Reckoning, p.1
Reckoning, page 1
Reckoning
Book 4 in the Of Brimstone & Halos Saga
The Of Brimstone & Halos Saga
Book Four
Isadora Brown
Contents
1. Everly
2. Walton
3. Everly
4. Walton
5. Everly
6. Walton
7. Everly
8. Walton
9. Everly
10. Walton
11. Everly
12. Walton
13. Everly
14. Walton
15. Everly
16. Walton
17. Everly
18. Walton
19. Everly
20. Walton
21. Everly
22. Walton
23. Everly
24. Walton
25. Everly
26. Walton
27. Everly
28. Walton
29. Everly
30. Walton
31. Everly
32. Walton
33. Everly
34. Everly
35. Walton
Epilogue
Newsletter Information
Did You Like Reclamation?
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Everly
The hum was the first thing I noticed.
Low and constant, like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. It buzzed beneath me, inside me, around me. I didn’t know if I was lying down or floating—my body felt far away, like it had decided to leave me behind. I tried to open my eyes, but everything was washed in white. Blinding, clinical light. The kind that didn’t flicker like torches or cast warm, dancing shadows. These lights weren’t meant for comfort. They were meant for control.
My skin prickled. The air tasted like metal and bleach and something bitter underneath—something too clean to be safe. I tried to shift, to move my fingers, but they felt like marble, stiff and cold. Everything smelled wrong. I wanted to smell stone and smoke and Elise’s lavender oil. Not this.
I think I drifted again.
“We’re home now.”
Michael’s voice cut through the haze next. Gentle. Measured. Almost sweet, if I didn’t know better.
Home.
That word clung to me like wet cloth, heavy and suffocating. His voice was soft the way you’d talk to a child or a pet or something that didn’t need to understand—only obey. And maybe he thought I didn’t understand. Maybe I didn’t, not really.
The doors opened with a whisper. Not the heavy groan of iron scraping against stone like I was used to. No, these moved like they had nothing to hide.
Bright light spilled into the transport, burning through my closed lids until I forced my eyes open.
White halls stretched endlessly, so polished they reflected everything like mirrors. Symbols were carved into the floor—runes I recognized but couldn’t name in the moment, twisted in some sharper, colder pattern than I remembered. They pulsed faintly with energy. It felt like standing inside a prayer written by someone who had never believed.
Security drones glided along the ceiling like vultures in a chapel. I couldn’t hear them, but I knew they saw me. I felt it in the way my skin tightened, like my body knew it wasn’t supposed to be here.
Not anymore.
Everything was spotless. Immaculate. Like nothing bad had ever happened here. Like it was incapable of mess, of sin, of blood.
But I remembered.
I remembered the Sanctum, the fire in the Runes, Elise’s laughter, the warmth of our bunk. How Elise betrayed me.
And Walton.
My body trilled at the mere thought…
God, I missed him.
And I knew—no matter what Michael said—this wasn’t home.
Not anymore.
The elevator doors opened with a hiss.
The light hit me first—so bright it sliced straight through the veil of my dizziness. I flinched, or at least I thought I did. It was hard to tell what was real and what was just my brain playing tricks on me again. My vision blurred at the edges, softening the outlines of the world like a dream I didn’t want to be in.
But then everything sharpened, too fast and too much.
White halls. White ceilings. White floors.
Perfect, glistening, endless.
My breath caught in my throat.
Symbols etched into the ground beneath us shimmered with power—Runes I knew in my bones. Ancient, divine, merciless. I’d knelt beside them. Bled on them. Prayed with trembling hands, whispering Elise’s name under my breath like it could save us both. My heart pounded so loud I thought it might rupture the sterile calm around me.
I smelled stone and ash, but that wasn’t real—it was memory. The walls weren’t rock anymore. They were metal and glass and cruelty disguised as purity. But my mind filled in the gaps: the Sanctum of Glyphs, Elise’s voice echoing off ancient walls, the cold scrape of runes under my palms, the warmth of her hand guiding mine.
Elise. Elise.
“No,” I whispered. The sound barely made it past my lips. “No, no, no, no—please.”
The drone of security units filled the air, subtle but suffocating. Machines hovered above us like silent watchers, glowing eyes tracking every movement. My breath came faster. I stumbled backward, but there was nowhere to go. Just Michael’s steady hand on my arm, guiding me forward like this was some kind of homecoming instead of a sentence.
“I—I can’t,” I choked out, struggling against the pressure in my chest. “Don’t take me down there. Please, not underground. Not again.”
I felt the floor tilting under me, even though it hadn’t moved. I couldn’t breathe. The walls were too clean, too quiet. No smoke. No warmth. No freedom.
Just the bunker all over again.
Only this time, Elise wasn’t here.
She was gone.
