“At Armageddon?” I asked, confused at first, but then I remembered. Armageddon isn’t an event like people seem to think these days, it’s a location. “You mean, the site of the End of Days is Armageddon, which is the same place as Har Megiddo near Jerusalem.”

When I looked over at Will, I could tell he was thinking the same thing. “It’s the hill of Megiddo in Hebrew,” he said, his face lighting up. “Armageddon is the Greek name for this hill, not an event synonymous with the End of Days. It’s the site of the End of Days.”

“Correct,” Azrael said. “It has been long foretold that the final battle will begin on the hill of Armageddon. Sammael and his legion will meet you there, Gabriel.”

“Is there no other way for Ellie to use this weapon?” Will asked.

Azrael’s gaze was sympathetic. “She must be an archangel to use the hallowed glaive and it is the only weapon strong enough to destroy the Fallen.”

I tried not to let my sadness show as I understood what I must do, despite my fear of what would happen to me. “Then how do I ascend?”

“There is a spell that you and I wrote together when you were ordered to come to Earth in human form. I see you still have your necklace. You will need your grace. Along with the spell, you will need the fail-safe, which has been kept hidden in the event that one day you would need to shed your mortal bonds and become an archangel to fight on Earth.”

“I have no memory of Heaven. Do you know the spell? What is this fail-safe?”

He stepped toward me, his movements fluid and inhuman, and he pressed his hand to my forehead. I gasped; the ancient words rushed into my mind in a thousand different languages. Images flashed of great humanoid beasts, the Nephilim, carving a path of destruction through civilizations long turned to dust, and of winged warriors painting the soil with the blood of those giants. I witnessed Azrael’s memories through his eyes. I saw myself standing on a hill wearing armor made of a strange metal I didn’t recognize. It looked as if it was made of mother-of-pearl, much like my winged necklace, and was splashed with blood, as were my Khopesh swords. My hair blazed like fire. At the bottom of the hill were the bodies of Nephilim, massacred. Azrael’s memories whispered into my head, “We were sent to eradicate the abominations.” The Nephilim were the offspring of the Grigori and human beings, but they couldn’t be controlled or used like the reapers, who were bred from among the Grigori—the Fallen and Watcher alike. The flood that the world believed God had sent to destroy the Nephilim was not made of water; it was a flood of countless legions of angels, steel, and blood. Led by me. And then I was sent alone to destroy the demonic reapers. I was nothing more than an exterminator.

The angel of death drew his hand back and I stared up at him, feeling a tear run down my cheek. “We killed them all.”

“No,” he corrected. “You kept one of them.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Kept…?”

“For his heart.”

Nausea wormed through my gut. “The fail-safe. The last Naphil is alive, saved like a lamb for slaughter.” I was so disgusted with myself, at what kind of monster I had once been—and the monster I would become again.

Azrael put a hand on my shoulder. “We do what we must to protect this world.”

“Like murder?” I spit, anger boiling beneath my skin.

“Sacrifice,” he said. “The Nephilim tore Earth apart and nearly wiped out the human race. We did what we were ordered to do, and we weren’t supposed to feel shame. But you and I did.”

When I closed my eyes, I sank into Azrael’s memory again. I stood on the hill, my armor and white wings splashed with blood. My face flashed closer, soundless images clicking in sequence like an old silent movie, and I saw that my cheeks were stained with tears. My archangel self surveyed the battlefield littered with bodies of angel and Naphil alike, and I wept.

“God never again sent us in force,” Azrael continued. “The damage was too great. Ever since, it has been your task alone to destroy the demonic reapers. Though I feel the war with the Nephilim may need to repeat itself against the beasts of Hell.”

I reopened my eyes with a new determination. “Where is the last Naphil?”

“I’m sorry, Sister,” he replied regretfully. “But I do not know. only you do.”

That determination threatened to flicker out like a candle flame. “Yet another impossible thing to find. Thankfully, I’ve done several impossible things in the last few weeks.”

“I must warn you, Gabriel,” Azrael said, “that if you ascend, your unbound strength will be too unstable in this world. If you summon the power required to use the hallowed glaive, it will destroy your earthly form.”

“You’re certain?” Will demanded.

Azrael nodded. “There is no way her body could survive channeling all the power needed to destroy the Fallen. She will use the hallowed glaive and she will die.”

Everything that Michael had said about my archangel power destroying my body once I ascended came crashing down on me. I’d held on to the hope that maybe I wouldn’t have to ascend and if I did, that the angels would be wrong. That I could make it out of this and still destroy my enemies without destroying myself to do it. But now I understood that I had to die one last time to end this war.

“Then we won’t do it,” Will said with a hard finality in his tone. “We’ll defeat Sammael without Ellie ascending and using the glaive.”