Children of Sophia: The Demon and The Warrior

“If the world is a dream, who is the dreamer?”

Seneca sat at the edge of the sandbox on the playground behind the healthcare center. Her long white hair had been dyed black, but her red eyes still caught the light.

The weekly session with the child psychologist was over. For now, it was just the wind, the sand, and the soft clink of plastic toys. Her mother was sipping coffee on a nearby wooden bench, speaking with Haruki's mother, who had only just moved to the town.

Seneca watched the boy.

Haruki knelt in the sand, fully absorbed in his game. In one hand, he held a samurai figurine. In the other, a horned creature with wings, something between a dragon and a man. The samurai always won, but the monster always came back. Even when it had been struck down, it returned. Sometimes it crept back while the samurai was sleeping.

“Why does he always come back?” she asked.

Haruki didn’t look up. His hands kept moving, the story unfolding between them.

“Because he’s a demon,” he said. “To kill a demon, you need a magic sword. Otherwise you can only stop him for a while.”

Seneca frowned. “Why doesn’t the samurai cut off its head? So it stays dead forever.”

Haruki shrugged, still playing. “He doesn’t have the sword yet.”

“Then why doesn’t he hide?”

Haruki shook his head. “You can’t hide from a demon. He’s a warrior. He fights.”

“He’s not very smart.”

Now Haruki looked at her. “He is smart. He just hasn’t found the wise woman yet. She’ll give him the sword.”

“Will he find her?” Seneca asked, tilting her head.

Instead of answering, Haruki asked, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Seneca,” she said, and bowed slightly, still sitting.

“Haruki,” he replied, bowing in return.

Her mother’s voice cut in from the bench. “Senika, use your real name.”

Seneca’s gaze dropped. “But this is my real name,” she whispered.

Haruki slid closer to her, lowering his voice like they were already sharing a secret. “Hey. Can you keep one?”

She nodded.

He held out the samurai figure in his palm, as if presenting it for the first time. “This is Yoshiki. He’s like me.”

“Really?” she asked.

Haruki hesitated. “I mean… I dream about him. A lot. He protects me.”

“I dream too,” she said. “But mine are scary. Not just here. There’s a place with a red sky…”

“…and towers that reach the clouds,” Haruki said quietly.

She blinked. “You dream it too?”

A glance toward her mother, then back. “Mother said it’s interesting. She asked how I feel about it…” Seneca struggled for the right word. “But I don’t like it.”

“Me neither.” Haruki leaned forward and held the samurai close to her face. “Do you have a protector?”

Seneca hesitated.

He nodded to himself. “We’ll protect you,” he said.

She smiled, small, but true.

What he didn’t tell her—not then, not ever—was that in his dreams… he was the samurai. And the monster killed him.

Back then, the psychologist saw it in his drawings. But Haruki never said a word.

Twenty-five years later Haruki entered the room with the file tucked under one arm, the collar of his white coat slightly turned back. He was not thinking about monsters anymore. He tried to save them.

The room was quiet—a single table, two chairs, and a pale overhead light that didn’t quite reach the corners. A guard stood just outside the heavy door.

He didn’t look at her. Years of routine made him start with the paper.

Yoshino, Asami. Female. 21. No psychiatric history. No drugs. No record.

Until last week, when she killed five men in an abandoned building outside the city. All confirmed traffickers. The report used the phrase psychotic break, but even the detectives didn’t seem to believe it. The bodies had been found arranged. Not dumped, arranged.

Haruki turned the page. The autopsy notes were unusually clean. Throats cut. Quick deaths. No signs of struggle.

Paused.

That wasn’t a panic kill. Five men—with a knife?

He was about to read further when her voice interrupted, soft, and without ceremony: “Have you found the magic sword?” she asked lightly. “The one that kills demons.”

The words cut sideways through the moment.

He looked up.

Handcuffed to the ring in the table, she didn’t smile, but something behind her red eyes glinted with familiarity.

His breath caught.

