The chapel smelled of old wood, damp wool, and rosemary oil rubbed too many times into too few prayers. The pews were empty now. They always emptied quickly these days, like hope had learned how to walk away on its own.
The last hymn still rang in his ears, thin and trembling, sung by voices that did not quite believe the words anymore. He had watched them sing. Farmers with dirt under their nails. Mothers with hollow eyes. Men who smelled of whiskey and regret. All of them looking at him like he had answers tucked into his collar.
The crucifix above the altar looked heavier lately. Christ’s ribs too sharp. His face too knowing.
Dean sank down, not gracefully, but hard, knees knocking against the old wood of the prayer rail. Pain flared bright and immediate, a mercy compared to the slow rot inside his chest. His fingers dug into the rosemary clutched in his fist, the beads biting into his palm. He bowed his head until his forehead touched the floorboards worn smooth by a hundred years of kneeling sinners.
“Please,” he whispered, voice breaking like bad glass. “I am not asking for much.”
The words came out wrong. They always did lately.
Sam’s face rose unbidden in his mind. Fever-flushed, eyes too bright, body wasting away despite every prayer, every vigil, every saint invoked until Dean’s tongue felt blasphemous just for moving. The sickness clung to his brother like a curse that had learned how to wait.
Dean pressed his fist to his mouth to keep from making a sound. Priests were not supposed to sob like this. Not on the floor. Not when the candles were still lit.
“I just need something,” he said into the wood. “Anything. A sign. A whisper. A trick of the light!”
Silence answered him, thick and pressing. The kind that crawled into your ears and made a home there.
It did not rush or thunder. It went still in a way that made Dean’s skin prickle. The candle flames bent inward as if listening. The scent of rosemary turned sharp, almost metallic.
Dean lifted his head. For a moment he could not breathe.
Boots stood before him, scuffed and out of place against the altar’s clean white cloth. A shadow stretched long and wrong across the floor, branching in shapes that did not match any human body.
He followed the shadow upward and found a man standing there who looked like he had been assembled incorrectly. Wild dark hair stuck out at odd angles, as if gravity had given up on it. A trench coat hung off his shoulders like it had never been meant to fit anyone properly. And behind him, folding and unfolding with a soft, wet sound like feathers brushing bone, were wings.
Not the sleek black of ravens or crows, but uneven, molting, feathers missing in places. They looked used. Wounded. Real in a way that made Dean’s stomach twist.
Dean surged backward, scrambling to his feet, rosary raised like a weapon.
This was not fear the way he understood it. His awe was so sharp it bordered on pain. His hands trembled violently, the beads clicking together in frantic prayer as he stared at the figure before him.
The word landed in his mind with crushing weight.
Not the gentle figures from stained glass or the clean, golden messengers of scripture lessons. This being stood crookedly in the chapel, wings dragging shadows across the pews, feathers falling like black snow to the floor. The air around him felt wrong, too full, humming faintly as if the world itself were holding its breath.
Dean’s knees weakened. He swallowed hard and bowed his head without thinking, instinct older than doubt forcing him down.
“I am sorry!” he whispered. “I did not mean to call You improperly! I did not mean to test You!”