Title: The Last IncantationPart I: The Man Beneath the Wings

  The desert had no memory of mercy. For forty days, the wind howled across the brittle sand, gnawing at the bones of the nd like a beast unsatisfied. Yet in the heart of this barren expanse stood a figure — wrapped in tattered robes of ochre and ash, head crowned with feathers and beads, his staff buried in cracked earth like a challenge to the sky.

  They called him Ishamel, though he no longer remembered if that had ever been his true name. In another life — a thousand moons ago — he had been a medicine man, a healer, a bridge between breath and spirit. But now, he was something else. Something that even the earth refused to name.

  He stood before a half-buried ruin, stone cracked and etched with forgotten glyphs, waiting.

  Waiting for the angel to return.

  The first time the angel came, Ishamel was young — reckless, burning with questions and wine. He had summoned it with the blood of a white crow and a chant in a tongue stolen from a dream. The creature had descended not in golden light but in silence — bck wings stretched like veils across the stars, its face both terrible and beautiful.

  "I am not your god," it had said. "But I remember Him."

  That night, the angel whispered the names of pnts that grew only in moonlight, and the roots that bled truth. Ishamel had learned. Healed. Led. For years, he became a prophet in the dust, wandering tribes seeking him like water.

  But heaven keeps no debts. And when he asked the angel to bring back his son — taken by fever and hollow breath — it vanished.

  Now, decades ter, he summoned it again.

  Tonight, the stars burned with strange hunger. Ishamel drew a circle of salt, ash, and dried rose thorns. Inside it, he pced a withered page from the Book of Enoch — stolen from a monastery that no longer stands — and a lock of his own grey hair.

  He whispered the forgotten name again.

  The sky cracked.

  Not thunder. Not fire. A sound like reality bending in mourning.

  Then he saw it.

  Descending, not with wings this time — but with bleeding feet and empty eyes.

  The angel.

  And behind it, shadows in robes of scripture, murmuring in broken tongues.

  Not all angels serve light.

  Part II: The Gospel of Ashes

  The angel hovered just beyond the salt ring, its presence unsettling the stillness like heat above a funeral pyre. Its wings were ragged now, frayed like ancient parchment, and its once-glowing face was pale — etched with cracks that wept golden ichor.

  “Ishamel,” it said, voice softer than memory. “You’ve called me again. Knowing the price.”

  “I remember the price,” Ishamel rasped. “But I’ve come to ask something different.”

  The angel’s head tilted. The shadows behind it shifted, murmuring — their bodies indistinct, like ink spilled across the edges of creation.

  “You dare to ask less?” it whispered.

  “No. I ask for truth.”

  The angel blinked slowly. A gust of wind blew across the desert, lifting grains of salt and ash — yet the circle remained unbroken. Protected.

  “I’ve read your gospel,” Ishamel said, reaching into his satchel with trembling hands. He drew out the torn Book of Enoch, brittle and bloodstained. “The pages speak of Watchers… of the children they sired. Of forbidden knowledge. I see their touch in every dream I’ve ever had.”

  The angel stepped forward, toeing the salt edge. It did not cross.

  “You are not of the blood,” it said.

  “No,” Ishamel agreed. “But my son was.”

  The murmuring grew louder. The shadows quivered, some reaching — long fingers of smoke and judgment.

  “I buried him beneath the sacred fig. But three nights ago, he came to me in a vision. His eyes were glowing… and his mouth full of stars.”

  The angel knelt, the movement so fluid it barely stirred the sand. It looked up at Ishamel, and for a moment, the desert disappeared. All he saw was light — not divine, but terrible. A brightness that seared the soul instead of saving it.

  “He was cimed,” it whispered. “One of the Nephilim. Bound to the fault line between heaven and earth. Between obedience and defiance.”

  Ishamel’s throat clenched.

  “I want him back.”

  “You can’t have him,” the angel said, “but you can go to him.”

  The wind howled, and the shadows screamed — words that tore at Ishamel’s ears. Names. Names of old. Names never meant for mortal tongues.