Someone else.
This time, I was alone.
“I can’t go back underground,” I said louder, maybe to Michael, maybe to the others, maybe to God. My voice cracked. “Please. Please don’t make me.”
But the elevator had already delivered me to the gates of my new cage.
And they were already closing behind me.
“No—no, stop—please don’t!”
I screamed until my throat ripped raw; the sound bouncing off the white walls and disappearing like it didn’t matter. I thrashed in Michael’s grip, kicking at his shins, trying to twist away. My hands clawed at the smooth, immaculate walls—no edges, no seams, just sterile perfection. My nails scraped against them uselessly, leaving behind nothing. Nothing.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
Air rasped in and out in these tiny, jagged gasps. My lungs locked up. The lights overhead spun. My chest seized like I was drowning in clean, recycled air. I tried to press myself into a corner, to vanish, to make myself so small they’d forget I existed.
But Michael didn’t forget.
His arm wrapped around me like a vice. Calm. Steady. Unyielding.
“You’re safe,” he said, almost kindly. Almost like he meant it. His voice was soft, like something meant to soothe a child. “You’re just overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed.
As if that word could contain the terror screaming inside my skull.
I kicked harder, twisting with everything I had. My shoulder slammed into the wall as he pivoted, hard enough that stars burst behind my eyes. He didn’t flinch.
His grip tightened until I cried out. I could feel bruises blooming beneath his fingers—like ink spills across skin.
“Let me go!” I sobbed. “Please, I don’t want to go back underground! I don’t want to go!”
Michael didn’t say anything. He just lifted me—like I weighed nothing—and carried me down the white hallway. His arms were like iron, steady and terrifying, as if he thought this was love. Or mercy.
My fists pounded against him, weak and frantic. My legs kicked. I bit down on a scream, then another. My whole body burned with the need to run, to run back to the light, to the surface, to Walton.
But Walton wasn’t here.
And suddenly I wasn’t twenty-three anymore. I was nine.
And it was the first time they made me kneel in the Sanctum.
And I’d cried so hard I threw up on the stones, and Elise had held me in her arms after. Whispered stories in my ear. Told me I was brave. Told me I’d be okay.
I wasn’t okay.
I never had been.
“Please,” I whimpered, my voice breaking into pieces. “I want to go home. I want my husband. I don’t want to go back.”
I didn’t remember when I stopped fighting.
Maybe it was when my muscles gave out. Maybe when I realized I wasn’t winning. Or maybe it was when the silence settled — not real silence, but that clinical kind, the kind that hums through vents and electric pulses and security systems. It was the silence of places where nothing natural is allowed to survive.
Michael’s arms were still around me, carrying me like I was something precious. Or breakable. Or already broken.
The walls stretched endlessly on either side—white, seamless, glowing faintly from within. But they weren’t blank. Not really.
Every few feet, scripture had been carved directly into the walls—verses in celestial script and Common Tongue. Commandments. Oaths. Decrees. Words about purity. Submission. Obedience. My eyes caught on one as we passed: “The obedient shall inherit the flame of heaven.” It made my st omach turn.
Between the scripture, there were glyphs. Familiar ones. Protection. Judgment. Cleansing. I recognized them from the Sanctum—only here they weren’t taught; they were imposed. Built in. Watching.
Like the cameras in the corners of the ceiling, turning to follow us. Quiet red lights blinking. Recording everything.
“This is just protocol,” Michael murmured, as if reading my thoughts. “You’ll get used to it.”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy trying not to throw up.
He turned a corner, and I saw it—the chapel.
It wasn’t like the prayer rooms in the old bunker, dusty and dim with rusted altars and old candles. No. This place gleamed.
The floors were gold-veined marble. The walls shimmered like pearl. The entire front wall was dominated by a massive throne—hand-carved, golden, obscene in its grandeur. The backrest was covered in images of wings and spears, suffering and ecstasy. It sat beneath a stained glass dome that filtered the sterile light into beams of divine propaganda.
Panels of colored glass lined the walls: Michael slaying demons with his flaming blade. Michael baptizing women in holy fire. Michael lifting supplicant brides into his arms while lesser men burned in the background.
Every inch of it was perfect. Sterile. Devoted.
And deeply wrong.
Statues lined the walls, tall and pale and smooth—Michael in every possible role: the warrior, the father, the savior. His eyes followed me no matter where I looked. Every face was his.
Every wall was him.
The air smelled like frankincense and control.
It wasn’t a chapel. It was a lab for souls. A test. A trap.
And I was already failing.
We stopped in front of a door. Michael pressed a button, and it slid open with a quiet hiss, and I stepped inside on legs that still trembled, my palms stinging from where I’d clawed the walls.
"Your room," Michael murmured.
But it wasn’t mine. It didn’t feel like it belonged to anyone human.
