One week later.
A grey sky hung over the north as a convoy of police cruisers rolled through the pine-lined road that led to the isolated town of Talbrook. Snow crackled under tires. The radio buzzed with static and short, tense chatter. None of the officers liked this run. A week of complete silence from an entire town—no phone calls, no radio, no mail. Not even a snowplow. That didn't happen. Not in Canada. Not in 1975.
Sergeant David Malone sat in the lead vehicle, lips pressed into a grim line. He wasn't a man prone to superstition, but something about the air here felt… wrong. Cold in a way that wasn't just weather.
They reached the outskirts by noon.
And they found no one.
Every building had its windows shattered, as if by a single blast. Some doors were broken clean off. No bodies in the streets. No signs of violence—no blood, no shell casings, no drag marks. Just emptiness.
Like the people had vanished.
The officers spread out in pairs, checking houses. Stores. The church. The school.
All empty.
Until they reached the last house on the northern edge of town. One of the smaller ones, tucked near the woods. The snow hadn't been disturbed in days.
Inside, they found death.
Two adult bodies in the living room. A man and a woman. Burn marks on their clothing, a dried bullet wound in the woman's forehead. The man had been shot too.
And in the middle of the kitchen, sitting on the cold tile floor in the same flannel pajamas he'd worn a week ago, was a little boy.
Curled into himself. Eyes red. Lips cracked.
Still crying.
Malone crouched down, stunned. "Jesus…"
"Hey," he said gently, as if trying not to scare a deer. "Hey, kid… What's your name?"
The boy blinked slowly. His voice came out dry, almost broken.
"…Castiel."
"Castiel… are you hurt?"
He shook his head.
"What happened here?"
Castiel's gaze drifted toward his parents. He didn't speak for a long time.
"…I don't know."
---
They took him back to the station in the nearest city. Washed him. Fed him. Put him in clothes that didn't fit and gave him a blanket he refused to let go of. He said nothing for hours.
Officers filed reports. Investigators were called. They made phone calls to anyone who might know what to do.
By nightfall, the whispers had started.
"Maybe it was radiation?"
"Mass poisoning?"
"Some kind of gas leak?"
None of it explained the burns. Or why every person in the town—fifty-seven men, women, and children—was gone without a trace. No damage except the windows. No bodies except the two.
And the boy.
Castiel stayed in a small room at the station, curled on a cot, watching the ceiling. At some point past midnight, an officer checking on him found him sitting upright, eyes wide, speaking quietly to himself.
"The light got them," he said. "It screamed."
The officer froze. "What screamed?"
Castiel turned slowly. "A white thing. After they hurt my mom and dad. It… killed them. All of them."
The officer backed out of the room without another word.
---
Days passed. The town was declared a disaster zone. Scientists and government agents came and went, trying to find an explanation. They never did.
Some believed the boy. Said he saw something. Maybe even survived something supernatural.
Others were less kind.
"You think he did it?" someone muttered in the station one night.
"He's five."
"Still. That place… it felt wrong. Maybe he's a mutant. They've been in the papers, right? Weird kids with powers."
"No. He's just a traumatized kid."
"They always are. Until they snap."
---
Two weeks later, Castiel was placed in an orphanage outside the city.
The staff were kind, in the way people are when they don't know what to do with grief they can't fix. He didn't speak much. He barely played. He often stared out the window for hours.
He never talked about the town. Or the light. Or his parents.
---
1980
Northern Ontario.
Castiel Winchester had lived in the orphanage for five years, and in all that time, he'd learned two things: the world didn't make sense, and people were rarely kind. He had stopped asking questions about what had happened to his parents. No one had answers, and the ones they made up never felt true.
He mostly kept to himself, quiet and watchful. Other kids called him "the ghost," whispering rumors about his past. They said he saw his whole town die. Said demons visited him in his sleep. He ignored them. They didn't know anything. Not really.
Then, one gray afternoon in April, the nuns came.
Two of them. Traveling from church to church, orphanage to orphanage, spreading their faith. Sister Agnes, the older one, stood tall and thin, her voice calm and commanding. The younger one, Sister Miriam, was softer, her words like warm bread. They brought books, wooden crosses, and Bibles worn by many hands.
The children were made to sit on the cold floor of the common room. Castiel, arms wrapped around his knees, sat near the back. He didn't like crowds.
Sister Agnes spoke of God. Of Jesus. Of mercy. Of strength. She told them of a love so great it forgave even the darkest sins.
"We are all children of God," she said. "Even when we are lost, even when we are angry. Especially then."
Castiel stared at her. Something in her voice made his chest ache in a strange, unfamiliar way.
At the end of their visit, Sister Miriam walked around handing out small wooden crosses, strung on thin brown cords.
When she placed one in Castiel's hand, it felt warm. Heavy. He clutched it tightly.
That night, for the first time in his life, he prayed.
He didn't know the words. He just closed his eyes and whispered whatever came to him. Not for answers. Not for miracles.
He just wanted someone to hear him.
---
Weeks passed. Then months.
Castiel changed. Slowly, but noticeably.
He began to smile sometimes—only a little, but enough for the caretakers to notice. He read the Bible the nuns had left behind, page by page. He began saying grace before meals, even when others didn't. He wore the wooden cross around his neck every day.
Some of the other boys laughed at him.
They said things like:
"Look at the preacher boy."
"Hey angel boy, you gonna float away?"
"He's talking to Jesus again. What a freak."
At first, Castiel ignored them.
But the thing about mocking is—it finds the cracks in people. And Castiel had many cracks, even if no one could see them.
One afternoon in July, it broke.
He was sitting in the sun behind the orphanage, reading quietly, when three boys came up behind him. The ringleader, Martin, kicked dirt onto his shoes.
"Hey, church mouse. Still trying to talk to your invisible daddy in the sky?"
Castiel didn't respond.
Another boy snatched the cross from around his neck and held it high. "What's so special about this junk, huh?"
"Give it back," Castiel said, standing.
"Make me."
What happened next felt like fire.
Something in Castiel snapped.
He lunged.
Fists flew. Screams rose. It didn't last long, but it was brutal. When it was over, two of the boys had bloody noses. One had a split lip. Martin's eye was swelling fast.
Castiel stood over them, breathing hard. His hands were trembling.
The cross lay on the grass between them, the string broken.
The woman who ran the orphanage—a cold, strict woman named Mrs. Keane—came running. She saw the boys, the blood, the bruises, and then she saw Castiel standing alone.
Her face turned to stone.
"That's it," she said. "I've had enough of you."
---
A week later, Castiel was packed into the back of a long black car, his few possessions stuffed into a duffel bag.
He didn't cry. He didn't argue.
He just sat quietly, watching the trees blur past the windows as they drove south. Toward Toronto.
Toward a Christian orphanage.
His cross was still around his neck. The string had been fixed.
He held it in his hand as he whispered another quiet prayer.
He didn't know who was listening.
But something inside him told him—someone was.