  The medicine man fell to his knees.

  “Then show me the way,” he breathed.

  The angel extended its hand, long and thin — fingers ending in gssy tips that shimmered with script. Biblical runes swam beneath its skin.

  “You must cross the threshold,” it said. “Drink from the cup. And forget everything but purpose.”

  Behind it, the shadows parted — revealing a gate made of bone and prayer.

  And Ishamel — once a healer, then a heretic — stepped beyond the salt, past the angel, and into the path of the forgotten.

  He did not look back.

  Part III: The Hall of Broken Gods

  The Gate behind the angel led into silence.

  Not mere absence of sound — but a silence alive, pressing against Ishamel’s skin like water, whispering things he could no longer pretend not to hear.

  The path was carved through obsidian stone. Above him, vaulted arches twisted like frozen smoke, etched with symbols not meant for mortal comprehension. Some were hieroglyphs, others spirals of divine script. But at their core, Ishamel sensed something older.

  Something Greco-Roman.

  As he walked, he passed statues.

  Gods, chained.

  Ares, bound with serpent-rope, face half-buried in the floor. Athena — her eyes hollow, wisdom leeched from her skull. Dionysus, mouth sewn shut. Names once worshipped, now forgotten. Each of them imprisoned — not by chains, but by the weight of being unnecessary. Repced.

  Forsaken.

  “They were not defeated,” said a voice beside him.

  The angel had returned, walking now in human form — simple robes, no wings. But the light in its eyes still flickered with gaxies.

  “They were dismissed.”

  “By your kind?” Ishamel asked.

  “No,” the angel said. “By yours.”

  He stopped.

  “Humans?”

  “Faith is not a currency of heaven,” the angel said. “It is a weapon. You forget a god, and you wound it. You scorn it, and it rots.”

  Ishamel looked back at the chained immortals — gods once mighty, now withered. Some wept. Others stared, empty.

  “Why show me this?”

  “Because your son walks among them.”

  The angel led him to a chamber shaped like a wheel — twelve spokes of stone radiating from a central pit. In its heart, a boy knelt. His back bare, scarred with celestial runes. His hair long, bck as crows’ feathers. And though his body was young, his eyes — when he looked up — were ancient.

  “My son…” Ishamel whispered.

  But the boy did not speak.

  Not with words.

  Images flooded Ishamel’s mind — memories not his own. Chains. Fires. Camps in the dust. Men in metal masks branding others like cattle.

  And amidst them, the boy — carrying the memories of svery, not as a victim, but as a vessel.

  “The Nephilim,” the angel said, “were never free. They were bred for war. Born with wings they were never allowed to use.”

  Ishamel sank to his knees.

  “Can I release him?”

  “No,” said another voice — not the angel’s.

  An old man stepped forward from the shadows, wrapped in furs and bone beads. His face was weathered, paint across his cheeks in the shape of a hawk’s wings.

  “Ishamel,” the man said in the nguage of the desert winds. “You cannot free what does not remember it is caged.”

  The old man carried a drum.

  With each beat, the air rippled. And Ishamel saw — for a heartbeat — his own reflection wearing a headdress of antlers, eyes glowing with wolf light.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I am the memory of your ancestors. You’ve forgotten who you were before you called angels. Before you read Latin in stone or Hebrew in ash.”

  He pointed to the boy.

  “If you want to save him, you must dream as they once dreamed. Walk as you once walked.”

  The angel stood silent.

  And Ishamel understood.

  To save his son, he had to unbind not just his spirit — but his story.

  He took the drum.

  And he began to beat.

  Part IV: Dream of the Hollow Sky

  The drumbeat was steady — soft at first, like distant thunder crawling across the skin of the world. Ishamel sat cross-legged in the circle of ash, the old man behind him, chanting in a tongue that reached beyond nguage. The angel watched in silence, fading slowly until it became a shimmer in the periphery of vision — as if it had never been anything more than memory.

