully on Lucifer, who only looks amused as the hunter reaches for his collar.

“Dean.” Cas’s voice cuts through the room, quiet but carrying the kind of pressure that makes the air tremble around him. It halts Dean mid-move. The older hunter looks back, eyes pained, as the angel steps forward.

“Zachariah is capable of creating such visions,” Cas says. “I’ve seen him manipulate mortals, even angels, with half-truths that serve Heaven’s narrative. So what you saw might not be real in the way you think it was.”

Dean looks at him in utter disbelief. “You’re taking his side now?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Cas replies, frowning. “I’m saying perhaps you were used. But that doesn’t make Lucifer trustworthy.” His gaze slides to Sam, and the temperature in the room seems to drop. “Don’t mistake shared purpose for shared honesty. You can’t count on the Devil’s sincerity.”

The slow smile Lucifer gives Cas is meant to be threatening, but the angel doesn’t flinch. “Good talk, brother. Does this mean the Winchesters shouldn’t mistake your so-called loyalty for honesty, too?”

“I’ll die for them, Lucifer,” Cas meets his gaze squarely. “And because of them, I’ve already been falling, slowly but surely. Heaven is mostly shielded off from my reach and access now. What’s your story, if not for making Sam say yes to you?”

A mixture of pain, recognition, and bile flashes across Lucifer’s face. Sam doesn’t know how to deal with Cas’s heartfelt confession or the fact that he can now read Lucifer better than before, and perhaps better than anyone else in this room. Of course, his immediate task is to keep things from escalating further.

“Dean, Cas, please,” he cuts in. “Lucifer’s weakened to a great extent and can’t wreak havoc even if he wants to. What we’re left with is Michael—his intentions for humanity were never clear—and the grace thief. God knows what they’d do with such power.”

Dean lets out a low, humorless laugh and scrubs a hand down his face. “Right. All the more reason to team up with the Devil, huh? And while we’re at it, maybe someone wants to explain why she’s breathing again.”

Ruby tilts her chin up, defensive but tired. “We’ve been wondering the same thing. I didn’t crawl out of the void on purpose, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Dean says flatly. “Guess death’s just a revolving door now.”

Anna comes forward before Ruby can answer. “I verified her resurrection. And I saw no trace of Hell’s work on her. Whatever brought her back wasn’t demons.”

“So Heaven?” Dean asks, bitterness running deep beneath his tone. “Or something playing both sides?”

He glances from Sam to Cas, searching. The only answer he receives is dead silence, before Sam opens his mouth and tries, “Dean…”

But the older hunter is already striding toward the doorway, brushing past his shoulder, Cas following. “You do whatever you want, Sam,” he says without looking back. “But don’t expect me to stick around when they turn against you.”

The slam that follows is loud enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Soon, the Impala’s engine hums faintly on the other side of the door. The friction of tires on asphalt deepens, then fades into the kind of white noise that fills the room.

Sam pulls up a chair, sits down, and buries his face in his hands. He’s so tired that he no longer cares about showing his vulnerability in front of this strange combination of what apparently counts as a team.

“You should sleep,” Lucifer says from somewhere near him.

Sam raises his head, stares at the Devil with bloodshot eyes, and asks, “What are you going to do?”

“We have a few errands to run, I believe,” he replies lightly. “So much intelligence to gather now, between Heaven and Hell.”

——

Sam wakes up to a mild headache and a parching thirst, underlined by his disordered circadian rhythm. He rubs his eyes and rolls out of the cot with a groan, only to meet the stretched hand of the Devil, holding a cup that smells of cold boiled water.

“Anael showed me how to use the kettle,” he says casually, and Sam takes the cup from his hand. He finishes the water in a single gulp, opens his mouth several times, and finally yields the word that creeps up and sticks in his mind: “Thanks.”

At that, Lucifer’s eyes widen momentarily, before he nods rather awkwardly without a word. Then Sam hears a snort from the direction of his makeshift kitchen. It’s undoubtedly Ruby. The only reason he doesn’t roll his eyes is that Lucifer might mistake it for a reaction to him. As for why that should be of his concern, Sam chooses not to indulge the question any longer.

He walks past Lucifer to his desk, sets the cup down, and looks at the cell phone he started charging before going to bed. He’s slept for more than six hours, a big win in his dictionary.

What doesn’t taste like victory are the few missed calls from Bobby. He exhales, then turns to find Lucifer drawing closer. His gaze drifts between him and the women on the other side of the room. “What have you got?”

“I asked a few members of my old garrison, all of them trustworthy,” Anna says from where Ruby leans comfortably against her side. “The intel is twofold. They’ve also lost sight of the future, but more importantly, they’ve heard whispers about preparing a backup vessel for Michael.”

“That can’t be good,” Sam mutters. “I suppose you don’t know who’s on their list.”

Anna shakes her head before Ruby shoots him a weary, frustrated look. “I went back to Hell, and things were worse there. Putting their internal struggles aside, they actually believed me when I told them it was Lucifer who resurrected me. It’s for the kind of shock, fear, and reverence Lazarus once inspired, the kind that makes demons tell you the truth.” The dark chuckle she lets out doesn’t amuse Sam at all.

