The Cry of Blood
Prologue
Official excerpt from the novel
Three months have passed.
Time stretches and crumples like the pages of a forgotten book, yellowed and heavy with stories the world no longer wishes to remember.
Nothing has happened.
And yet, everything has changed.
Hope does not vanish with a roar. It wears away. Drop by drop, in a silence so slow that you only notice its absence when nothing remains.
From the catacombs, Gabriel continues to send us visions: fragments of something I still cannot fully understand. Perhaps that is his way of keeping us moving when purpose begins to fade.
Matthew unravels secrets with his ingenuity.
Thaddeus provides weapons I no longer know if I wish to wield. Raphael keeps his routes open.
Peter and John remain at my side, like fragile anchors in a current that never stops pulling.
The world keeps turning, indifferent.
I, on the other hand, feel estranged from it, marked by victories that do not feel like victories at all.
We have defeated demons in distant lands. Some relics have returned to our hands.
Even so, I cannot help wondering whether, with each triumph, we have sealed something deeper than a simple victory.
Or are we merely moving toward a fate that no longer allows for detours?
The shadows have clung to me, and it grows harder each time to distinguish what is real from what is nothing more than a persistent echo of my own mind.
Every battle leaves a new crack.
Every sacrifice tears away a part of us that never returns.
The emptiness did not come all at once.
It sat beside me. And it never left.
The question returns, stubbornly, again and again: Is it worth continuing?
Time does not stop.
Four relics still elude us.
Four demonic generals roam the world, hungry, waiting for the moment to complete the ritual that will open the way for Lucifer’s return.
If they succeed, hell will not knock at the door. It will simply walk in.
And we… are no longer the same.
Because, whether we wish to admit it or not, when darkness brushes against us, it leaves marks that are invisible, yet no less deep.
We are little more than shadows moving through a storm that never stops growing.
And still, I keep walking.
I do not know if it is out of conviction.
I do not know if I can still call it faith.
Perhaps only because stopping is no longer an option.
Chapter 1
Shadows of a New Dawn
Sleep, restorative for many, was the only place where I could still find shelter. There were no missions there. No names.
And now, they were watching me.
I had to wake up.
I had to keep going.
I opened my eyes, and the figure that had been watching us from that threshold still lingered in my mind. I blinked, and it was gone. Its image pursued me like an omen born in the Petén; I could not tear it from my thoughts.
The light filtering through the battered windows offered no comfort. The day, as always, settled over me with unbearable weight.
Another day of survival in a world where ancient glories had faded and hope seemed to have vanished centuries ago.
I sat up heavily, as though millennia of memory were pulling at my bones. Time did not touch me, but it left its scars on everything else.
The reheated coffee tasted like burnt rubber. The last cigarette in the pack smoldered between my fingers as sunlight slipped through broken blinds, tearing into the darkness like a wound. The heat was unbearable; the humidity seeped into my bones.
On the table, the pistols rested in silence.
Everything was in ruins: the house, the body, the will. To ask whether it was worth it would mean surrendering.
I could not.
Not now.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Shouts, running footsteps, the chaos of everyday life. Human misery unfolded before me like a spectacle that no longer surprised me.
I decided to take a shower. The icy water struck me with the violence of a sentence being carried out. The cold dragged me back into reality, cutting into my skin like a knife, but it was a necessary pain.
What I had once been no longer mattered.
The crucifixion, the agony, all of it blurred together in my memory like a distant nightmare.
I looked at my hands. They were clean, yet I could still feel the blood soaked into them, still warm, still there. The thorns of old vines bit into my flesh: reminders of the sins I had chosen to bear. Old wounds never vanished. Neither did their consequences.
I stepped outside, and Peter was there, as he was every day.
“Good morning, Cael,” he said, raising a hand in an almost ceremonial greeting.
“As good as bathing with piranhas,” I replied without looking at him.
“Sorry… I just…”
“You forgive me,” I cut him off, my voice cold. “I keep seeing that damned shadow. It won’t leave me alone.”
He did not press me. He knew when to stay silent.
At the corner, a man snatched a bag and took off running. Halfway down the street, he crashed into me.
The impact made him stumble. He looked up, ready to curse or stab whoever had gotten in his way.
I opened my trench coat without haste. Just enough.
The weapons flashed for an instant.
His eyes widened. He stepped back and ran without looking behind him.
I picked up the bag and returned it to the woman. She spoke to me, thanked me, perhaps even cried. I never knew.
I did not hear her.
I was no longer there.
People kept walking as though nothing had happened.
Indifference was a cruel poison that seeped into everything.
I returned to Peter.
“Another rat running away…” I muttered.
The silence lasted only a moment.
“Brother…” he said at last. “Have you heard anything?”
I opened a new pack of cigarettes with a mechanical gesture. I wondered how much longer I would be able to keep living like this.
“Gabriel had another vision,” I said. “And I don’t think it was good news.”
He told me the world shattered into liquid mirrors. Faces emerged from them—a child, an old man, a warrior—until they merged into one.
He heard a voice, thousands speaking at once, and it pronounced:
“Seek neither face nor name. All belong to me.”
“And what does that mean?” Peter murmured, taking a step back.
“I don’t know for certain yet. But I have a feeling we’ll find out soon enough.”
The engine roared to life. John was behind the wheel. He shot me a quick glance, tired but alert.
“Are you going to keep playing hero, or can we leave now? Gabriel said he had crossword puzzles for us to solve, and you know how much I love those things.”
I could not help but smile.
As we pulled away, the city blurred beyond the window.
Routine began to wrap itself around us again.
But this time, something was different.
This is only the beginning.
The rest… is not here.
Excerpt from El clamor de sangre: El Último Redentor — G. R. Meneghetti