but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

Season 4 AU: Castiel is the prophet.

This book begins with a housefire in Lawrence, Kansas. The firemen ruled it as faulty wiring, but everyone who knew about the otherworld — the supernatural, the demons, the monsters, the hunters and their ilk — knew it wasn’t so. This fire, though pivotal to the plot, launching John Winchester into an unhealthy crusade which will take him deep as — literally — hell, is but another piece in a long history of events. But perhaps “piece” and “history” are misnomers; time is fluid, after all, and merely one dimensions in a story that spans several. There are other pieces — for certain, there is the long-ago war in heaven, there is the story of earth before the angels came, the birth and evolution of monsters, there is the witch who rose above so many other demons in hell through deceit alone, another girl who’d grow up to study in Stanford and meet a remarkable boy, another girl who stayed at home and served beer n’ bullets and stowed her bravery until time came to unleash it; there are parallel dimensions, there are nightmare futures, and covered-up pasts — some of the characters have lived a very long time, after all, through battles and empires, while others lived for too short a while, goodness and dark trees in their hearts both, and no less for it.

This book begins with a housefire, but the story was written long before that, connecting highways and small towns west to east on earth, heaven, hell, saints, sinners, family, brothers, sacrifice, blood and love.

And I am tasked to write it. My name is Castiel. I’m a prophet of the Lord.

A reluctant one.