Nick allows himself four seconds to feel the trans bead lizard in his pocket, resting right next to his own—to center himself, to get his heartbeat back to where it needs to be. Two seconds to breathe in, two seconds to breathe out. Two seconds to pack Brother Clairborne into the deep part of his mind where he won’t come back; two seconds to reconcile the boy shivering against him with Seraph howling among monsters.

The four seconds end, and he snaps each thought off at the root and drowns them because if he doesn’t, he’ll melt down. Turns back to the bloodshed. Pulls the gun into his hands and goes through the gate.

Back to where the world is ending all over again.

One step into New Nazareth, and the crosses beside the gate are demolished in a screaming song of disintegrating wood. Nick stumbles back against the stairs, right inside the rough barrier. Twisted flesh and feathers shake off massive splinters, wailing with rage.

Benji. It’s Benji. The creature Faith was crying about is Benji.

Seraph—Benji—is terrifying in his beauty, in his brutality. That’s him? That’s the boy who wanted to kiss him, who promised to come home, who made him face the broken fucking thing the Angels had turned them both into?

Nick realizes, horrifically, that he adores that boy with every ounce of himself, in a way that refuses to be packed down and ignored like everything else, and that is why he slams his fist into the stairs to shatter his train of thought. He pulls himself back onto the wall.

He slides into place beside Aisha. She’s not going to last much longer. She looks like she’s going to break with every breath she takes. On the other side of the gate, on the other wall, Cormac and Salvador struggle to keep up with the swarm of Angels between them and Benji. This has to end soon, or they’re not going to make it. It’s up to Benji now—all the Watch has to do is make sure he survives long enough to break this place apart.

But that thing. That fucking thing.

Brother Clairborne, or what’s left of him.