At first, I’m not sure how. I spend the rest of the day reciting Revelation from memory, and when I get to Revelation 22:20—Even so, come, Lord Jesus—I rewind back to the top. The end times, measuring the Kingdom of Heaven, the woman in labor, the dragon, and the bride of the Lord. I whisper to nothing, trying to find some connection to the disease under my skin. I run my tongue over my teeth, chew on my nails, grind the bones in my hands together until they hurt. I take a wad of rags from under my pillow and cough up rot.

Is it visions of the end, or the Flood eating holes in my brain? Seraph is burning through me, readying my insides for the inevitable shattering of my human form into something blessed. It’s reached my gray matter, burrowed between my synapses, and gotten into the lobes, the neurons, all the little pieces of me, and maybe that’s why, when I squeeze my eyes shut and pray, I am given the gift of sight.

Dead New Nazareth and the blood-pink river. The crows. The trees and the underbrush. The beast of fangs, feathers, and flesh across the stream, dappled in sunlight and shadow, baring its teeth. The angel that gave the vision to John of Patmos, and the angel that gives this to me: a body twisted under God’s will into something else, winged and sacred.

Isaiah 6:2—And above him stood the seraphim. Among the trees is Seraph.

I wade into the water and climb up onto the other bank, squeezing between trees. Seraph rears back and snarls, but I whisper, “You don’t scare me.” I can make out more of it now—its blazing white eyes, the gleam of the sun on its teeth—but not much else before it clamors into the branches of old-growth trees, sending down a rain of twigs and brown leaves, a massive winding shadow disappearing farther into New Nazareth.

I follow and come out from the trees into the back of campus. The old university has been scrubbed clean of all things secular, transformed into a liminal space between the old world and our next life in the Kingdom of Heaven. For once, it lies silent. The soldier preaching in the plaza is gone. The bell doesn’t ring to call the faithful to worship. There are no women walking to the parking lots made fields, no children running through the grass. But there are still blessings painted across sprawling windows, concrete paths winding through towering buildings, trees wavering in the breeze. This was home for five years. I know New Nazareth better than I know myself.

The shadow of Seraph digs its claws into the side of a building and hauls itself up to the roof. I follow.