The Stitch Between Us

A brand new Seraph stood in the plaza above her, taller than any man, armor gilded and gleaming in the sunlight. Its eyes glowed white, face serene, as though suffering were a thing it had never known. The crowd fell to their knees. Priests burned incense in golden braziers in its honor, the smoke carrying a bitter scent of frankincense and crushed roses that made Iria’s throat tighten.

“Behold the perfection of Calora,” the priest sang. "Behold our safety and salvation!"

Iria stared at the Seraph’s hands. They were stitched together, faint white lines circling the wrists like bracelets made of scars. She tugged at her brother's sleeve, whispering, “That’s not perfection, that’s wrong.”

Kael hushed her. “Don’t be so loud.”

Years later, when a Seraph’s sword shaped the rest of her life while ending Kael’s in a nonsense border raid, the bitter scent of ceremonial incense clung to Iria’s memory.

The river had carried him home. His body washed up against the reeds, broken and pale. Iria’s fingers went numb when she touched his skin. It was too cold.

Around her, the village mourned, though strangely, Iria did not cry. While they burned things and chanted meaningless words, she stole her brother away under cover of night, dragging him to the old tannery where the empire’s scraps lay piled: sinew, shards of bone, coils of thread thick as wire, blood crystals that glimmered faintly red. Refuse the priests called “impure.”

She lit no candles. The dark itself sat witness.

When she stitched Kael back together, her hands shook. The air stank of old leather, iron, and the herbs she burned to mask his rot. Every knot burned her fingers raw, but she didn’t stop. She whispered with each pull of the needle, “Come back. Come back to me.”

And then he did.

His eyes opened, clouded but alive. His lips cracked as he rasped her name.

Iria crumpled beside him, pressing her forehead to his chest, though it was hard beneath her cheek and his heartbeat uneven, it was there. “I have you,” she whispered.

At first, he was her Kael. He followed her through the fields, his steps a bit heavier than before, his laugh lower but familiar. When she braided rosemary, thyme, and lavender to sell in the market, he carried the baskets for her. When she woke sweating from dreams of blood and damnation, he sat at the edge of her bed and hummed the lullaby their mother used to sing.

But the villagers noticed. They stared at his stitched skin, the faint gleam beneath his fingernails, the way his eyes sometimes caught fire and glowed.

“He’s not right,” a neighbor muttered.

“He’s a Seraph,” another whispered.

Iria spat. “He’s my brother.”

But doubt coiled in her gut.

The first time Kael killed, it was for her.

A thief cornered her near the well, jeering, hand snatching at the jewels on her arm. Kael’s shadow fell over them. His hands closed on the man, and with a sound like wet branches snapping, he crumpled.

Blood sprayed across Iria’s dress, hot, metallic and filling her lungs until she gagged.

Kael dropped the body like spoiled meat. His hands trembled, but his eyes… his eyes gleamed with a strange light.

“I protected you,” he said.

Iria nodded, heart hammering. She wanted to believe him.

Kael grew hungry. Not for food, not even for blood. For completion.

“You didn’t finish me,” he said one night, voice low, vibrating in his chest like thunder. “I can feel the seams. I need more.”

“More what?”

“More flesh. More power. Make me whole, Iria.”

The tannery reeked of death when she returned. Discarded limbs, shattered ribs, dried muscle, all dumped like refuse by an empire that worshipped perfection. She pressed her face to her sleeve to keep from retching.

She stitched anyway.

“You hate the empire,” Kael said, watching her hands move. His voice was softer now, but edged with something she couldn't pin down, “but you use their tools. Their thread, their bones. You make me their mirror.”

“I brought you back because I love you.”

“No.” His grip closed around her wrist, firm enough to bruise. “You brought me back because you couldn’t let go.”

Her throat closed. She didn’t have an answer.

The villagers began to fear her as much as him. They avoided the tannery. They crossed themselves when she walked past. Children hid behind their mothers’ skirts.

“Heretic,” someone hissed.

“Monster!”

Iria clenched her teeth. They don’t understand.

But deep down, a seed of doubt began to grow.

On a bitterly cold evening, a Seraph patrol descended on the village, white eyes glowing, blades gleaming. Kael met them in the square. His roar split the air, raw and guttural. He tore through them like cloth, their bodies falling in pieces, the ground slick with their blood. The villagers screamed, scattering like birds.

Iria stood frozen, the smell of burning herbs and flowers mingling with blood, the clash of steel ringing in her skull. This wasn’t her brother anymore.

When the last Seraph fell, Kael turned to her. His face was streaked with gore, his stitches strained, glowing faintly. His voice calm.

“Finish me, Iria. Make me perfect.”

Her hands trembled. The needle and crystal lay heavy in her pouch. She could unmake him. She could let him go.

She looked at the villagers, huddled in terror, looked at the soldiers’ ruined bodies. She looked at Kael’s hand, reaching for hers, strong and certain.

So she stitched.

The final seam closed with a hiss. Kael stood taller, his glow bright as moonlight. His voice was no longer cracked, but resonant, commanding.

The villagers fell to their knees.

Iria stared, needle dangling from her hand, her own knees weak. This was not Kael. This was not her brother.

This was a Seraph, and she had made him.

Smoke curled above the ruined square. Blood seeped into the dirt. The smell of iron and incense clung to Iria’s skin.

Kael’s hand, no, it was a Seraph’s hand, settled on her shoulder. Warm, steady. The touch that once comforted now pinned her in place.

“You see, sister,” he said, his voice like thunder, “perfection was always the way.”

Iria closed her eyes. She had sworn she would never kneel. Never bow to the empire’s twisted worship.

But when the villagers bent their heads to the Seraph she had stitched, she realized she was no different.