Archangel. A being the size of a building, skin shining like the moon. Beautiful, ineffable, terrible to behold.

Yet as Misery’s vision clears, she realizes it is no creature. Its soft edges take on resolution. Precise, engineered lines. A fighter, a mech. A seraph.

The thing before her is an archangel mech.

Archangel: Eater of Sorrows, Eighth Form of the Divine. The existence of archangel mechs has only been guessed at, gleaned from sacred murals where other war machines were discovered—seraphim and warships and jump portals. In the history and breadth of the Empire, a real unit has never been found. Until now.

Misery’s skull sings. Her blood is aflame. This is no delusion. The nullvoid cannot thrive in the presence of such holiness. This here is the touch of the Forge Hirself. She stumbles forward, hands clasped to her chest, soul filled with unutterable light. The archangel calls to her.

It’s hers, isn’t it? This is what she had been sent to pilot. An archangel. A glorious machine to turn the tide of war.

The mech descends to the floor, coming to rest in a hollow that surrounds its form perfectly. The remnants of the sarcophagus it slept in for void knows how long. On either side of the hollow’s opening, stone walls branch outward in thin filaments, light as ice. In front of it hovers the pod that contains Alodia Lightning’s body.

The archangel mech waits for her in its glacial thicket. Compelled by awe, Misery goes to the husk of the sarcophagus. It’s not a long journey, but it seems to take forever. Every footfall is sacred. Holy books will write of this precise path she’s walking in ages to come. Misery reaches the bottom of the cocoon, where the first strut of the stone filaments bars her at chest height. The feet of the archangel are enormous, each splayed toe larger than Misery is. She looks up. The heart of the archangel—where the pilot’s pod must be—seems impossibly far away.

She grips the bottom strut of the ladder formed by the sarcophagus stone. Pushes herself off the floor and finds that it holds weight.

Misery climbs.

It’s a long way up, but this is demanded of her. She must. The filaments are perfectly spaced for the scale of Misery’s dismal human body. Her muscles start burning as she crosses the threshold of the archangel’s many knees. She keeps climbing. Past the waist of the mech. Past the hovering specter of Alodia Lightning’s stone cocoon. Her breath burns her airways and chest.

Still she continues. Her limbs shake with near-collapse by the time she draws level with the archangel’s heart. A deep, wide slit bisects the mech’s chest between its set of arms. Misery slides along the length of the rungs until she’s positioned above the center of the archangel mech.