That human tried to communicate with Uriel again. The last time had been three weeks ago, when they lit a few candles to thank the archangel for the help he had given them with their studies. That night, Uriel appeared in their dream, gazing at them from across a vast expanse of emptiness. And now came this time. In the past, that human had always prayed to Uriel, asked him to intercede on their behalf, sought answers to their questions, or asked for help with one thing or another. There had never been anything particularly unusual about it. But this time, when they reached out to Uriel again, their request was for him to help find a book that had gone missing from their home.

What book could possibly be so important that it warranted disturbing an archangel?

Not that Uriel particularly minded helping with such a small matter. After all, he had done all sorts of things before. He had even, on more than a few occasions, guided grieving humans towards their lost cats and little birds. So the archangel listened to what the human had to say.

“...The book I lost is called The Book of Demons…”

Uriel stopped.

The book’s author had lived during the Fourth Cycle. He was a famous exorcist who had poured his life’s work and all his experience into the book. After his death, it was passed down to his son, and then to his son’s son. During the exorcist’s final battle, he had discovered and destroyed the lair of a rather powerful demon in the human world. The demon had been driven back, and, humiliated and enraged by its defeat, it placed a vicious curse upon him: among the exorcist’s descendants, should the firstborn ever be a girl, the demon would seize the girl’s body and use it to slaughter her family.

The exorcist’s children and grandchildren had all had sons, and so they lived in peace. However, by the fourth generation, the firstborn was a pair of twins. Before giving birth, the twins’ mother was approached by an old nun who slipped a bracelet around her wrist, claiming that it would protect the children and keep them safe and healthy. The mother thought nothing of it and wore the bracelet almost every day. Thus, the son who should have been born first was forced behind his sister.

On the night the twins were born, their mother’s agonised screams echoed throughout the manor. Servants hurried back and forth, carrying water and towels to the delivery room. Sweat dripped from the midwife’s forehead in such quantities that it seemed there might have been enough to fill a washbasin.

The girl’s head emerged first, followed by the boy. The midwife had only just cleaned the girl and placed her on a soft towel nearby when a clap of thunder suddenly exploded outside. The mother let out a heart-rending scream, the sound almost as though something were trying to crawl out from inside her. Just as the midwife reached for the boy, a branch struck the window with a sharp crack. Her hand jerked, and the boy slipped head-first onto the floor. He died before he could utter his first cry.

The family had taken every precaution. They locked the girl away in the deepest part of the manor and sealed the windows shut. Only a few servants whom the master deeply trusted, along with her own father - the mother had died on the day of her birth - were given keys to the door leading to the girl’s room.

And so the girl grew up under strict confinement. From infancy to adolescence, she was never allowed to leave that room.

Then, one day, a servant who had just delivered her meal forgot to lock the door. The girl seized her chance and quietly slipped out while there was no one outside. She did not merely escape her room. She escaped the manor itself. She secretly made her way into the garden, marvelling at the flowers, trees, blue skies, and white clouds. She walked on and on until she reached a great tree. A remarkably handsome man was waiting for her there.

Two days later, the entire family had vanished without a trace. The house was silent. Half-eaten food still sat upon the dining table. The teacups were half full, thin wisps of steam still rising from the tea. Everything was neatly in its place, and there were no signs of any valuables having been stolen. A little blue bird kept in a golden cage chirped and hopped up and down, demanding food.

People found an old servant at the entrance to the cellar, his face frozen in terror. They brought him out and questioned him, but he would not say a word. He simply trembled uncontrollably. Someone wondered whether he had witnessed something he should not have seen and suggested taking him to a church for an exorcism. But the moment he had barely stepped into the main hall, he let out a scream, tore himself free from the hands of several strong men, and rushed towards the holy-water font. No one could stop him. He plunged head-first into the water and was drowned alive.

Back in the present, having sensed that human’s summons, Uriel went to the Great Library and slowly took on human form. He raised his hand slightly, his fingertips brushing against a book that happened to be flying past - a book describing what Hell had looked like when it was first formed. He moved his hand away. The book vanished instantly behind several bookshelves.

That The Book of Demons, after the family’s death, had been brought to Heaven by Raziel, who had been carrying out a mission on Earth at the time. It was then entrusted to Uriel, who placed it in the Great Library.

During the Fifth Cycle, a young angel was assigned to clean the library. Uriel had already explicitly told the young angel not to open any books. Even if one happened to be lying open directly in front of them, they were to pretend they had seen nothing. The young angel agreed readily, full of confidence. However, only a few hours later, while cleaning a corner on the southern side of the library, the young angel suddenly let out a cry of agony. Their wings burst into flames. A few seconds later, with one final, faint whimper, the young angel fell through the library’s soft floor together with the book, plummeting from the clouds.

To this day, Uriel believed that all of this had been orchestrated by God. As an archangel who had existed since the beginning of Creation, cleaning a building under his own management should have been no more than a snap of his fingers. Yet God had still ordered him to go to Middle Heaven and choose a suitable angel to come up and help with the cleaning. Though puzzled, Uriel had obeyed. The result was that the angel, along with the book, fell into Hell.

Whether the contents of the book had simply been too shocking for the angel, or whether they had been destined to fall all along, Uriel personally leaned towards the latter.

Regardless, after the young angel fell, Uriel had reported the matter to God. At the time, God had been seated upon the throne in the form of a mass of white light, its radiance so dazzling that it resembled a supernova exploding. Several seraphim standing near the throne had quietly edged away, and only then did the light slowly begin to dim. Before that, it had apparently flickered several times as well, making Uriel wonder whether he had imagined it.

He reported everything that had happened truthfully, and then asked whether he should go to Hell and retrieve the book. The mass of light shifted slightly, and God’s response entered his mind.

God: God said: No. Leave it alone.

Uriel: And so Uriel returned to the library, shut himself inside for several months, and carried out a thorough deep clean on his own. That was the end of the matter.

Later, he heard that the book had remained in Hell with the fallen angel, and had therefore avoided the Day of Reset.

Eventually, during the Middle Ages of the Sixth Cycle, the book came into the possession of a witch. The witch passed it down to her descendants, generation after generation, until it eventually became a family heirloom belonging to that human’s family in the modern era.

Uriel left the library and locked the entrance. He closed his eyes. His form flickered, and then he set off towards Earth.

It took only two seconds. He appeared inside a building filled with the weight of history. It was a church, yet the air within was thick with the stench of rot and sulphur. The enormous windows had been shattered, and dim moonlight seeped through the clouds, falling faintly across the collapsed altar. Several rows of pews at the front of the nave had been pushed aside, leaving a large open space covered in symbols drawn in blood. At the centre lay a human whose abdomen had been ripped open.

The moment Uriel descended, his two pairs of wings spread first, whipping up a violent gust of wind that snuffed out every candle placed around the edges of the symbols. Starting from his bare feet, his body formed upwards: calves, knees, thighs, abdomen, chest, and finally his head. He appeared in mid-air, his bare feet landing upon the back of a mid-ranking demon that was in the process of crawling out from the remains of the human. The demon suddenly raised its head. Their eyes met. Four amber eyes blinked one after another in the darkness, like the dying embers of candles. Several women dressed in black nun’s habits and a man wearing a priest’s robes looked terrified and collectively took a step backwards.

Uriel blinked slowly, his wings still spread. He took another step, planting his foot upon the demon’s neck.

“What are you doing?” he asked, deliberately pretending not to know.

He took another step. The demon’s head was driven into the stone floor. A sword wreathed in blazing flames materialised in his hand.

“Leave.” He spoke to both the humans and the demon.

“Go back to Hell.”

He raised the sword in his hand.