  Smoke rose from the herbs Ishamel burned — white sage, bitterroot, and a shard of dried serpent scale. The air thickened. The chamber blurred.

  And then the world cracked open.

  He found himself standing in a forest that breathed.

  Not with wind — but with spirit.

  Leaves whispered stories in forgotten tongues. Trees pulsed faintly with light, as if the stars had taken root beneath their bark. Ishamel’s hands were painted in symbols he hadn’t drawn. Across his chest, the mark of a hawk.

  A presence moved through the woods. Not a beast, not a man. Something else.

  Then it came.

  A white bison.

  Its eyes held storms.

  Its breath shaped snowfkes.

  It stopped before him and bowed its head. Without thinking, Ishamel mirrored the gesture.

  “You seek to free a soul,” the bison said. “But your own is bound in chains of forgetting.”

  “I remember him,” Ishamel said. “I remember—”

  “No. You remember pain. Not truth.”

  The bison’s gaze pierced him.

  “You were not always a man of books and Latin chants. Once, your people walked with sky spirits. You buried your dead in fire and sang their names until the stars echoed them back. You knew bance. Now you crave power.”

  Ishamel lowered his head.

  “I only want him back.”

  The forest darkened.

  Behind the bison, the trees parted.

  And there, bound to a totem of bone and bronze, was his son.

  But not the boy he remembered.

  The being before him was taller — cloaked in feathers and iron, wings broken and bound, eyes empty as old altars.

  “My son!” he cried, running forward.

  But a coyote stepped into his path — fur silver, eyes golden.

  “Would you tear him from the dreaming before he’s whole?” it asked.

  Ishamel trembled.

  “What must I do?”

  The coyote grinned.

  “Walk the path he walked. Feel the chains on your own skin. Die, if needed.”

  The totem burst into fme.

  The boy screamed — and from his chest, light poured like molten gold.

  Ishamel fell to his knees.

  The drumbeat returned, now from within him.

  He reached out—

  And the world shattered.

  He woke gasping.

  Still in the chamber. The angel was gone.

  The old man knelt beside him.

  “You have seen,” he said simply.

  Ishamel’s hands were still painted.

  But now, beneath the paint — scars.

  Fresh.

  And the boy?

  He was gone.

  Only a feather remained where he had knelt — not white, but bck and gold.

  A sign.

  The journey was not over.

  It had only begun.

  Part V: The Roots Beyond Stars

  Days passed, though Ishamel no longer trusted the sun.

  He wandered the ruins beyond the angelic gate — a shattered realm where time unravelled like worn thread. He slept beneath silent moons, dreamed of stars that wept, and listened to echoes of prayers never answered.

  The boy — his son — was gone.

  But not lost.

  Each night, Ishamel dreamed of a tree.

  Vast. Rooted in nebue. Crowned with gaxies.

  A voice told him its name: Caledh Rún — the Celtic Root, whispered across cultures and worlds. Known by many names. Yggdrasil. Irminsul. The Axis.

  But this version was... alive. Growing across dimensions. Each branch a world, each leaf a soul.

  And in the dreams, he saw it burn.

  One night, Ishamel awoke to firelight.

  Not real fire — but memory.

  He stood in a vilge that no longer existed. Stone huts, meadows filled with singing. Men with blue spirals painted on their arms. Women weaving charms into the wind. Celtic chants echoed, braided with starlight.

  But then came the smoke.

  And the soldiers.

  Banners of a holy empire. Torches. Iron masks.

  The Inquisition.

  They came not with questions, but with decrees. Truth was no longer truth unless sanctioned.

  Ishamel saw himself — or a version of himself — dragged before a pyre.

  “You consort with spirits,” a voice thundered. “You dream without permission.”

  He looked up.

  The inquisitor wore robes of stars. His face — hollow. His eyes, gaxies turned cold.

  “This is not just Earth’s past,” said a woman beside him — tall, robed in ivy and starlight. Her skin shimmered with consteltions, but her accent was old Gaelic.

