“Interesting?” Gabriel asked, amusement tugging at his lips. “Dear boy, I could tell you about a time before Time had been Created, when nothing existed until it was imagined, and each thought could become a new star, a new galaxy. I could tell you about the Creation of the Earth you stand on and the air you breathe, about six thousand years of hopes and miseries, Death and new life.”

He let himself laugh, a soft, silvery sound, feeling suddenly infinitely old.

“And yet,” he added softly, his gaze sweeping over the impossibly young face of the Antichrist, “I think you could see these things for yourself. Why do you resist what you were meant to become?”