“The demons are wrestling with what a post-Apocalyptic world looks like,” she continues. “Some, like the past me, believe survival comes first, and loyalty to Lucifer guarantees that in the impending war. Some are trying to start their own empires, like Crowley, a crossroad demon.” She flashes Sam a wry smile. “He might be coming for you and your brother in the future, you know. For allyship, to defeat Lucifer and earn favors with Heaven.”

Lucifer’s mouth quirks upward. “A demon, betting on Heaven’s grace.”

“You can’t really blame him,” Ruby points out. “The choices are limited. It’s you or Michael, and you don’t seem to think highly of demons either.”

Lucifer shrugs, and before he can offer a barb of his own, Sam asks, “This is all bad news. Tell me you’ve got good ones.”

“I’m afraid not.” He sighs. “I’d rather not advertise my current… condition to half of Heaven and Hell. For strategic reasons. I did try to contact Gabriel, though. He’s the only one I’d wager isn’t Michael’s loyal lieutenant. But he didn’t answer my call.”

He looks into Sam’s eyes with an intensity that borders on sorrow, and murmurs, “I hope he’s still out there.”

Sam swallows, unsure what to say in return. Luckily, he has a good excuse to look away from Lucifer.

“Got it. I’m going to make a call. Try not to, uh, distract me.” He grabs his phone from the table and dials Bobby’s number without waiting for Lucifer’s response. The line goes live on the first ring.

“What the hell is going on there?” Bobby mumbles instead of a greeting. “I called Dean, and he said you’re working with the Devil? And he’s running out of juice?”

“Hey, Bobby.” Sam offers a weak smile at his phone, though the older man can’t see him. “I guess… it’s true.”

Bobby doesn’t need to spell out the word idiot. It’s written all over his voice. “What do you mean by ‘I guess’?” he snaps. “Do you know how dangerous it is? Having the guy trying to wear you like a pair of sleeves nearby?”

“I really appreciate your concern,” Sam hears himself say. “I know you don’t trust Lucifer. But can you please trust me? I’m trying my best to save humanity here. Keeping him in the loop seems like the only solution for now.”

“No, Sam,” Bobby raises his voice. “What I’m worried about isn’t that. It’s whether you’re trying to save yourself.”

His temple throbs. It’s a physical echo of the heartache he doesn’t want to name, because he can imagine the concerned look Bobby would throw at him. It makes him want to go back to bed and sleep forever.

Instead, he answers flatly, “Yeah. I’m trying, I’m trying.”

Their brief call ends with Sam warning Bobby, and by association, Dean, about Michael’s backup vessel. He’s also promised to reach out if he needs help. After that, he tosses the phone back onto the table, sinks into the chair, and wipes a hand down his face. As he brushes away a few stray strands of hair, Lucifer asks in that calm, self-assured voice of his, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Sam says, not caring how unconvincing he sounds.

“But you argued,” Lucifer observes. “Do you feel… disappointed?”

Sam almost laughs. “No. Bobby’s just worried. Actually, I feel better—he reminded me that people are still on my side.”

Lucifer studies him for a moment before saying quietly, tone serious and careful, “I’m always with you, Sam.”

“Ok…” The word slips out before Sam can stop it, and for better or worse, the Devil doesn’t elaborate.

Chapter Text

By the time the light outside turns copper and thin, their safehouse has gone quiet. Sam’s been at the table for hours, reading through headlines for signs of Heaven or Hell’s meddling. Anna volunteered to repaint the sigils on the walls, making sure no one could enter uninvited, like she once did. Ruby’s been devouring the chips and energy bars Sam thought he’d hidden well. Now she’s dozing off on the smaller couch, the one without bloodstains. She claimed that gluttony and sloth would aid recovery.

Lucifer’s pulled up a chair next to him with Sam’s reluctant permission. The few remarks he offers are brief but clairvoyant, either pointing out what Sam missed or backing his suspicions with unnerving precision. At times he challenges Sam’s intuition, calm, confident, but never condescending at him. He asks him to think in the shoes of an angel or a demon, explaining why certain things simply can’t be done in Heaven’s or Hell’s name.

By the end of their weirdly domestic, oddly productive session, Sam’s crossed every case off his list. The chilling revelation hits him again: humans can rival demons in cruelty, and sometimes outdo them.

Pushing back from the table, Sam tells Lucifer he’s going to make dinner. As he pads to the kitchen and rummages through the old fridge for whatever’s left from a few days ago, he catches himself wondering why he even bothered to announce it—to the Devil, of all people.

The question itself doesn’t matter as much as the unfathomable mental block preventing him from reaching an answer.

A faint buzzing starts up just then. At first, Sam takes it for the refrigerator’s usual electronic groan. But as he sets the food on the counter and shuts the fridge door, the sound doesn’t fade away; it builds up.

He turns, frowning. Lucifer has already straightened, every trace of ease gone, and strides toward the bookshelf. Anna follows, her eyes locked on the dust-coated radio leaning against the shelf.

If Sam remembers correctly, the hunter who lent him this safehouse once mentioned the thing hadn’t had its batteries changed in years.