The floor gleamed — a pale, polished surface so spotless I could see the distorted reflection of my face in it. No dust, no cracks, not a single hair or scuff or shadow. It made my skin crawl. Nothing should be this clean unless it was meant to be dissected.
The cot sat in the center like an accusation. Metal frame. Bolted down. Thin mattress tucked beneath tight, white sheets — the kind that crinkled when you touched them, the kind that smelled like bleach and stillness. No pillows. No softness. It didn’t invite sleep. It dared you to rest.
A sink was built into the wall beside it, just deep enough to wash your hands or maybe your sins, but there was no mirror. Of course not. Couldn’t have anyone looking themselves in the eye in a place like this.
Across from the cot was a small table. Polished wood, beautifully carved—too beautiful for a room like this. Almost holy. And in its center, like a crown on a too-clean altar, was a single object: a leather-bound Bible.
The gold-foil lettering gleamed like teeth.
I didn’t touch it.
I looked up, suddenly, and locked eyes with the blinking red light in the corner of the ceiling. The camera. Always watching. Even in here.
Especially in here.
They gave me luxury and stripped away choice. A palace-shaped prison. That was what this was.
The walls were smooth. The corners curved, gentle and soft. There was nothing sharp, nothing personal. Nothing mine.
And I hated it.
I hated it instantly.
I backed toward the cot and sat slowly, my fists clenched in my lap. I didn’t cry, not here. I wouldn’t give them that.
But inside?
Inside I was screaming again.
Because this wasn’t safety.
This wasn’t sanctuary.
This was just another Sanctum—with prettier lighting and better funding.
And I knew exactly what happened to girls who stayed in places like this too long.
Michael moved like a prayer: composed, quiet, inevitable. I stayed frozen on the edge of the cot, hands tight in my lap, spine rigid like if I sat still enough, I might disappear into the walls.
He knelt beside me.
His robes barely rustled. Light seemed to cling to him, glowing softly at the edges of his skin. Like he was lit from the inside out. Like holiness incarnate.
And still, I couldn’t breathe.
“This is where your new life begins,” he said, voice low, reverent.
My heart stuttered.
“You will be purified.”
I flinched, just slightly.
“You will lie with me.”
My stomach turned to ice.
“You will be my wife.”
Each sentence dropped like a stone into water, sending ripples I couldn’t control.
“We will bring forth the New Seraphim,” he continued, gaze serene. “Holy children. Born of holy union.”
“I—” I tried to speak, to interrupt, to ask why, to say no, but he didn’t stop.
His voice only grew softer.
“You were chosen.”
My throat tightened.
“Not corrupted.”
My hands trembled.
“Not broken.”
He reached up then, slowly, like he was touching something sacred.
“You will be made sacred again.”
His fingers brushed my cheek.
And I flinched so hard I nearly fell backward.
He froze.
Just for a moment.
But I saw it. The flash of something in his eyes—something flickering behind the glow. Disappointment? Irritation? Surprise that I wasn’t honored? That I didn’t fall to my knees and thank him for saving me?
I pressed myself back against the wall, breath caught between sob and scream. My skin burned where he’d touched it. Not from pain. From violation.
This wasn’t love. This wasn’t devotion.
This was possession.
He knelt there still, unmoved, patient.
Holy.
And I realized, in that moment, that to Michael, this was love. This was mercy.
And that terrified me more than anything.
Because men like him didn’t hurt you in anger.
They hurt you with faith.
And they believed they were saving you while they did it.
“You can’t do this,” I said, my voice low but shaking. “I’m married. I belong to someone else.”
Michael stilled.
The light around him didn’t dim—but something in his face did. Something cold and vast cracked open beneath the surface of all that practiced serenity. He turned his head slightly, and when he spoke again, his voice was like ice sliding beneath my skin.
“That creature is not your husband.” His words rang with disgust. Not anger. Not pain. Just certainty. “That union is not sanctified. It is not of God.”
My heart pounded, but I didn’t look away. “He sees my heart,” I whispered. “He knows I love him.”
Something flickered in Michael’s expression—almost pity. “God would never recognize your desecration with a demon.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I didn’t get the chance.
The slap came like punctuation.
A single, open-handed blow.
Not vicious. Not wild. Just… deliberate. Controlled.
My head snapped to the side. My cheek burned. My whole body jolted, stunned by the sound more than the force. Not enough to bruise, not really.
Just enough to make a point.
“You will unlearn this filth,” he said softly.
Then he stood, slow and graceful, like he hadn’t just hit me. He smoothed his cuffs with an infuriating calm.
Straightened his collar.
And gestured toward the table.
“Learn your place.”
Then he turned and walked out, robes trailing in his wake like smoke.
The door sealed with a hiss.
