Beauty & The Beast: A Gospel in Brass and Ash

For fifty years, no prayers had echoed within the cathedral's walls. The stained glass lay shattered, casting fractured halos on the stone. Iron beams patched the vaulted ceiling where saints once seemed to float. Beneath the altar, pistons sighed in slow, mechanical repentance. Somewhere in the walls, unseen gears turned patiently, like a clock waiting for the world’s end. The plague had come like a quiet fog. Children coughed crimson into linen. Mothers whispered bargains into the empty sky. And so he came. Sir Rand of the Seventh Choir. He was a paladin, bound by oath. His armor was polished but marked with scars, like faith that had been tested again and again. He walked alone down the cathedral’s long spine of cracked marble, each step echoing like a countdown. At the altar stood the Beast. She was not fur and fang. She was ivory skin beneath shadowed arches. Long black hair threaded with faint copper filaments. Across her collarbone and wrists, delicate sigils glowed—three intertwined sixes etched like forgotten vows. Wings unfurled behind her, not feathered but veined in brass lattice and dark velvet membrane. Her eyes were not red. They were tired. “You know what I am,” she said softly. “I know what they call you,” he replied. The gears ticked. The plague would take a thousand by dawn. “I offer my soul,” he said, removing his gauntlets. “Untainted. Unfractured. Take it. Use it to burn the sickness out of this city.” Her expression faltered—just slightly. “You would damn yourself for them?” “For them,” he said. Then quieter, “And perhaps for you.” The Beast did not smile. She stepped forward. Close enough that he could feel the unnatural warmth radiating from her skin. “No thunder,” she warned him. “No angelic chorus. This will not look holy.” “I did not come for spectacle.” He knelt. The cathedral held its breath. She pressed her palm to his chest. And the transfer began. Not with lightning. With a glow. Golden light seeped from between his ribs as though his heart had cracked and spilled sunrise. It flowed into her hands, into the faintly glowing sigils that trembled as they drank. The gears in the walls ticked louder. Her jaw tightened. He did not scream. His breath only hitched once. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For what?” “For surviving you.” When the last filament of gold slipped free, he collapsed forward. For a moment, she thought it was over. Then— The gears stopped. Silence. And in that silence, something impossible happened. The body on the marble floor began to breathe. Not golden. Not infernal. Both. Light returned—not from above, but from within. Crimson threaded with radiance. The marble beneath him cracked as if unable to contain the fusion. His armor reformed first—liquid metal climbing his skin, reshaping into plate etched with intertwined sigils: halo and horn, wing and flame. When he rose, he was taller. Not monstrous. Not angelic. Something forged between. His eyes met hers. Not hollow. Not damned. Awake. “What have you done?” she breathed. He flexed his gauntleted hand, now etched with her mark beside his own crest. “I gave you my soul,” he said. “It seems it refused to leave me entirely.” Her wings trembled. “You are no longer mortal.” “I was never only that.” He stepped toward her—not as a supplicant, not as a sacrifice—but as equal. “You are not a Beast,” he said quietly. “You are a keeper of burdens.” “And now you share one.” He knelt again—but this time not in surrender. In devotion. “Command me.” Her fingers brushed his helm, trembling not with hunger, but with something far more dangerous. True Love. Outside, the plague wind shifted. In the city below, fevered children began to breathe easier. Inside the cathedral, shadow and light overlapped into one silhouette: her monstrous wings curving protectively over his radiant, armored form. Once, the Beast had stood alone beneath the broken glass. Now she had a blade. And once, the Beauty had knelt in innocence. Now he rose transformed—not corrupted, but chosen. Not a tale of taming. Not a tale of redemption. But of devotion so fierce it rewrote the rules of heaven and hell alike. The gears resumed their ticking. Not counting down. Keeping time.