  “This is every world. Every soul that remembers the old ways. The root must burn so the empire can reign.”

  “Who are you?” Ishamel asked.

  She pced a hand to his chest.

  “The memory of those who would not kneel.”

  When he awoke, the feather was gone.

  In its pce: a branch.

  Bckened.

  Yet alive.

  A single leaf shimmered at its tip — glowing faintly with the same light that had filled his son's chest.

  A whisper followed the wind:

  “Find the branch-keepers. Before the fme does.”

  And for the first time, Ishamel knew.

  This was no longer just a quest for one soul.

  It was a war for all of them.

  Part VI: Keeper of the Hollow Grove

  The branch pulsed in Ishamel’s hands — a slow, rhythmic heartbeat, like that of a sleeping beast.

  He wandered through nds that shimmered between dimensions — one step in desert stone, the next in frost-covered heather, the next on an obsidian bridge suspended over a nebu. The realms bled into one another, each echoing fragments of forgotten myths.

  Eventually, the branch led him to the Hollow Grove.

  It stood on the edge of a dying moon — the trees grown from stardust and sorrow, their roots entangled in memory, their leaves shedding not in seasons, but in stories. Whispers echoed through the grove: lulbies in nguages no longer spoken, prayers of mothers long turned to ash.

  There, at the grove’s center, stood the Keeper.

  She was neither young nor old — cloaked in bark and silver moss, her eyes twin moons suspended in bck. Around her neck hung charms made of bone, feather, and gss meteorite.

  “I know you,” she said, before Ishamel spoke.

  He bowed low.

  “You carry the burn-mark of Caledh Rún,” she continued. “And the question no man should ever ask.”

  “Will you answer it?” he asked.

  “No,” she said softly. “But I will show you how to survive it.”

  The Keeper walked with him through the grove, each tree they passed showing scenes from distant worlds: a celestial dragon coiled around a temple of salt; a thunder god weeping beneath a shattered mountain; a Native boy — young, painted — dreaming beneath a buffalo robe as machines tore apart his sacred nds.

  “All stories live in the Tree,” she said. “But when the Inquisition of Stars began, the Empire sought to prune.”

  “They feared truth?” Ishamel asked.

  “They feared contradiction. The idea that more than one dream could be sacred.”

  At a clearing, she stopped. Raised a hand.

  A mirror formed — not of gss, but of polished void.

  “Look.”

  He saw himself — cloaked in feathers, then in chains, then in starlight. He saw his son — screaming in a prison not of bars, but dogma. He saw angels with broken halos, gods devoured by bureaucracy, and children burned for the sin of remembering.

  Then he saw something else.

  A fme.

  Not destructive — but cleansing. A fire that burned only lies.

  The Keeper pced the branch into that fire.

  It turned white.

  “I name you a Witness now,” she whispered.

  “And I name your son…”

  She touched Ishamel’s forehead.

  “…the Heir of Unwritten Lore.”

  Ishamel colpsed, overwhelmed.

  When he awoke, the Keeper was gone.

  In his hand, the branch remained — transformed.

  Glowing white, humming with power.

  And carved into his palm, in a script older than stars:

  “One Keeper remains. One Truth undone.”

  Part VII: The City That Painted Silence

  The branch led Ishamel beyond stars and roots, through fractures in time where even the angels forgot to look. Eventually, he arrived at a pce he never thought he’d find in the in-between: a city.

  It was beautiful.

  Vibrant towers curved like brushstrokes against a periwinkle sky. Murals covered every surface — swirling gaxies, animals in motion, lovers embracing beneath twin moons. Music floated from balconies, dancers spun across bridges of light.

  It was a city of art.

  A sanctuary for exiles, dreamers, outcasts.

  No kings. No gods.

  Only the Council.

  He was welcomed by the citizens — kind faces, open arms, food grown in gardens that climbed the walls. Ishamel learned the city was built on communal living. Every need met, not through coin, but through contribution. Artists taught children, engineers designed floating farms, healers sang illness away.

