The silence in the cottage was absolute.

It was a thick, heavy thing, a presence that filled the space where laughter and screams had so recently echoed. Archon Azael stood in the center of the living room, the very air around him shimmering with the aftershock of restored power. He drew a slow, deep breath, the first true breath he had taken in millennia. It tasted of dust, of blood, of pine from the forest outside, and of something else—freedom.