This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/thegodcircuit on 2026-08-05 00:01:32+00:00.

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Part 1

Part 2

I sat on the bed in my hotel room, my wings spread out behind me, watching the flickering video of a man reading from the Quran that played on the TV.

I’d landed in Kabul the night before. After checking into my hotel room, I slept thirty hours straight.

I texted Destiny to let her know I was okay.

“Are you still in San Francisco?” I asked her.

“I’m back in New Mexico. I’m getting ready to post the videos we took at Apotheosis Labs. I’m sure Reid won’t be happy when they go online.”

“You should probably keep out of sight for a while.”

“I’m staying at a friend’s place. You’re still planning to go to Kandahar?”

“I hired a driver to take me there tomorrow.”

The driver’s name was Rahmat. I’d found him online, on a tour guide website. He was very young, but he claimed he spoke English.

My neck was still throbbing from where Chazaqiel had bitten me. I went to the bathroom, took off the bandage, and looked at the bite marks in the mirror. A bit of blood was still oozing out.

I felt so strange to be trapped in a body that didn’t feel like mine. A body changing in ways I didn’t understand.

A numb sadness spread through me. A sinking depression like I’d never felt before.

Suddenly, my arms turned into fog.

I stepped back from the mirror, panicked. I tried to touch my chest, but my hands passed right through the body.

I sat on the floor, took a few deep breaths, closed my eyes and told myself to relax.

When I opened my eyes again a few minutes later, my arms had turned back into flesh and blood.

***

Rahmat’s rusted Toyota rattled across the dirt road, past the sandy hills and sun-baked limestone.

“There’ve been a lot more English tourists coming to Afghanistan lately,” Rahmat told me. “I’m thinking of starting my own tour business, just for English-speakers.”

I nodded, uh-uh, barely listening to him while I stared at my phone. I zoomed in on one of the red Xs on the map of Afghanistan I’d found in Apotheosis Labs. It marked the hills right outside of Kandahar.

“Have you heard about a place called Dollmaker City?” I asked Rahmat.

“Last year, there was a Jewish Iranian who came through Kabul, asking about it,” Rahmat said. “He said it was a city built by angels. A home for all the world’s lost children.”

Fields filled with grape vines appeared beside the road. Orchards filled with pomegranate trees.

We drove down into another valley, and I saw Kandahar City ahead of us.

The streets in Kandahar were crowded with carts and motorcycles. The houses were made of brick and mud. Old men sat in the shade of the doorways, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.

Rahmat parked at my hotel. We went inside together. I showed the clerk the reservation on my phone. He pointed at my phone’s screen and said something in Dari.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“He said you booked a room for two weeks,” Rahmat told me. “He wants to know if that’s right. Most tourists only stay a day or two.”

“Two weeks is right.”

Rahmat translated what I said. The clerk gave me the keys to my room.

“Where do you want to go tomorrow?” Rahmat asked. “There’s a pomegranate orchard not too far from here that does a great tour. I can take you there, if you want.”

“I need to go to the Arghandab River Valley.”

Rahmat stopped smiling. “The valley is dangerous. The Taliban is still there.”

“But you can take me?”

“I’ll need more money.”

“How much more?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

I gave him the money. He looked like he regretted not asking for more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

I went up to my room and took off my coat. Then I stood underneath the ceiling fan, letting the cold air blow on my body.

Online, in the conspiracy forums and conspiracy subreddits, people told stories of giants in Kandahar. Soldiers who’d been attacked by Nephilim. Lost travelers who’d wandered into hidden cities filled with young boys and girls.

I was sure the truth was hidden somewhere in the hills around Kandahar. I wasn’t going to leave until I found it.

***

That night, I dreamt of Chazaqiel again. He sat locked in a cage in a circus tent. Beside him, a teenage boy with claws for hands ate a hot dog, and a two-headed woman brushed the hair on her right head.

Chazaqiel pressed his face against the bars.

“You’re special, Vadym,” he told me. “Very smart and also very willing to throw your life away.”

“I won’t be your lab rat.”

“Your blood is my blood now. You’re already part of this experiment.”

“I’ll find a way to fix this. I always do.”

He smiled.

I woke up in a cold sweat, my neck throbbing.

