Chapter Five: For you I have Fallen.

  My eyes drifted open, languid and unhurried, fixing upon the newborn star burning quietly in the firmament above. A small smile touched my lips as I watched it flare, a spark fed by my presence alone. Its growth was microscopic, constant, and ever so slightly hastened when I turned my attention toward it.

  A thought, and my focus shifted.

  My serpentine irises constricted to narrow slits as the heavens faded from my awareness and the Garden came back into view. Crystalline grass shimmered beneath my bare feet, semi-translucent blades chiming softly as I moved. My hair flowed behind me like molten gold, catching the light as I walked.

  I allowed my mind to relax.

  The final locks fell away from the mental fortress I had maintained for so long. There was nothing left to hide now. The plan was complete. Victory inevitable.

  Father would know soon enough.

  I turned, already smiling, and found her standing there.

  Eve.

  Hazelnut hair fell loosely over her shoulders, framing a face untouched by fear or doubt. Innocence, unbroken and radiant. She was the final piece; the only one He’d ever hesitated over.

  Humanity was a gift. He repeated his father’s words in his mind; once he’d understood the true meaning of that statement, he committed to changing it.

  “Why, hello there, Eve,” he said gently. “What brings you so far out today?”

  The words were sincere. I had always cared for her; as one might a younger sister. Still, we both knew why she was here.

  She startled, then laughed, entirely unafraid, eyes alight with wonder at the world around her. “Lucifer! Gosh, it’s like you can tell when I go exploring.”

  A soft chuckle escaped me, my tongue flicking briefly between my teeth. “’Tis a good omen, walking with the morning star at your back.”

  Her expression dimmed just a fraction.

  Another pun. Another variation. Another tiny piece of her patience surrendered to eternity.

  She sighed. “I suppose I can’t argue. I always find new things when you’re with me…”

  She would have continued, but I stepped closer and gently raised a finger to her lips.

  “Speaking of which, dear child,” I said, gaze drifting toward the treeline, “I saw something while I was among the skies earlier. I believe there is a new tree, deep within the Garden.”

  I finished with a smirk, playful and practiced, though my eyes softened at her immediate excitement.

  My core pulsed.

  Pain radiated from the living flame beneath my skin.

  This is necessary.

  Her words tumbled out in a rush as she peered past me into the forest. “New? Like new new? One you haven’t seen before?”

  I laughed quietly. “I have never been near one like it.”

  That was all it took.

  I extended an arm, gesturing toward the dense oak forest beyond.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  Eve took off at a sprint, bare feet striking thorn-covered branches and roots without concern. She leapt, rebounded, and twisted through the undergrowth with reckless grace, the movements of someone who had never known pain, never learned fear.

  I followed at a measured pace.

  My footprints were lighter. Deliberate.

  The trail led us to it.

  A massive tree rose from the earth, its bark thick and layered like polished steel plates. Tiny, innumerable leaves glowed with a soft cyan light, and from its branches hung thousands of small, circular fruits; crystalline, transparent, each filled with a viscous red gel that pulsed faintly.

  Eve stood frozen, breath caught in her throat.

  I watched her, eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Hurry along now, my dear child,” I said lightly. “Night will soon fall upon you, and I shan’t be flying you home again.”

  The spell broke.

  Determination replaced awe as she sprang forward, grabbing a jutting branch and swinging herself upward. She twisted and vaulted higher, climbing with effortless joy.

  “Make sure you gather enough for Adam and Lillim while you’re up there,” I called.

  She laughed in response.

  I did not smile.

  Six massive wings unfurled from my back, white feathers blazing with unbearable light. Along the bones of each wing, dozens of eyes opened; serpentine slits narrowing as they focused.

  The air shattered.

  With a single violent beat, my wings hammered the atmosphere, and I rocketed skyward.

  Lucifer tore through the sky like a predator after the flash of light he’d caught.

  Boom after boom followed in his wake as he accelerated, ripping through the sound barrier again and again in the span of a heartbeat. Space itself seemed to recoil from his passage. By the time light reached his eyes and Gabriel came into view, Lucifer was already upon him.

  He seized Gabriel mid-air.

  Wings snapped wide and beat once, hard.

  The world inverted.

  They rocketed earthward, flames gathering along Lucifer’s form just before impact. The forest vanished beneath them as the ground gave way, dirt and stone tearing themselves apart in a thunderous explosion. A massive crater bloomed outward as Lucifer drove Gabriel into the earth and rode him down.

  “You won’t ruin this, Gabriel,” Lucifer snarled, standing over him. “You don’t get to take this victory from me just because you were hiding out here.”

  He inhaled deeply.

  Steam rolled from his nostrils, small tufts of flame flaring with each breath. Lucifer drew his arm back, briefly regarding his clenched fist.

  There was no doubt.

  He struck.

  The blow caved into Gabriel’s face with a sickening crack. Golden blood sprayed from his mouth and nose as he skidded through broken stone.

  “You…” Gabriel stammered. “You hit me. I— I’m bleeding. You can’t do this.”

  Lucifer laughed.