  It was paradise.

  Almost.

  But then he saw the signs.

  A dancer’s performance abruptly stopped when she began to channel visions of a winged child. The murals depicting gods were quietly painted over by the night crews. A poet was exiled for invoking the name Caledh Rún in verse.

  Ishamel asked.

  And they warned him.

  “We don't speak of roots here,” one said, “only branches we can manage.”

  The Council called it economic bance — managing finances of memory and myth. Dreaming too much was destabilizing. Prophets brought unrest. History could not be allowed to provoke rebellion.

  “We are free,” a sculptor whispered, “but only if we forget what freedom cost.”

  Ishamel stood before the central monument: a colossal statue of an androgynous figure, its face bnk, its hands lifted — not in prayer, but in silencing.

  He raised the white branch.

  Immediately, arms rang — not metal, but mental. A pulse of psychic pressure, trying to still his thoughts.

  But Ishamel had seen too much.

  He drove the branch into the base of the statue.

  The earth cracked.

  Light bled from beneath the city — roots hidden deep beneath painted marble.

  And then, a voice echoed from below.

  “Ishamel…”

  It was his son.

  Trapped beneath paradise.

  Buried under compromise.

  He fell to his knees.

  The citizens gathered, silent. Some horrified. Some weeping. Others… remembering.

  The murals began to change — no longer abstract swirls, but scenes of gods unchained, angels weeping, mothers dreaming.

  The city trembled.

  But did not fall.

  Only opened.

  A gate emerged from beneath the statue.

  And behind it, the final Keeper waited.

  Dressed in rags made of scripture and stars, face veiled in strands of musical notation.

  A being of both harmony and heresy.

  The one who remembered everything.

  Part VIII: The Keeper Without a Name

  The gate opened with a whisper, not a roar — as if reality itself feared disturbing what y beyond. Ishamel stepped inside, leaving behind the city of colour, music, and curated truths. Within, it was dark. Not from the absence of light, but from the presence of something more.

  The walls were made of thought. Of echoes. Of moments that had never happened — but could have.

  At the center stood a figure.

  Neither young nor old. Neither man nor woman.

  Cd in a robe woven from notes no bard had sung in millennia. A veil covered their face — threads made from dead nguages: Celtic, Sumerian, Navajo. And behind the veil, eyes like twin eclipses held the gravity of memory.

  “Ishamel,” the figure said — not aloud, but as a resonance deep in his chest.“You are te. But not too te.”

  “Who are you?” Ishamel asked softly.

  The figure lifted a hand.

  A sliver of the veil fell away. Just enough for Ishamel to glimpse — himself.

  Not a reflection. Not an illusion.

  A possibility.

  The healer he might have remained. The father he could have been. The fme he still carried.

  “I am the self you silenced when you chose answers over questions,” the Keeper said.“I am what remains when the medicine man becomes the heretic… and the father becomes the fire.”

  Ishamel trembled.

  He understood.

  This was not a Keeper.

  This was himself — from another branch of the tree. From another dream, where he had never followed the angel, never sought forbidden truths, never demanded resurrection.

  But remembered everything.

  “And my son?” Ishamel whispered.

  The Keeper reached into the space between moments and withdrew a ring.

  Woven from white wood and bck metal, entwined like breath and shadow.

  “He is not what you think. He is more. Because of you.”“You gave him memory. Now give him choice.”

  Ishamel took the ring.

  And time... paused.

  He stood once more in the desert.

  The golden sun scorched the horizon. Above him, a winged figure descended — neither fully angel nor fully mortal. Half-light, half-shadow. And in its eyes: his son.

  “Father,” the voice said from the sky,“I remember everything.”

  Ishamel lifted the ring.

  And offered it to the light.

  There was no fsh.

  No thunder.

  Only silence.

  And within that silence… the Tree began to grow again.

  Not among the stars.

  But within the heart.

  The End(or perhaps, only the beginning…)