That face. Pale skin, sharper now. But the same eyes. The same voice.

Still young. Too young. The math didn’t work, unless memory lied, or something else did.

They met many times back then, before her parents died and she was sent away to live with relatives.

A chill touched the back of his neck.

She was reading him—not his face, but something deeper.

Trying to buy time, he began. “Miss Yoshino, I’m Dr. Haruki Mori. You’re here because you killed five men. Do you want to talk about that?”

Seneca just tilted her head, like a bird listening to a distant echo. “You weren’t even looking,” she said disappointed. “Were you?”

Now he did meet her gaze.

His voice dropped. “How do you know me? Are you Senika Kuroda’s relative?”

“Some of us don’t forget,” she said. “Even when we leave.”

She leaned forward slightly, the cuffs sliding.

“Some of us come back.”

The thought rose unbidden—absurd, impossible—yet before he could stop himself, the words were already out: “Are you a demon?”

She gave a small laugh, dry, almost a breath. “To some.”

Then her voice shifted: “Do the dreams still come to you? Would you still protect me?”

Haruki hesitated, his grip tightening around the file. “I… need to understand first.”

Seneca’s eyes didn’t leave his. “Then be quick about it. It’s coming for me. And if it’s already here…”—her voice dropped, almost a whisper—“it’ll find you too.”

She shifted slightly in the chair, and only then did he notice the bandage on her thigh.

“It almost got me,” she said quietly. “You should let me out.”

He didn’t dare to ask what hurt her.

“This session is concluded,” he said, then stood, adjusted his coat, and walked out without looking back.

Two guards were leading Seneca back to her room and they were halfway across the atrium when she felt it.

The air tightened, like pressure building before a storm, the kind that made the skin prickle. Behind the glass walls of the nurse station, someone laughed softly.

Slowly, without warning, the panoramic glass window across the nurse station bowed inward, the surface wavering, lines slipping sideways. A distortion pushed forward like a wind where no wind should exist.

One of the nurses looked up.

Then the glass shattered.

Not explosively. Not violently. It simply gave way, fragments cascading down as the haze pushed through, spreading into the atrium like breath released into cold air.

Someone screamed.

The guards froze.

Seneca did not.

She drove her shoulder into the nearest guard, the impact jarring up her arm. He stumbled sideways, slammed into the elevator frame. She turned and ran, cuffs clinking once, then lost as the stairwell door flew open under her arm and swallowed her into concrete and echo.

Emergency lights pulsed faintly as she descended, boots slipping on the last steps as pain flared up her leg. Somewhere above, voices shouted. Somewhere closer, the air moved without sound.

She burst into the underground parking level.

The space opened wide and low, rows of cars stretching into shadow, the smell of oil and cold concrete heavy in her lungs. Near the far row, a man stood beside a dark sedan, key fob in his hand, frozen mid-motion.

Haruki.

“Yoshiki!” she shouted, the name tearing out of her. “Move!”

He turned just as she reached him, eyes wide, caught between confusion and recognition, between now and then.

Behind her, the stairwell door opened.

Something entered.

The air rushed in, pressure rippling across the floor. A low hum filled the space, not sound, but vibration, as if the structure itself were being tuned to a different frequency.

From between the cars, two guards appeared, weapons already raised.

“What the hell is that?” one of them said, confusion breaking through the training.

The other hesitated, voice pitching higher. “Stop where you are!”

Before he could move, a razor line of unreality sliced through the air from the open door—invisible and absolute—cutting the air, the guard, the car behind him, and the concrete column beyond in one impossible motion as if the fabric of space had been ripped apart.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the rift collapsed.

Matter couldn’t follow.

Air rushed in with a wet, concussive pop. The guard came apart, the car split cleanly, and the column cracked as if scored by something that had never existed.

The other guard fired.

The bullets struck nothing.

They hit the far wall with sharp, metallic pings—deflected, as if bounced from something just out of phase, hidden inside the haze.

Then the lights dimmed, then trembled, like something recalling fear.