  “Pathetic,” he hissed. “Weak Gabriel.”

  He stepped closer, heat radiating from him in waves. “You’d undo everything I’ve worked for. Doom them to a life of enslavement; not for your morals, but for fear of punishment.”

  His voice rose, twisting into something hateful and discordant.

  “You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for this. You have no idea what I’ve lost.”

  The fire within him pulsed like a violent heartbeat. His skin flushed, and for a fleeting moment, confusion flickered; his cores were gone, replaced by something hotter, older, and far more dangerous.

  Then the confusion burned away.

  Above them, the sun began to change.

  Its light deepened, bleeding into crimson. Lucifer’s slitted golden eyes followed, darkening to the same blood-red hue.

  The emeralds embedded beneath his eyes blackened. The sapphire tear-line etchings along his cheeks began to pulse with a sickly violet light. Across his wings, the countless eyes lining their bones snapped open, staining red with the sun.

  Gabriel looked up at him, horror hollowing his face.

  “Brother…” he whispered. “By Father— what have you done? What have you done to yourself?”

  Lucifer’s lips peeled back as long, serpentine fangs unfolded from his jaws.

  “What have I done?” he growled. “You should be asking what you haven’t done.”

  He loomed over Gabriel, voice lowering. “You live as a slave, pretending friendship with those born unfree. Content to watch. Content to do nothing; while holding the power to change everything.”

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  Disgust crept into his tone.

  “But what would I expect? You only have the two wings you were born with. A disgrace to our kind. A disgrace to creation.”

  Then the rage died.

  It collapsed inward, leaving behind something far worse;cold, absolute apathy.

  Lucifer grabbed Gabriel by the wings.

  With a snarl, he wrenched them apart. Bone snapped. Feathers tore. Gabriel screamed as Lucifer twisted and broke them, then hurled him away. His body vanished into the forest, the thunder of his impact fading into silence.

  Then.

  Thunder answered.

  Lightning slammed down upon Lucifer in a burning wave of purifying light. The clap came too late to warn him. The bolt struck true, coursing through him, rooting him in place as forks of lightning exploded outward from his wings.

  It did not weaken.

  It grew.

  The beam thickened, swelling until it consumed his entire form. Father’s judgment made manifest.

  For a moment, Lucifer almost surrendered.

  Almost accepted it.

  Eve must have been faster than he thought. Perhaps this was enough. Perhaps his task was complete.

  Then the image burned into his mind’s eye.

  The lightning lancing through Alyssa…

  No.

  Through Eve. Through Adam. Through Lillim.

  And Lucifer screamed defiance into the light.

  My body did not heed my confusion.

  The twist in my mind where thought should have become action failed me. I no longer decided. And something older took over.

  My fists clenched.

  I squared my feet.

  Then my wings exploded outward.

  Lightning raced through my feathers, arcing and branching as they spread to their full, terrible span. Flame poured from my skin orange, crimson, violet, blue, white, green. Every hue bleeding together. Fire drawn from the hearts of genesis beneath my soul surged upward as a single, catastrophic pillar.

  It tore through the sky.

  The clouds split as the column of flame punched into them, roaring like a living thing. Lightning struck it head-on, colliding with fire so violently that the heavens screamed. Sparks and thunder rained outward as the mantle of judgment was lifted from me, forced back, inch by agonizing inch, into the sky.

  A victorious howl tore from my throat.

  My fangs elongated. My eyes narrowed to hateful slits. Glowing gold spittle flew from my teeth as I strained, huffing, muscles screaming under the effort. The silver adorning my nails sharpened, blackening as heat warped it into cruel points.

  And then…

  I stopped holding back.

  I unleashed the gifts of man I had usurped from the gods above.

  Flame screamed through me, bursting from skin and wing alike. I burned, well and truly burned, yet the fire only intensified, the temperature rising up with the fire-storm, driving the oppressive light back into the heavens like an uneven nail.

  So… Hot. The thoughts swam through my cooking mind awe for the freedom of fire.

  With one final scream, I won space.

  I bent forward, hands braced on my knees, gasping. My wings sagged. My shoulders slumped inward. The fire sputtered and died, revealing scorched, reddened flesh beneath.

  But I smiled.

  Wide. Crooked. Manic.

  “I…” I laughed breathlessly, teetering between hysteria and collapse. “I did it. You’re too late.”

  The fire answered.

  It reignited in violent waves, exploding across my skin. Massive serpents of flame poured forth, arcing and circling through the air, burning it into hissing distortion as they coiled around me in living defiance.

  “Haha… hah!” My laughter cracked, exhaustion bleeding through even as the grin remained. “They were the last.”

  I straightened slightly.

  “No more bonds.”

  The world answered.

  “No more leniency.”

  The voice came from behind me.

  Pain pure, surgical, absolute lanced through my soul as golden lightning speared into my back. The force hurled me forward, carving into my flesh as runes burned themselves into my divine body.

  The storm clouds shifted.

  They condensed.

  They stood.