As he joins the two by the bookshelf, shoulders taut, the buzzing thickens: first a faint, electric hiss, then a fragile, ethereal hum. Out of it emerges a syllable, almost human: “I.” The sound then sharpens and settles into a measured male voice that resonates through the dust and wood of their room.

“...am Metatron, the Scribe of Heaven. The ink is spilled; fate rewritten. Where Lilith was slain should have remained desolate and forgotten. Yet now, forces gather. Demonic in scent, angelic in trace. You will go there.”

The transmission cuts off, leaving a single pulse of static that dies a second later. Sam exhales and turns to Anna. “I thought you reinforced the sigils.”

“I did.” Her brows knit as she and Sam study the radio, its metal casing warm to their touch. “They only ward off physical intrusion. Radio waves are… exempt.”

“Is this Metatron guy real? I mean, even if he exists, the voice over the radio might still be a mimic,” Sam withdraws his hand, tone cautious.

Lucifer nods curtly, his index finger tapping just below his lips. “I know him. During my time in Heaven, God favored him, because words hold unspeakable power, even when spoken on a whim. He clung to those verdicts as if his grace depended on them. Perhaps it did.” He scoffs, a quiet sound that echoes in the room.

“Metatron has always been God’s loyal servant, even in His absence,” Anna adds. “I’ve never heard him through a human vessel, though. I can only attest that what we heard carried an angelic imprint.”

Sam begins to pace, hands clasped under his nose, thinking aloud. “Should we find him first and verify? But even if it’s truly him, how can we be sure he’s not playing his own game?”

“We can’t,” Lucifer replies evenly. “Though if history matters, I’d say he follows no one but God’s eons-old speeches.”

“Lucifer,” Anna cuts in, an implicit plea edging her voice, “during your time, did God ever indicate He wanted the Apocalypse to happen?”

Sam stops mid-step and looks back at the two, a cold shiver running down his frame. The Devil looks almost serene and simply shrugs. “Does it matter? He let it happen.”

“This is getting too existential for my liking,” Ruby mutters from the couch, yawning. “I’d rather go investigate Lilith’s death place and retraumatize myself with my own death. After all, if this Metatron guy wants everything back on track for the Apocalypse, he’d hate for Lucifer to lose his grace. We might find out who orchestrated this whole thing in Maryland. It’s better than awaiting our doom in this cramped place. Risk exists either way.”

“She’s… actually got a valid point,” Sam says after a pause, turning to face the demon. It proves to be a mistake, because Ruby immediately flashes him a crooked grin. “Valid? Does it kill you to say the word good to me, Sam? I thought you were the kind of guy who understands evil doesn’t cancel out intelligence.”

Sam exhales, rolling his eyes, and turns back. The amused glint in Lucifer’s gaze doesn’t help; the Devil even dares to raise an eyebrow and chuckle when Sam glares at him.

——

They decide to get there the most old-fashioned way: by driving. The rationale is threefold. First, it saves grace for both Anna and Lucifer; teleportation drains energy that recovers painfully slow. Second, if things ever go south in that abandoned convent, they’ll still have enough grace left to get out alive. Third, and perhaps most mundanely, it’s only a four-hour ride from where they’re cozily tucked beneath the hills east of Pittsburgh.

And if the world’s ending in four hours, well. Whatever they could do might already be too late.

Sam insists on leaving right after dinner and a shower, but this time the others stand united against his idea of self-reliance. Anna points out that he’ll probably fall asleep at the wheel before they even hit the state line, let alone fight for his life when the time comes. Ruby agrees, mostly because she wants the radio to herself, and that’s never happening if Sam’s the driver. Lucifer doesn’t object. He only smiles, like he knows Sam’s not used to being told no, at least not outside a familial setting.

In the end, Sam relents. Anna takes the driver’s seat of his rental, a well-kept dark-gray Honda, and assures him, half teasing, that she has had a driver’s license since her first year of college.

Before they leave, Sam texts the hunter who owns the safehouse, thanking her and apologizing for the bloodstains on the nicest couch he’s ever sat on. He adds briefly that she doesn’t need to worry about the blood anymore: he helped someone injured on it, and that someone’s doing just fine.

He also makes sure to pack his clothes and laptop, because they might not come back. It’s fascinating and pathetic all at once, how he can fit everything he owns into two duffel bags.

By 8 pm, they’re already on the road. Ruby happily sits in the front seat, cycling through radio stations like she’s competing with some unseen force, and Sam rides in the back beside the Devil, who keeps casting half-amused glances out the window into the quiet night dusted with pinpricks of light.

When told to buckle up, Lucifer complies, but only after Sam explains that it isn’t for his safety. Of course, nothing on the road could actually hurt him. “It’s to make sure we don’t get stopped by cops,” Sam adds, tightening his own seatbelt. “None of us have real IDs. And don’t start—I know you don’t care about human traffic laws, but I do.”

Lucifer hums at that, seemingly content with his explanation in a way that tells Sam… he feels acknowledged.

