MARIA

  THE NEWS WERE TROUBLING, but Maria didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink, didn’t breathe too fast, didn’t let her jaw tighten. She received them with the same cold precision as if they were merely wind direction readings.

  As if it was all part of the grand design. As if she had planned it that way.

  She hadn’t.

  Maria had no idea where this army could have come from. And it was an army, whether Raphael refused to call it that or not. Too many tribes, too many banners, too many strategies woven into their movements — someone had formed them into one.

  And that someone was not her.

  What troubled her most was the presence of the Sajanos among them — a force she hadn’t yet invited into this theatre of blood. The Sajanos were always meant to be handled carefully, delicately, introduced at the right time like the sting in a masterfully paced symphony.

  Now the song was out of tune.

  And if the Sajanos were in it, then the darker Svarts — those from beyond the ancient sands in the southern end of the continent — must have crossed into the lands of men too. The deep ones. The forgotten ones.

  But why?

  There was no time to ponder. No luxury of stillness. There was only action.

  She summoned the envoys and ordered Michael XIII’s departure. His launch would proceed within the hour. She gave him his spoken instructions, clear and ceremonial, the ones he would remember and repeat to those below. Then she handed the sealed scroll — adjusted, specific, secret. Meant for Gabriel’s eyes only.

  When the chamber emptied, she stood still. Waited. Counted twenty breaths.

  Then she moved.

  The old cabinet at the back of her office opened with a precise push. Its gears groaned, gears forged when the Moon was still being fortified. Inside: the ancient console, low-frequency transmitters, equipment untouched by satellite decay and signal collapse. Wires coiled like roots around faded steel.

  She activated it. Waited for the static to stabilise.

  The speaker crackled with age and distance before a voice formed in the noise.

  “Welcome, my child,” Maria answered, her voice slow and wrapped in divine certainty. “It is I — the One and Only, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

  The static gave way to silence on Adam’s end, then:

  “What is it that you ask of me?” he said, bowing. She could not see it, but she knew it with certainty. “Speak, and I shall listen.”

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  Maria stepped back from the console, arms raised to the empty room like a prophet to the firmament.

  “Be still and know that I am your God,” she said. “I have watched you, Adam, in the wilderness of shattered time. You have wandered long among the thorns of broken men. But now I say unto you: the hour is near.”

  The device hummed, a soft mechanical breath.

  “The earth shall tremble. The sky shall split. When you see the fire light up the heavens, when the wind howls like a beast in labour, do not be afraid. That is the sign of My coming. That is the light of My will.”

  Adam breathed once, a sharp inhale swallowed by static.

  “And what must I do, my Lord? What shall we prepare?”

  Maria let her voice deepen, soften, echo with finality.

  “You shall gather your people,” she said, “and shelter them beneath the ash.”

  “And when the fire comes?” Adam asked, trembling now.

  “You will kneel,” she said. “You will raise your hands to the scorched sky and you will proclaim Hosanna in the highest. And in that moment, I shall descend upon you.”

  She leaned closer to the transmitter.

  “And unto you I shall give the greatest gift. A son. The Son of God.”

  Adam wept then, quietly. She could hear it, even through the distortion of old tech and distance.

  “Is it He?” he whispered. “The one the scriptures foretold?”

  Maria allowed herself a smile, the barest curve of divinity.

  “Yes,” she said. “The Lamb and the Lion. Born of fire, clothed in flesh. And you, Adam, shall prepare the way.”

  Static swallowed her final words like incense rising from an altar.

  “Let there be no fear. For I am with you always. Even unto the end of this world.”

  The line went dead.

  Maria closed the cabinet and stood in silence.

  The echoes of her voice still clung to the corners of the room, but inside her chest there was only stillness. Not peace, but the kind of hollow silence that followed performance. The theatre of godhood was exhausting.

  She turned slowly and crossed to the far wall, fingers trailing over polished surfaces, over the ancient wood of the desk, the obsidian casing of the communicator, the dusty spines of unread books.

  She wished that she had a god of her own. Someone to care for her. Someone to whisper the right words, to light a path where none could be seen.

  But no such voice ever came. Only paper pages written by men long dead. Relics of the old world.

  They spoke of strange matters. Republics, democracies, nuclear deterrents. Of balance and collapse. She studied them, as all Marias had before her, looking for instruction not in what was said, but in what was implied. In the gaps. In the warning signs.

  But the ancestors had left more than philosophies. More than doctrines and diagrams and scriptures.

  They had left the device.

  Maria walked to the vault hidden behind the curtain of flags and scanned her wrist. The lock released with a hiss.

  The door swung open.

  Inside, resting on a plinth of reinforced alloy, was a single object. Small. Harmless in appearance. Encased in transparent shielding. Still. Silent. But no less terrifying for it.

  The Device.

  Not a name. Not a model. Just the word. And all it implied.

  A weapon. The last weapon. Forged not merely to destroy but to end. There was no memory of what it looked like in use. There were no records. Only instructions, passed from one Maria to the next.

  Not written. Spoken. Only once, on the day of inheritance.

  She had been nineteen when she heard the words. The youngest one among them all before her. The High Chairs. The leaders.

  This is the last resort. The blade behind the curtain. To be drawn only when the game is over.

  They hadn’t wanted to bring it. Not really. But in the end, they feared one thing more than dragging the one thing with them that could easily destroy them all: that someone else would find it on Earth. Someone. Survivors, newly evolved species. Whoever.

  And so they brought it. And so it slept.

  Maria stood before the casing and placed a hand on the control panel. Her hand trembled. Just slightly.

  No one else alive had seen it. Only her.

  And now, with the world unravelling, armies shifting, tribes uniting, she wondered if the day was near. If this was the game’s end. If this was the time to draw the blade.

  But not yet.

  She closed the vault.

  The time would come. When it did, she would not hesitate.

  Because gods must not hesitate. Even the ones who had no gods of their own.

  First the Son of God, then the Judgement Day.