The bite marks had started bleeding again. I put on a fresh bandage and then went down to the hotel lobby. Rahmat was waiting for me, pacing in front of the door.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“I’ll be fine. I just want to get this over with.”

We got into his car and then drove in silence through the desert. We crossed the Arghandab River and then descended into the valley, toward the orchards filled with pomegranate trees.

Between the trees, drainage channels had been dug in the dirt. The farmers had built wooden huts throughout the orchards to hide from the sun.

Rahmat parked near one of the fences.

“I won’t drive any farther,” he told me.

“Then I’ll get out here.”

“How will you get home?”

“I’ll walk to the gas station we passed earlier and call you from there.”

“Okay.”

I stepped out of his car. He looked at me like it was the time he’d see me, and he turned his car around and drove back the way we’d come.

I stared at the hills in the distance. Then I looked at my map on my phone. The X was straight ahead of me. I walked towards it, through the pomegranate trees.

In the distance, men shouted in Dari.

I’d walked for about an hour, when I heard a man moaning in pain. I found him in one of the drainage channels. A young farmer. His throat had been cut open. His tunic was soaked with blood.

He saw me and muttered something.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Blood sputtered from his mouth. His pupils widened.

Through my work as investigator, on the dark web I’d watched thousands of people tortured and killed. Death never bothered me much. As a child, I’d taught myself to shut my emotions off, to not let myself ever feel anything. Complex PTSD, my therapist had called it.

I thought about killing the man. Putting him out of his misery. But I didn’t have it in me. I wasn’t a killer. I wasn’t a hero, either. I wasn’t the type to pick him up, drag him to the road and shout for help.

I just watched him die and kept walking.

The sun set. Darkness filled the orchards.

I climbed over the last fence and then walked towards the hills.

I could see a fire burning in the distance, inside one of the caves. Taliban, maybe, but maybe something else.

I heard footsteps behind me.

“Vadym?”

I turned and saw a giant with bright red hair.

“How do you know my name?”

“I’m Frank.”

***

Frank led me to the cave where he’d been living. We sat together next to his fire.

“We’re like brothers, you and me,” he told me. “The sons of Chazaqiel.”

“Are there any more of us?”

“There were a few more, but they’re all dead now. It’s just you and me left.”

“How did they die?”

“They were killed by Yevun and the others.”

Frank bit into the arm of a corpse he’d found in the orchards. He tore off a chunk of flesh and chewed on it as blood dripped down his chin.

“There’s a war,” he said. “You’ll need to pick a side, too.”

“A war between who?”

“The Watchers. But you’ll learn about the war soon enough.” He bit into the arm again, tearing off another chunk of flesh. “We all have different powers. Some of us can raise the dead. Some of us can cure diseases. Others, like you and me, can change the weather or turn our bodies into fog.”

“It just happened to me earlier, my arms dissolved.”

Frank nodded. “You fill yourself with sadness, and your body becomes water. Then you put your sadness in the sky whenever you want the rain to fall. I’d rather be able to raise the dead, but this is what we got.”

He laughed and then bit into the arm again, licking the blood off his lips.

“Tomorrow, I’ll take you to Dollmaker City and introduce you to Yevun and the others. They’re all excited to meet you.”

“So, the city is real?”

He nodded. “Very real. It’s where most of us live now. Those of us on Yevun’s side of the war, anyway.” He held the severed arm toward me. “Do you want some?”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t like the taste of it at first, either, but there’s not a lot of good meat around here. You get used to it.”

He ate the last bit of flesh off the arm and then threw what was left of it into the corner of the cave.

He lay down on the ground and closed his eyes. I lay down and tried to get some sleep, too.

***

The next day, as soon as it was dark again, Frank and I kept walking through the hills.

“Chazaqiel has been working with a billionaire in San Francisco,” I said. “They’ve set up a lab where they’re using Nephilim to try and decode angel DNA.”

“It’s not just Chazaqiel. It’s him, Ramiel, Baraqijal, and the other Reconstructionists. They want to make themselves Gods.”

“What about Yevun and the other Watchers in Dollmaker City?”

“They just want to be left alone.”

We walked through the desert all night. Then, when the sun b...

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