The sky wept fire the night the world shattered.
Not from the heavens above, but from the divine realm ruptured by rebellion.What was once azure and endless cracked like fragile glass, spilling divine fire upon a world already drowning in its own defiance. Cities trembled beneath the weight of judgment; stone and steel melted alike under Heaven's fury. The heavens had not come to listen. They had come to silence.
Cries rose—not just from human lips, but from the throats of angels cast from their high thrones, their wings scorched by the flames of disobedience. Some fell in battle. Others… fell by choice. A thousand wings once clothed in radiance now darkened, torn asunder by conflict. The shrieking wind that swept across the land carried ash, soot, and the dying echoes of hymns once sung in reverence. Beneath the sky's bleeding veil, cities crumbled and forests burned, a tapestry of ruin painted by divine wrath and human defiance.
Avesari stood at the edge of that ruin.
High above a mountain cliff that now jutted like the blade of a god into the heart of a dying continent, her bare feet pressed into soot-blackened stone. She was once a harbinger of light, a guardian of sacred harmony. Now, her wings—fractured, fading—were composed of smoke and faint luminescence, barely clinging to her form. They shimmered like ghostly memories. Where feathers once gleamed with holy gold, now hung veils of ash and ether.
Her gaze was not on the fires below, nor on the distant machines still clawing at the husk of civilization. It was fixed on the horizon—where twilight met the sea of stars above the world's edge. There, a dark star pulsed faintly.
A star that should not be.
Her hand trembled as she reached for it instinctively, but the chill that crawled along her arm was not celestial. It was memory. The cries of fallen brethren. The bitter betrayal of Heaven's command. The moment she defied the Creator's decree and chose mercy over obedience.
The moment she Fell.
She remembered a voice echoed through the flames—harsh, commanding, celestial.
"Those who betray the Throne shall be stripped of their grace."
"I thought the end would feel... heavier," she murmured to no one. Her voice, soft and lilting, carried like a lullaby on the smoke-choked wind.
---
Now
The city was a fractured hymn of silence and static.
Perched atop a rusted tower of forgotten tech and tangled ivy, she listened to the broken rhythms of a world still limping toward survival. Wind whispered through broken antennas like flutes played by ghosts. Somewhere below, neon flickered against crumbling stone—remnants of two eras refusing to let go of one another.
The fallen angel watched.
Behind her, the ruins of a temple crackled, its pillars half-swallowed by molten stone. This place had once echoed with sacred music and divine presence. Now it served as a tomb for belief.
She closed her eyes.
For a brief instant, the world was silent. Then came the whisper.
"Do you regret it?"
The voice was not hers. It slithered through the smoke like a serpent. Familiar. Mocking.
"No," she replied aloud, though doubt laced her tone. "They deserved a choice."
A rustle in the air behind her. Not leaves. Not wings. Something else. A shadow coalesced near the broken altar—a fractured memory of another fallen.
But it vanished as quickly as it came.
She had given up Heaven, but not her purpose.
She searched—not just for a sign, but for him.
A human. Kneeling amid the ruin, holding his instrument like a prayer. His bow danced with reverent precision. No audience. No reason. Yet he played.
The music reached her, carried by some mercy in the wind. Each note wove through the ash like threads of defiance and longing. It was raw. Imperfect. Beautiful.
Something stirred within her.
She stepped back from the edge.
"No," she whispered. "Not yet."
He wasn't ready. Neither was she.
Her form shimmered briefly, the remnants of a Mirrored Weave spell unraveling as she folded into shadow. A final glance down at the musician—Caleb—and she vanished.
Unseen. For now.
He wouldn't remember the war. Not truly. Just fragments in dreams, perhaps. Songs that haunted him. But she remembered him. The child who had once dared to sing amidst the ashes.
The one who was now a man.
---
He tuned the last string and let it hum.
The sound was imperfect—slightly flat, worn like the guitar itself—but he let it settle. Perfection didn't suit this world anymore. Not since the sky burned. Not since silence became the default melody of life.
His name was Caleb. Just Caleb. No titles, no grand lineage. Just a man with rough fingers and a stubborn heart who carried music like a scar he refused to cover.
He sat by the cracked window of a forgotten chapel-turned-shelter, surrounded by relics: broken pews, old circuitry, candle stubs barely clinging to wax. A fusion of old faith and scavenged tech. It was his sanctuary.
Outside, the wind carried ash and whispers. Inside, he played.
Notes drifted like feathers, soft and uncertain, rising through the air as if searching for someone to hear them. To understand. To answer.
He didn't know why he played anymore. Maybe to remember. Maybe to forget. Or maybe because she had once told him music could mend things the world didn't know how to heal.
She.
That memory was vague. A presence, more than a face. A voice that sounded like starlight and mourning. He often wondered if it had been real, or just something his mind had conjured during the darkest nights after the Fall.
But tonight, something was different.
He paused. A shiver ran through his spine—not of cold, but of recognition.
Someone or something was listening.
Not from the street, not from the city below. From above.
He looked up. The air had shifted, the wind carried the gaze of something ancient. Each note he played sang against fate, a defiance that called to something sleeping in the stars.
And high above, beyond mortal sight, the dark star pulsed again.
A warning.
A promise.