When they’ve left town, he thinks about calling Dean but doesn’t. What would he even say—I’m going to the place where I started the Apocalypse with the Devil? Instead, he finds a compromise with the part of himself that still wants to mend what he assumes is broken. He fires off a brief text: “Headed to Ilchester, might be nothing. Will check in.”

Dean doesn’t reply. Ten or so minutes later, Sam stops waiting. He dozes off under the Devil’s steady gaze now fully on him, his head turned deliberately toward the window.

Caught between dreaming and waking, Sam hears the hum of the road—and, above it, the faint, catchy pop tune from the radio—fade into something else entirely: metallic, rhythmic, alive. The sound vibrates through his bones before consolidating into an earnest inquiry that grows desperate: “Can you hear me?”

In his half-dream, Sam imagines himself replying, “Yes.” But the question comes again and again, not in any human voice but through a deep echo rooted in his mind. Frustration builds with every repetition, and he decides to be more proactive, to mirror it. He urges back, “Can you hear me?”

The words slip away from him and return transformed. Only a second later does he realize the plea has been reshaped, verbalized with the determination, edge, and softness of a woman’s voice.

The woman, though wearing a vessel he’s never seen before, is unmistakably Lilith—deadly, mesmerizing, and powerful as she declares her name to what feels like a one-way mirror amid the tranquility of a lush grove. She is naked in both her occurrence and her desire, veiled by nothing but a sheen of dim, white light.

Transfixed by the scene before him, Sam fails to catch the words spoken to her from a palm’s worth of rainwater resting in the hollow of a tree stump. They reverberate through the grove, the echo soft but unyielding, reminding him of Lucifer’s eyes, sometimes.

Lilith straightens her back, white flame flaring behind her dark eyes. She inhales deeply and tears her own light apart, painstakingly, as if unwrapping stiffened bandages, until it dissolves into the air that’s beginning to chill. By then her fingertips are red, her palms callused. But she’s smiling.

“I shall fall, then,” she tells the pool of water—the one-way mirror that has guided her to this point. Or was it the opposite? The question hardly matters. A gale of wind sweeps through the grove, the sky bruising from pale blue to deep indigo. Rain follows. Heaven’s tears pour down onto Lilith’s new, naked body. She lifts a hand, cradling the cold water as the tree stump does its mirror.

At the first thunderstrike, Sam jerks awake. His last glimpse of Lilith’s pale face and wide grin fractures with the grove around her, split open by a thousand lightning bolts.

He snaps his eyes open; fragments of the dream still burn, vivid and haunting, behind his eyes. But what’s more immediate is the sense of a shoulder beneath his head, cold yet soft through the fabric. Realization sinks in at once. He tenses, pulling back from where Lucifer had let him bury his face against his neck, a groan escaping at the sharp pull in his muscles.

“Sam?” Lucifer’s voice is close, the scent of cedar, ozone, and rainfall threading through his breath.

“I’m fine,” Sam manages, chest heaving with tension. “How far have we got left?”

“Forty minutes, give or take. I’m glad you had some rest,” Anna answers amid the exquisite classical music drifting from the radio. That’s not Ruby’s taste, so she must have grown bored of tuning the stations a while ago.

“Or was it a nightmare?” the demon asks, not bothering to turn her head. “We heard screams.”

“They were grunts at most, Ruby,” Anna says, casting her a chastising yet amused glance through the rearview mirror.

Sam exhales, having made up his mind. “Speaking of which, I dreamed of Lilith’s fall. I’ve no idea how it might tie into our case. Just throwing it out there.”

“That’s not a premonition, in case you’re wondering,” Lucifer says from a few inches away, his tone almost casual. “You simply dreamed of my dreams.”

Sam tries not to shudder under the weight of his words. “What do you mean?”

The Devil holds his gaze in the half-darkness broken only by sporadic lampposts along the highway. Those icy blues seem even paler under the passing rush of light. When he parts his lips, his sorrow is almost serene.

“I never knew how exactly she fell—only imagined. The Cage allowed me to sense existences outside and let my voice come through, but I could never hear their replies. My own echo chamber.” He gives a small, wry smile before continuing.

“For one millennium, Lilith was Adam’s first wife. The next, she became the first corrupted soul on Earth. She must have decided not to kneel before him and left the sacred grove behind. I remember feeling her tears—the only thing that could infiltrate my Cage—after I told her about Michael and my soulmate. She might have sacrificed herself, not only to free me from my shackles but to grant me the chance to meet them.”

“To meet you” is left unsaid, but Sam hears it all too well.

Utterly overwhelmed, he steadies himself a few seconds later. He asks, demands, pleads: “What am I supposed to take away from this? She ate babies, Lucifer.”

“Oh. I never said she was a saint.” His answer is brief, maddeningly so. To ease the fiery, tingling pressure in his chest, Sam presses on. “And why could I dream of this?”

“You’ve been in my head more than once, Sam,” Lucifer says with his usual self-assurance. “We are connected, I believe, so you could hear what others couldn’t.”

Sam lets out a long breath and shakes his head, his gaze drifting to the dark, lush woods crowding the slope outside the window. He isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to feel targeted, comforted, or seen.

