From the diary of Michaela Archangelus

September 29th, Year of Our Lord 2026

I have witnessed the heavens torn asunder, not by the thunderous decree of the Almighty, but by the stolen fire of frail, desperate men. When the heat of Egypt’s weapon unmade the horizon beyond Jerusalem, it did not merely swallow our vanguard—ten thousand crusaders turned to drifting ash between two beats of my heart—it defied the natural order of creation itself. For ages uncounted, I held the scales and brandished the flaming sword against primordial rebellion, yet never did Lucifer craft a ruin so indiscriminate, so blasphemously bright.

The earth beneath my greaves is glass now, smoking with the bitter stench of split atoms, and my celestial mantle is stained with irradiated dust. I was sent to guide mortals through righteous battle, but standing in this silent, burning hollow, I look upon the ruins of our hosts and realise with a terrible tremor that man has finally forged the power to rival hell itself.

September 30th, Year of Our Lord 2026

I descended upon the Eternal City beneath a shroud of pallid skies, my wings heavy with the dust of the Levant.

The corridors of the Vatican were thick with shadows and the venomous whispers of the Curia, men casting their eyes to the cold marble as if their furtive glances could hide the schemes already hatching to crown a successor.

But when I reached the papal chambers to bear tidings of Jerusalem’s ruin, I found not a shepherd awaiting council, but the broken vessel of a beloved father. Red lay cold upon his couch, his neck bruised with the cruel marks of strangulation; he was a gentle soul, a righteous servant, and celestial tears spilled from my eyes onto his lifeless hands. When I confronted the Camerlengo in a tempest of grief and commanded fresh legions and steel to be marshalled for the East, he cowered, whispering that the ancient sinews of the Church were severed and that Rome could bleed no longer.

Righteous fury ignited within my breast, a flame colder than winter and sharper than any forged blade. As I strode from those poisoned halls, a furtive voice in the colonnade whispered of a conspirator lurking in the city's underbelly—a man preaching either the bitter poison of treason or the desperate embers of our reclaimed strength. Let him speak what is in his heart, for I go now to draw him into the unyielding light. Until a soul worthy of the Fisherman's ring is anointed by Heaven's will, the sword of the Almighty rests in my hands, and I shall be both the law and the reckoning.