The gates of Eden had vanished behind them—sealed in flame, swallowed by memory.
The world beyond was nothing like the Garden.
No divine chorus.
No whispering trees.
No golden light.
Only dust.
Mountains still raw with creation.
Skies wide and unshaped.
Adam and Eve walked hand in hand, but with each step, they drifted a little farther from what they had been.
From what they could have been.
And Gabriel followed.
He didn't let them see him.
Not at first.
He drifted above the clouds, wrapped in twilight, his wings dulled to shadow. The others would not understand. Michael would call it interference. Raphael would call it imbalance.
Yahweh had said, "Watch over them."
He had not said, "Speak to them."
But He had not said not to.
And so Gabriel lingered.
In the wind.
In the songs they hummed without knowing.
In the dreams they forgot upon waking.
He was there when Eve cried for the first time—over a thorn that broke her skin.
He was there when Adam bled and didn't understand why it didn't stop.
And when they looked at one another in silence, unable to name the ache they felt...
Gabriel whispered the first word of comfort into the dust:
"Love."
It was a hard world.
They learned to sharpen stones.
To build fires.
To dig into the earth like animals searching for shelter.
And Gabriel watched it all.
He could not intervene every time.
He could not stop every pain.
But he could teach.
Quietly.
He breathed the idea of weaving into Eve's fingers as she watched the wind move the grass.
He stirred the memory of warmth in Adam's bones when he stared too long into the cold.
He placed small, glowing truths in their path—not miracles, just tools.
Hope disguised as instinct.
One night, Eve awoke in the dark, heart pounding.
Something had pressed against her dream. A shadow. A voice. A name she didn't know but feared.
She rose and walked alone into the valley.
And Gabriel followed.
When she fell to her knees and wept—crying not for Eden, but for the emptiness growing inside her—Gabriel knelt too.
Though she could not see him, she felt a breath against her cheek.
A wind that kissed the tears from her face.
And she whispered, "You're still here."
Gabriel wept.
Because she knew.
He saw their first child born.
A boy.
Bright-eyed, loud, full of the ache of life.
They named him Cain.
Gabriel flinched.
He had seen this name before. Carved in prophecy. Shadowed in fire.
But he said nothing.
Because Cain was still innocent.
And Gabriel could not bear to break a truth that hadn't yet shattered.
He sang to Cain when he cried. Not in words. Not in voice. In vibration. In lullabies older than Heaven. Songs that didn't calm—but wrapped him in the memory of safety.
And when Abel came, Gabriel stood in the trees beside their home and smiled.
Not because the world was healing.
But because he had not yet given up on it.
One night, as the wind howled and the stars blinked like watchful eyes, Gabriel felt a presence.
Not human.
Not holy.
Something cold.
Something familiar.
He turned.
But there was no one there.
Not yet.
Still—he knew.
Lucifer had turned his gaze toward Earth.
The game had begun again.
But this time…
Gabriel would not watch from Heaven.
He would not kneel beside the throne while his family fell in silence.
He would walk with them.
Hide among them.
Burn for them if he had to.
Because he had failed his brother.
He would not fail mankind.
Not again.