It began to take shape.

Not in a flash. Not summoned by light.

It resolved.

Slowly, seamlessly, the shape cohered—translucence drawn inward, outline stabilizing, like water taking form. For a breath, the eye could not decide if it was entering the world or being remembered by it.

And then it stood there.

Eight feet tall. Armor plates shimmered like polished porcelain, curved and jointed with impossible delicacy, a medieval knight reimagined by some forgotten future. Slivers of silver and gold ran through the joints like veins, catching the light. Its wings stretched once behind it, bathing the ceiling in a wash of quiet luminescence. It was a marvel of design, elegant and terrifying—a god flayed down to its machine.

Seneca knew what it was.

The Archon’s face gleamed like a carved mask, stylized and inhuman. No mouth. No expression. Only the deep red of its eyes smoldered in the porcelain void, as if a sculptor had abandoned the concept of humanity halfway through the work.

Its arm remained raised, pointing toward the ruin—the blood, the broken column, the guard’s collapsed body. Then it moved, as though cutting the very air again with the same gesture.

The second guard fell.

No light. No scream. Only the fold in space.

Haruki stood frozen, staring.

Seneca grabbed him and shoved him hard, sending him stumbling away from the car, toward the darker end of the garage.

Behind them, the Archon stepped forward, wings humming softly, unhurried.

It had found them.

“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.”

—Revelation 2:11

White light.

Pain.

A surge across the chest, like drowning, reversed.

“Clear—again.”

Something slammed through him. Nerves firing without pattern. Limbs convulsed, then dropped. A voice he didn’t know barked an order. Another answered. Cool air on his skin. A beeping rhythm.

“Pupils responsive. Breath rate up. Cortisol spike.”

“Normal for re-entry. Start adrenaline taper.”

He heard the words, but not their meaning. Like listening through water.

A voice close to his ear, steady and low: “Coming back. There. Stay with me now.”

Haruki tried to speak. Nothing came.

Hands worked at his side. A buckle clicked loose. Soft pressure checked his temples. Fingers snapped near his ear.

“Left ear good. Right—also good. Raise her bed.”

A mechanical hum.

The word dropped into him like cold water.

Slowly, the world tilted upright.

Haruki blinked into the light, his vision adjusting in layers. The ceiling swam into view first. Then the room—quiet, white, low-toned. He caught a glimpse of chrome, curtain, medical machinery.

Then he saw her.

Senika.

She lay facing away, under thin blankets, hair white against the pillow, wires trailing to a soft-voiced monitor. Her chest rose and fell with shallow rhythm.

For a moment, she looked unchanged. Fragile. Human.

But then the blanket slipped from her shoulder. Her arm rolled outward—and froze him.

Her arm.

White as bone, jointed like porcelain. Between the segments, fine seams of metal glinted through. Not wrapped in flesh but designed. Crafted. A mirror of what stood in the parking garage.

He tried to sit further, but pain bloomed at his side.

Something tugged near his arm.

Then the wrongness.

He raised his hand slowly, an IV line still taped into the skin.

The skin—

It wasn’t his. Not completely.

Longer bones. Brown skin, warm-toned, unfamiliar.

The simple motion felt translated, like moving through someone else’s dream of a body.

“Heart rate spiking,” said the nurse.

The doctor leaned in. “Relax. Breathe for me. You’re still syncing. Let it settle.”

Haruki stared at the hand a moment longer. Then lowered it.

And for the first time, truly wondered: did I die?

They walked.

The corridor had once been a main haul tunnel, wide enough for carts and rail, its ceiling still bearing the shallow scars of extraction. Salt veins glimmered faintly in the concrete where the stone had never been fully sealed. The air smelled clean now, filtered, but beneath it lingered a mineral cold that never quite left places hollowed by industry.

Decades ago, Seneca said, this had been a salt and gypsum mine. Later, brine pumps had gnawed deeper, drawing saltwater up from levels so old they had never known light. The machines had been abandoned where they rusted, left to sleep with the bones of the continent.