——

From Sam’s first glimpse, the town near the ruins of St. Mary’s Convent looks weathered but pristine under the gibbous moon, its rows of red-brick houses and faded shop signs lined up in careful order. Well-kept yet slowly dying, which is normal for a small inland town. But his supernatural companions’ body languages say otherwise.

Lucifer has been sitting straighter since they hit the town’s rarely cracked pavement, eyes narrowing at the passing storefronts. The wind through his half-open window smells of river and iron. Ruby fidgets in her seat while Anna bites her lip, scanning their surroundings cautiously.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks, his tone edged with impatience.

“Listen,” the angel whispers, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. “It’s too quiet.”

“Uh, maybe because it’s almost past midnight?” Sam mutters, looking out the window. Every house they pass is dark, except one at the end of this crossroad, where behind a floor-to-ceiling window facing their yard, a family seems to be just sitting down for dinner.

Anna doesn’t answer right away. As they pass, she slows down to the point that the car is barely moving, and Sam takes in the sight clearly: inside, the family of four lifts food to their mouths with mechanical precision, eyes vacant. They don’t swallow, just chew and smile at each other, endlessly.

“Are they possessed?” Sam blurts out, tension pooling under his muscles. “We should go help!”

“No, Sam,” Lucifer says beside him. “It’s not possession. It’s the shock effect after someone loses their soul.”

“And that’s what I meant by ‘quiet’,” Anna frowns as Sam’s mouth falls open. “An angel’s grace is light, a demon’s core is darkness, and a human’s soul is color. I can’t hear colors here. Everything’s… muted into black and white.”

Ruby wraps her arms around herself, knuckles whitening where her fingers dig into her arms. “I don’t like this. What should’ve been souls are now dark and sulfuric, but not as pure as a demon’s core. The residues of humanity are strong enough to mask those fragments of Hell in them. At least to anyone who isn’t one of us.” She shudders. “What an abomination.”

“We should check out St. Mary’s first and see if that place has anything to do with this.” Anna taps the accelerator just enough for the car to inch forward along the dark street. “If nothing’s there, we can always come back.”

About fifteen minutes later, their car rolls to a complete stop beside the abandoned convent, where weeds have overgrown the trail. What remains of St. Mary’s stands bare before them, bathed in moonlight that lends it an eerie kind of beauty. Ruby’s the first to jump off, her eyes carefully tracing the broken silhouette of the convent.

“It reeks of death,” she mutters under her breath. “Present tense.”

Once they step into the convent’s periphery, Sam understands how true Ruby’s words are, at least in a figurative sense. The exterior walls are charred for reasons long lost, debris crunching softly underfoot. When he turns on the chest flashlight clipped to his shirt—his jacket left hastily in the car for freer movement—the interior proves darker, hollower than when he was last here.

Body tense, Sam approaches the altar that once doubled as a gate. Lilith’s body is long gone, along with her spilled blood that served as the key to Lucifer’s Cage. It’s now just broken, empty, and pathetic. Judging from Ruby’s wince and the way Lucifer’s penetrating gaze burns holes into the back of his head, they understand too well what demise and rebirth entail.

Then, as the Devil steps closer from behind, the altar trembles, barely, but enough to be felt. In a single motion, Lucifer moves in front of him, arms open as if to embrace whatever’s coming. Sam doesn’t have time to think about what his protectiveness means. Through his half-blocked vision, he sees silver and red lines swirling out of the altar’s cracks, forming a sigil within seconds.

From his angle, it resembles a single wing, too disheveled to be called angelic.

The lines still, and the altar falls quiet again. A few heartbeats later, after Ruby and Anna edge closer around it—movements cautious, almost synchronized—Lucifer lowers his arms and traces a long finger along the sigil. It shimmers under his touch.

“This sigil remembers me,” he tells them, irises flaring red, dimmer than the lines but infinitely more terrifying. “My stolen grace—at least part of it—was here. Used as a ward.”

The moment his words fade, Sam catches a rustle of chanting from the chapel’s far side: a sound half human, half beast, somewhere between a wail and a prayer. One look at Lucifer tells him that’s where they’ll be going next.

Chapter Text

Bracing himself, Sam watches Lucifer push open the door that connects the altar to what was once St. Mary’s cloister. With one barrier gone, the chanting grows louder, stronger, and more distorted, riding on a gust of cold wind.

Before Lucifer’s shadow disappears completely into the dark, Sam follows, two careful pairs of footsteps echoing behind him.

A few short turns later, they reach the old courtyard. Moonlight and Sam’s flashlight carve the scene into stark relief: four demons, eyes pitch black, stand guard at each corner, a dust-covered, dried-up fountain at their center. Two women kneel before the fountain’s rim and chant—no, cry out—their prayers, faces turned away from him. And Lucifer jumps off the hallway, striding straight toward the fountain through the bodies of dead roses.

By then, Sam has already unsheathed Ruby’s knife, its tip angled upward, while the other half of their team moves as one, sealing off the exits in unspoken accord.

The chanting stops abruptly, morphing into a deafening chorus of screams. Yet the women refuse to move, their expressions hidden in ironclad hands, a gesture that strikes Sam as almost… grieving.

