Isaiah Cole didn't think he was important enough to be silenced. He wasn't famous. He didn't have millions of followers.
Just a cluttered room, a cheap webcam, and a YouTube channel that kept getting flagged for "misinformation."
The kind of channel you'd only find if you were deep enough into conspiracy rabbit holes that even Reddit started to look at you sideways.
Tonight's stream was supposed to be like any other. He sat hunched over his desk, cracked phone buzzing in silent protest beside a half eaten instant noodles cup.
The screen glowed in the darkness, filled with red string, archive screenshots, and files nobody was supposed to have. He leaned toward the camera, voice low and steady.
"They removed him from history.
Every scripture, every mention, every trace, gone. But not all of it. There are still fragments if you know where to look."
His viewers didn't. Not really. They just liked the way he said things, like it was real. To him, it was.
The god that shouldn't exist.
He'd been chasing this thread for three years, an old name that showed up in corrupted Dead Sea scroll data, scrawled behind ancient walls in photos that were immediately deleted from the academic web.
A name that never made sense in context, like a placeholder in reality. Azrael.
Not the Angel of death. Not a metaphor. Something older, much more raw.
Something no one wanted to admit was ever real, something HE didn't want to admit was real. Tonight, he found a link that connected a vatican database with a sealed subdomain from a private satellite feed over the Syrian desert. It was all above his pay grade. But it was real.
"He was wiped," Isaiah whispered. "Like he was never supposed to be remembered. But someone still remembers him. I'm not crazy, I'm…"
His screen went black. Power outage? No. His phone still buzzed. The tiny green light of his mic stayed on. He turned.
Someone was standing in his room. What was going on? One second he was standing and the next, he was waking up.
Face down, dirt in his face, dirt in his mouth, air sharp in his lungs. Cold. Damp. What was happening?
He coughed violently, rolling over onto his back, squinting at a sky that wasn't the one he knew. There were stars. Too many stars. Clusters and patterns he'd never seen. The moon was larger, cracked somehow like a broken coin hanging in space.
Where the hell was he? Isaiah sat up slowly, taking in the quiet. He was in a graveyard. Not just any, an old one. He didn't remember dying or leaving his room either.
Forgotten ruins of stone temples loomed in the distance, tangled in the vines and silence. Everything looked ancient, but the carvings didn't match any civilization he knew.
His clothes had changed.
Black robes, woven with symbols that shimmered faintly when he moved.
A circular medallion rested against his chest, cold and heavy.
When he touched it, something pulsed like it recognized him.
Then he saw the tombstone.
It was cracked and half buried in earth, but one name was still visible:
AZRAEL
Isaiah stared at it for a long time as if trying to decode the fuckery that was happening to him. "….No way."
No one was around. No cameras, no internet trolls. Just the wind, the graves and the impossible silence of a world that he didn't know two fucks about.
Isaiah took a shaky breath and stood. The name on the gravestone stared back at him like it had been waiting. Azrael. He'd spent years chasing that name, digging through dusty archives, cracking religious transcripts.
And now, it was etched into a stone in front of him.
He glanced around, half expecting to wake up. Maybe it was a dream.
Maybe he'd finally gone off the deep end. But the cold was too real, the dirt under his nails and his heartbeat thudding in his ears.
No. This was real, or something close to it.
He brushed the dirt off his robe and looked down the slope beyond the graveyard. Torchlight. Faint flickers of flame danced in the distance.
A procession, maybe ten or twelve figures cloaked in dark hoods, was winding up the stone path toward the graveyard. Slowly , purposefully.
Isaiah ducked behind a half collapsed mausoleum, adrenaline slamming into him like a train. What the hell was this? Who were they? He peeked out.
They weren't just carrying torches. Some of them held scrolls. Others clutched ritual blades or incense burners.
One of them at the front who was taller than the rest, draped in robes marked with the same glowing sigils as Isaiah's, held a stone tablet.
He was chanting something in a language Isaiah didn't understand but somehow…recognized.
"He who was erased by time… return to the cradle of flesh. Return to the bones of your divinity. We have remembered you and in our remembrance, you are reborn."
He didn't breathe. The chant hit like a whisper in the back of his mind. Like an old song you didn't know you knew.
They stopped in front of the grave. The one with his name.
The leader raised the tablet. The flames surged. Immediately, others dropped to their knees, the chanting rose. A low, throaty hum that didn't sound human. Isaiah's pulse slammed in his ears.
He backed up against the stone, gripping the edges of his robe. His fingers brushed the medallion again and it flared. Just once, like it had been activated.
The chanting stopped. All at once, then the hooded men turned toward the mausoleum he was hiding behind.
"He is here," the leader said.
Shit. Isaiah stepped out slowly, hands raised. "Look, I don't know who you think I am, but…"
The leader fell to his knees and so did the others.
Azrael," the man whispered. "God of forgotten truth. We, your disciples, remember you."
What was happening? He could feel it coming, whatever it was…