Chapter One: The Letter

Angel sat in his office staring out the window. Just yesterday everything had finally felt normal again, he'd had Cordelia back and now she was gone, his time with her had gone by so quickly. Angel hadn't been the same for a long time, Cordelia had been his rock, his strength, she had kept him grounded and guided him. When he lost her a year ago, things had never been the same; yesterday was the first time in a long time he'd been with his Cordelia.

Angel got up and walked back over to his desk he stared at the wall behind her and the sword Cordelia had used to help defend him one last time. He looked at the phone that had given him the news that she was gone. None of it seemed real.

A knock on the door startled him. He turned around to see Harmony, "Harmony, I'm busy."

"I'll only disrupt your brooding for a minute boss. Here's your mail." She walked over and handed Angel a manila envelope. "It says urgent on it so I figured—"

"Goodbye Harmony." Angel said taking the envelope and tossing it onto his desk. Harmony shrugged and left. Angel sat down at his desk and looked at the envelope; there was no address on it. All it said was "For: Angel. URGENT!!" Nothing was urgent in his books unless it had to do with Cordelia.

"Angel?" Wesley walked in carrying a book. Angel sighed and dropped the envelope.

"What is it Wesley?" Angel asked. "And can it wait until later?"

"I know you're upset about Cordelia but—"

"Fine what is it Wesley?" Hearing her name out loud was too painful. Wesley watched Angel and closed the book in his hands. Angel looked up at him. "I'm not going to talk about it."

"Alright, well I've been doing some research into the Shanshu prophecy and I've discovered something—"

"Screw the prophecy."

"But Angel."

"Spike can have it. It doesn't matter any more. So any information you've discovered about the prophecy you can take to Spike." Angel got up from behind his desk, he glanced down at the package and sighed he grabbed it and stepped into his elevator. The doors closed with Wesley watching him.

Angel held the envelope in his hands as he rode the elevator to his room. The last time he'd gotten a strange envelop, Spike had come along with it. But for some reason he felt a strange pull to this one. Maybe he was hoping it would have Cordelia in it, although he knew that wasn't it.

The doors opened and Angel stepped out. His room was dark, the curtains drawn back so that no light entered. He sat down on his neatly made bed and opened the envelope. He pulled out an old piece of paper covered in words from a different language. "Great, I should have opened this in front of Wesley." Angel mumbled. He looked at the words and ran his hands over a portion of the paper. He felt a warmth flow through his body, and knew this was important.

While he regretted storming out on Wesley, it wouldn't stop him from going to him now. He made his way to Wesley's office quickly, but Wesley wasn't there. He was about to leave when he had an idea. He took two of Wesley's books off the shelf and sat down at Wesley's desk. He opened the first book and tried to decipher the words written across the top, which might tell him what he was looking at. But Angel had never been good at the researching part. After what felt like forever he finally found the right language, and slowly he translated the top.

"Anulekha Fateor Orculem…" He looked back into the book to make sure he was right. "Orculem is Prophecy. Anulekha…I can't find." Angel sighed but then thought of something he got up and grabbed one more book from Wesley's shelf. He took it over to the desk and held it to his mouth. He took a deep breath hoping this would work. "Anulekha Prophecy. English Translation." He set the book down and opened it, the book was blank but after a few seconds it began to write itself. Angel grinned and took the book and the prophecy back up to his office leaving Wesley's desk a mess.