The demons, on the other hand, move in sync toward Lucifer, and by association, toward Sam following close behind. Despite their instincts to snarl, hiss, and lunge, the one in the lead halts mid-stride when Lucifer is yards away, facing him squarely.

His black eyes gleam with something like the demons’ equivalent of tears. Recognition trembles on his lips before he drops to his knees. “My Lord, you’re finally here!” He hesitates, words faltering in the thick silence. Lucifer doesn’t move, only watches him and the others, who stand frozen, uncertain whether to kneel as well.

“You look… unwell, my Lord.”

Lucifer’s reply is silvery, calm, and perilously soft, and Sam can’t tell whether the goosebumps on his arms come from the cold or from that voice. “That’s because someone stole my grace,” Lucifer says, taking a step closer, “and handed it to you.”

The demon’s face blanches. Moonlight glances off the sweat gathering on his skin.

“I can sense it from the fountain’s base,” Lucifer continues. “Tell me what you’ve done with it.”

The demons exchange quick, fearful glances toward the exits now blocked by Anna and Ruby. They too understand it’s not a question, but an order.

If they want to escape, Sam realizes, they’ll have to abandon their vessels. And that means their cores would burst free of the human bodies. Just for a moment, but long and vulnerable enough to be struck down with the right spell.

“We… we were given a shard of filtered angelic grace,” their leader stammers, cold sweat pooling on his forehead, “to use as a primer for human-to-demon conversion. Lilith’s death site proved ideal for this experiment, given its history. We succeeded in converting the whole town—minus these two girls—over the past few days. We meant for Hell to claim as many souls as possible afterward, to expand our power in the war.”

He swallows, shuddering harder. “We never knew it was your grace, my Lord!”

“Now you know,” Lucifer coos. “Who handed my grace over?”

“A demon,” the leader answers, an edge of pleading in his voice. “She calls herself Meg. Said she got it somewhere else. We never questioned her.”

Her name rings a bell in Sam’s head, sharp enough to set every nerve on alert, but before he can dwell on the disturbing memory, Lucifer speaks again, his tone laden with pity and disdain: “Then you must pay for your assentation.”

Three things happen at once. Sam parts his lips, trying to warn him about the human souls possibly trapped beneath the demons’ cores. All four demons open their mouths, dark smoke writhing as they attempt to flee. And Lucifer raises a hand, almost tenderly.

Then the courtyard floods with light and screeching so violent that Sam has to shut his eyes and flinch inwardly.

When the light fades, all but their leader lie collapsed, vessels motionless. The one still kneeling before Lucifer is frozen in place, mouth slack, as if bound by a spell.

Lucifer turns to the hunter, his face paler than before. “I only purged the demons, Sam,” he says, his voice suddenly tired, breaths uneven. “But I can’t guarantee their hosts were alive before that.” He inhales, shoulders trembling slightly. “I left one of them alive, just in case.”

“You almost used up what’s left of your grace,” Anna calls from behind them, moving closer; Sam can hear the frown in her tone. “That’s reckless. The link between you and Heaven is tenuous, if not severed entirely. It won’t replenish until tomorrow.”

“You think I don’t know that, Anael?” He takes a step forward but stumbles. Sam catches him by his elbow and waist before he falls, his skin blazing hot, feverish to the touch, a startling contrast to his usual coolness. Lucifer steadies himself, exhales, then inclines his head toward Sam. He doesn’t speak for several seconds. “But I’ve got a lesson to teach.”

Relieved for reasons he can’t quite name, Sam walks over to the women, now half-collapsed on the ground like puppets with their strings cut. He switches off the flashlight so it won’t sting their eyes. Under the gibbous moon, their faces are no longer hidden. He can see their chests rising and falling, but they don’t respond to his voice or even stir at his waving hand, vacant as if lost inside their own minds.

“Try again after I have my grace back,” Lucifer says, already pacing toward the fountain. Meanwhile, Ruby steps past the demons’ fallen vessels, each stride slow and deliberate, until she stops before their kneeling leader. She leans down and murmurs, “Was it worth it?”

Of course, he doesn’t answer. But a vein twitches at his temple, an unspoken protest, or a final remnant of fear. Either way, it seems he has a lot to say.

Shaking his head, Sam lets his gaze and steps follow Lucifer’s silhouette, unfathomable tension crawling beneath his skin. The Devil lays a hand over the fountain’s spout, a litany of Enochian syllables flowing out in an oracular, resonant voice. The base trembles under his intonation as a wisp of light meanders up the cracked marble, mostly silver, but marred by tiny flecks of red.

When Lucifer withdraws his hand, a shard of his grace bursts forth from the spout, pooling into a shallow film of light over the timeworn fountain, an expanse of ivory and silver shot through by what resembles thin streaks of blood.

“It’s already corrupted by demons,” Anna warns, her voice strained. “It may no longer be compatible with you.”

“Have you heard of my Fall, sister?” Lucifer asks, his tone measured. “I was the first corruption outside God’s plan.”

“Lucif—” The angel doesn’t finish. The Devil has already reached for the stolen grace, his fingertips sending ripples across its surface.