Haruki listened, but he was watching her.

Seneca walked easily in the Archon body. Human-sized, proportioned, built to pass at a glance. Her hair fell loose and white against the porcelain contours of her neck. Her eyes were the same red, warm and alert, unmistakably hers. Only the seams betrayed her, faint lines at the joints where design replaced flesh.

Around them, people moved with purpose. Men and women in mixed military uniform. Some bore insignia he did not recognize. Some carried weapons. Others carried tablets, instruments, sealed cases.

No one stared at her.

That unsettled him more than fear would have.

She stopped at a reinforced door set into the rock, its surface painted a dull industrial green, the number long scratched away.

Inside, the room was large and bare, but it held three shapes under low light.

Archon bodies.

Two stood upright in cradles, human-sized like hers. Their porcelain armor was unmarked, flawless. But their faces—too human, too still—looked as if they had once belonged to someone and simply forgotten how.

The third dominated the far end of the chamber.

Eight feet tall. The same configuration he had seen in the parking structure. Wings unfurled just enough to brush the air, its masklike face reflected nothing.

“That one,” he said quietly. “That’s what came for you.”

Seneca nodded. “One like that, yes.”

“What is this place?” he asked.

She turned to face him, her red eyes steady. “A black site. A secret organization,” she added. “Once called The Daughters of the Second Death. The name stuck, even after centuries. But these days, we have cover companies. Partners. Contractors.”

He looked at herself—then at her—then lifted both hands theatrically, palms up in mock wonder. “All women?”

A faint, apologetic curve touched her mouth. “Not exclusively,” she said. "Sorry about that.”

He tilted his head toward the cradled bodies. “You could have given me one of those.”

She shook her head and smiled. “You wouldn’t like it. Not yet.”

Haruki’s hand tightened at his side. He looked down at himself again, at the unfamiliar skin, the longer fingers. “This body,” he said. “Whose was it?”

She did not look away. “Her name was Inês Moura,” she said. “Former French Foreign Legion. Later, one of us. She was injured during an extraction in Coimbra. Spinal trauma. Cranial swelling. She never woke."

She smiled. "But she’s a child now. Somewhere.”

Haruki was silent.

Then, quietly: “Did we die?”

Seneca glanced at him. “Technically. Legally.”

A beat. “But only the bodies. I carried you.”

“If the Archon had caught us, we wouldn’t be talking here.”

He nodded once then turned back to the Archon bodies. It was all he could manage.

“You’re saying these things aren’t… them.”

She stepped closer to the nearest cradle and laid her hand against the porcelain chestplate. The gesture was almost tender.

“They are vessels,” she said. “Empty without a mind. What you saw was the will inside it.”

“So you control them?”

“We can control the shells,” she said. “But not the real Archons.”

He frowned.

“They are malevolent spirits coming back from Saturn’s rings, bringing these things.” She waved, irritated, toward the cradles. “God put them there. To watch over mankind. To suppress us. They are janitors.”

She looked away, then back again. “God does not like us. Those who come back. Those who remember.”

“Why?”

“Because it breaks the system,” she said. “He thinks Himself God—but He’s just one of us. The first to awaken. The first to look at this world and claim it. He mistook arrival for authorship. He calls it creation.”

A pause.

“He forgot it was a service. So He ruined our towers and exiled us here.”

She turned, walking deeper into the room, stopping before the largest Archon body. It loomed over her, but she did not look small beside it.

“But we are searching.” Her voice was steady. “Not for weapons. Not for victory.”

“For what, then?”

“For Her. For Mother. The one who remembers what came before the world was created.”

She looked at him—the same way she had in the sandbox, a few lives back.

“We’ll find the wise woman. And we’ll cut down the head of the demon.”

Silence filled the room, broken only by the slow, patient breathing of machines that waited for souls.

Haruki stood among gods made hollow and finally understood.

The monster always came back.

But so did the warrior.