Beams of liquid light surge upward through his body from the point of contact. They snake beneath his clothes and skin, converging at his eyes with a sound like crackling glass, reminding Sam of a thunder rumbling in the distance.

For one fleeting moment, Lucifer’s irises flare ivory—bright, crisp, impossibly fragile, like morning light that makes everything else seem pure. Then, in the next heartbeat, veins of red spread from his pupils, spilling across his face and body, dense as cobwebs over every inch of visible skin.

Lucifer’s body convulses, arms flailing toward the edge of the fountain but finding nothing to hold on to. A silent scream twists his features as he stumbles backward and straight into Sam’s arms, a sheer reflex if you asked the hunter.

His body is scorching, even hotter than when he burned the demons away. Red lines surge and shimmer across his skin like sunlit waves, and he’s shaking so violently that Sam doubts he can hold him much longer.

“What do we do?” Sam lowers them both to the ground, looking over Lucifer’s shoulder toward Anna.

The angel only shakes her head, eyes grave. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen an angel’s grace reject them.”

Sam hisses under his breath, tightening his grip to keep Lucifer’s flailing arms from punching his own face. Another soundless scream wrenches through Lucifer when he parts his lips, light bleeding from between his teeth.

“If this keeps building,” Anna observes, her calmness uncanny, “he’ll probably explode. Even broken grace can level this whole convent. We should leave while we can. Unfortunately, I can’t take seven people with me, so those demon vessels will have to stay. Their hosts are likely gone anyway.”

“Shit,” Ruby mutters, and Sam echoes the word right after.

“Come on, Sam,” Anna urges. With Ruby’s help, she’s already dragging the two women’s unconscious bodies away from the fountain. “He’s probably a lost cause.”

Her last sentence, though spoken in such soft deliberateness, sets Sam’s mind ablaze. He looks down at Lucifer’s twitching, pain-stricken face, unsure if what’s burning is the Devil’s body or his own. Like a madman, his fingers tremble along with the one in his arms, eyes stinging with tears. He hears himself whisper, “No.”

For a heartbeat, the air warps around him, the world breaking into stillness. He blinks, and the weight between his arms is gone. The fountain, the courtyard, everything disappears.

He’s sitting in an empty space drowned in white. For a fleeting moment, he wonders if this is his afterlife, a perpetual price to pay for his stupidity. Or chivalry, if you look at the brighter picture. A wry smile tugs at his lips as he gets to his feet, taking in the vast, absent landscape. Can he even send a message across the threshold? Something as small as “I’m sorry, Dean”?

That thought dissolves when he notices a sphere of pulsing red light far to his left, resembling a rose in a hurricane. He squints at it, then realizes it isn’t truly red. It’s wrapped, bound by red threads that coil around a heart-sized ivory glow, leaving it barely any room to breathe.

The urge to reach it, a thought so simple and so instinctive, summons a gust of wind beneath his feet. It lifts him toward the captive light, as if he weighs nothing at all.

Facing it up front, Sam can almost taste the threads’ toxic, metallic sweetness. They smell of demon blood, dizzying and thick. But beneath them, the few visible patches of bound light breathe a fragrance of frost, underlined by ozone and ash.

His body moves before his mind can form any coherent words. His hands reach for the threads. They are exceedingly coarse and hot, searing when he tries to tear them apart. The moment his fingers slip through and brush the light beneath, a sound like a storm reverberates deeply in his bones.

He shudders, and so does the light.

Their resonance strikes the red threads in a ripple of sound, fracturing them in the middle as Sam rips them free. His fingertips are soon raw and tingling.

But the threads don’t vanish. Pooling beneath his feet like parasites desperate for a host, they surge upward, winding around his legs, binding him in place. He feels their sharp edges through his shirt. Time isn’t on his side, even in this void. So, his hands move faster, competing with the shackles rising along his body, which were here in the first place because of his own volition.

When the threads veil his eyes, his hands act purely on instinct. Somehow, they always find the right spot to peel the strands away, as if the light itself is guiding him. Soon, under his touch, only a few threads remain on the glowing sphere. The rest of them crawl up his arms, a crusade of red closing around his throat. He gasps for air, a spluttering sound scraping his dry lips, his fingers twitching above the light.

“This will kill you,” a voice says in his mind, achingly familiar. It’s weakened, each word a gasp, as if someone has just recovered from a grievous wound, and this is the first thing they need to share.

“Then stop me!” Sam answers, soundless but certain, his hands moving again of their own accord. All is silent then, except for the hiss of tightening ropes.

Tearing, ripping, digging feverishly, despite choking and blinded, he snaps off the last thread just before the shackles can reach his final bare fingertip.

His muscles convulse as a wave of light bursts forth, dazzling even through the red veil over his eyes. The next moment, those threads crumble into dust without a sound. When he can breathe and see again, he’s engulfed by rings of light—bright yet tender—with the faint scent of clear sky after a storm lingering around him.

The reverberation in his bones rises once more, murmuring as if in awe: “Thank you.”

Waving it off, Sam exhales once, twice, and passes out in the light’s embrace.

——

His sense of touch returns first. It tells him his upper back is resting on someone’s crossed legs. When he blinks his eyes open, a sharp ache pulses through his head, then immediately fades away as two cool fingers brush his forehead.

Lucifer’s concerned expression is worrying in itself, but what’s more alarming is their closeness when Sam jerks upright on instinct. Luckily, since the Devil doesn’t move, their noses don’t touch, though the breaths they let out mingle into a single stream against the cold night.

Cliché as it is, Sam takes the extended hand of Ruby—of all people—and hauls himself up. “What happened?”

“You saved me, Sam.” Lucifer brushes the dirt off his pants and rises to his feet, his expression solemn. “And you cleansed the piece of stolen grace for me. No human should be able to do that.”

“Well, I just did.” Sam exhales, trying not to dwell on that content half-smile playing at Lucifer’s lips or the mesmerizing, ivory shard glowing in his hand. When he looks around, he doesn’t see Anna or the two women.

Anticipating the question, Ruby shrugs. “The girls woke up a while after you collapsed. Pretty freaked out, but at least their souls are intact. They don’t remember a damn thing about being kidnapped. Our guardian angel took them home; this clearly isn’t the place for explanations. Also, a closer look shows those demon vessels’ hosts were already dead. Killed.” She nods toward their leader, who’s still kneeling and twitching. “Including his.”

Sam shakes his head, eyeing the kneeling demon with palpable spite. “He’ll have to pay, too.”

“He will,” Lucifer promises. “But not before I seal this shard away and use him to draw Meg here.”

“But it’s your grace, and it’s pure now.” Sam’s gaze flicks from the glowing shard—orb, cylinder, whatever it is—in Lucifer’s loose fist to the Devil’s calm eyes. “Why don’t you just… I don’t know, absorb it?”

Lucifer takes a slow, deliberate breath. “I can’t. Remember that file you pulled up about the Echo Trap? It was right. As long as the culprit’s alive, the victim can’t reclaim what was stolen. When the red threads vanished, I found my grace still bound by nearly invisible sigils that spell one thing: claimed. That’s likely another reason why it rejected me.”

“So what are you gonna do?” Sam presses, impatience bleeding through his voice. “You can’t just hold it like that. It’s too dangerous.”

“We discussed that while you were out,” Lucifer says as the air stirs, the faint clap of wings echoing from beyond the fountain. “And we found a temporary solution.”

Anna steps into view, rounding the fountain, exhaustion and surprise written across her face. “You’re awake,” she greets him, her tone betraying no emotion. Then, before Sam can answer, she turns to Lucifer. “I’m ready.”

Under Sam’s tense gaze, Lucifer brings the shard of grace to Anna. He chants a line of Enochian—soft, swift, and elusive. Sam catches only one word among the syllables: “Anael.”

At once, a thin film settles over the shard, dimming its brilliance until the light looks veiled with mist. A flicker of question crosses Anna’s eyes, gone the next instant. Then she speaks her own phrases in Enochian, the syllables “Samael” ringing out with striking clarity.

When she finishes, she cups her hands beneath the shard. Lucifer releases it, and the fragment of grace slips smoothly into her waiting palms.

For a heartbeat, her eyes flare a blue so deep and vast that even the sea would pale beside it. Then she exhales, closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, that light has vanished, leaving only the trace of tears she hurriedly wipes away.

“You bound it with your own sigils,” Anna says, brushing at her tears. “Are you afraid I’m going to play God with it?”

“I don’t fear that, Anael,” Lucifer’s smirk is brief. “I despise it. It’s a far stronger motive for precaution.”

“So you’re the vault now,” Ruby mutters from the side. Her remark earns a mirthless chuckle from Anna.

Sam releases the breath he’s been holding until this moment. He turns to the kneeling demon with a cold edge in his voice. “That’s one off the list. Now it’s you and Meg.”

Lucifer steps past him and looms over the creature. With a casual wave, the demon collapses back to the ground, wheezing.

“You’re going to call Meg,” Lucifer says, tone even. “And I’ll make sure your death is smooth and painless. Do we have a deal?”

The demon’s voice flips, stripped of that earlier fear-laden awe. “I don’t wanna die. You… you don’t have enough juice to wipe me out anyway.”

“Is that so?” Lucifer replies, smiling with all his teeth. “Oh, I forgot to mention. The spell I put on you has a kill switch. I can press that metaphorical button anytime. Or I can make the process long and unbearable.”

The demon hisses something unintelligible—perhaps a curse. But given the single nod that passes between Anna and Lucifer, that’s exactly the outcome they wanted.

“See? Not that hard to ask for help,” Lucifer says, snapping his fingers. The demon convulses as if electrocuted, then goes still; gray smoke curls from his hollow eyes. Lucifer watches it rise, then adds with quiet satisfaction, “And that, I keep my end of the deal.”

The courtyard falls silent again, the air thick with a burnt smell before the wind slowly carries it away. For a while, no one speaks and only breathes, as the distant hoots of owls reclaim the night.

Then the wind shifts, cold and sharp as it envelopes them, carrying a low, guttural growl that tears through the dark.

Anna is the first to look up, toward the road that led them here. “She’s coming.”