  A titan took shape within the tempest, vaguely humanoid, impossibly vast. A lazy hand extended. And more beams of light slammed into me, crushing my fire inward. The serpents of flame rushed to defend me, only to be annihilated, chewed apart, erased by the judgment that touched them.

  “I have ignored this foolishness long enough, Lucifer.”

  The voice was not angry.

  It did not need to be.

  “I turned a blind eye while you lied and stole your way across the realms. I held my tongue when Prometheus took the fall for your tricks. I said nothing when Mahuika hunted a fire thief.”

  The titan loomed.

  “I had hoped Surtr might teach you the error of your ways.”

  The storm darkened.

  “But your greed. Your wrath. Your envy.”

  A pause.

  “No… your pride— has kept you from seeing the truth.”

  “Freedom. They are nothing but ani—”

  “Free. You can’t stand it, can you?”

  The voice was calm. Absolute.

  “That for once you may have to guide instead of order. Be what you only ever pretended to be.”

  A hollow laugh wrenched itself from the six-winged seraphim’s lips as the blade he’d borrowed materialized from a steel coloured flare surrounding his halo the burning energy breaching the material becoming a beautiful long blade of gold and steel with an ornate engraved handle, that depicted blazing stars shooting through the void. The Blade itself licked and groomed itself with flames of which its embers could glass deserts.

  “And here’s the punchline.”

  A titanic hand of storm stretched toward him.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  Lucifer slammed the sword down.

  The blade shattered on impact.

  Flames exploded outward, a roaring wave that hurled the Creator back as the fire raged, then collapsed inward. Filling each fragment until they glowed red-hot. The shards fell like shooting stars, melting through the forest floor and plunging deep into the world below.

  Even as the platform of Eden cracked and disintegrated beneath their feet, fragments of Surtr’s flame fused with the remains of the sword, eviscerating the divine bindings that held the realm together. Eden burned, cleansed, purified, as the shards sank into the planet’s heart, igniting chaos and flooding its core with molten god-slag.

  “There,” Lucifer croaked. “A fighting chance.”

  A force seized him by the throat.

  I’m sorry, children. I don’t think I’ll be there to guide you. But you won’t be alone anymore.

  “No one will remember you as a savior, Lucifer,” the voice pronounced.

  “You are a destroyer. I gave you chances… Time and opportunity. Yet time and time again, no matter the occasion, you choose the path to ruin.”

  The Arch-Angel rose, lifted skyward by a higher power. His flames consumed his form, burning desperately as the Usurper hung above Eden like a second sun.

  “So be it then,” the voice declared.

  “If you wish to give them their own patrons, be it on your head to be their first boogeyman.”

  The realm beneath him splintered.

  Lucifer was hurled downward.

  Wind screamed past him, shearing feathers from his wings as he accelerated. His body slammed through the Garden of Eden, detonating the realm into fragments as he tore through the void.

  Above him, the broken world hung suspended, ether spilling from a fracture in reality like an hourglass of raw light. And yet. Eden did not simply die.

  It flowed.

  Land melted and fused, magma-like, coalescing into a new world; one of fire and sulfur, forged from judgment and defiance alike.

  His wings flared, flames within him pulsing desperately, trying to slow the fall. Instead, his speed only increased as the runes carved into his marred arm spread like a sickness across his flesh.

  Below him, a massive lake of boiling sulfur rushed closer.

  A terrible scream tore from Lucifer, his voice ripping apart as fire coated his throat and rent the air itself, leaving fissures in the void behind him.

  “No! Not like this. It wasn’t like this!” Came a roar in his mind.

  Images assaulted Kain’s mind as the memory consumed him. Centuries of war. Worlds burning. Two beings clashing across planets yet unborn, flashing between material and pure energy as they wrought cataclysmic war across the universes.

  All compressed into a fraction of an instant and crammed into Kainen’s mind’s eye.

  Lucifer’s wings flared one final time, hundreds of eyes blazing with molten rage.

  Then the fire crawled down his oesophagus.

  Burned away his feathers.

  And the fall claimed him.

  Then he woke.

  A gentle, cool wind wrapped around his skin, rushing past his ears as his body hung weightless in open air. For a heartbeat, there was peace. Until awareness snapped fully into place.

  He was falling.

  The last traces of the memory, vision, heat, defiance, they all collapsed in on themselves and vanished, leaving only sky and motion.

  Thwoom.

  Kain tore through a dense bank of clouds, vapor detonating around him as he plummeted toward a ground he could not yet see.

  Instinct surged. He reached for the wild ether in his mana system, wrapping the rest of his focus around his unholy aura. Both recoiled violently. It was the first time he had attempted to channel his energies since, since everything.

  He phase-shifted.

  The world stuttered.

  Reality ground against itself as the unstable ability flickered uncontrollably, dragging his perception back and forth between agonizing slow motion and explosive sonic descent. The strain forced the technique apart, and he abandoned it before it tore him with it.

  Breaking through another cloud layer, the world below bloomed into view. Landmasses, oceans, color unfolding like a pop-up book revealing an unfamiliar reality.

  Panic crept in.

  Kain reached inward, abandoning finesse and forcing his awareness deep into himself, trying to cycle his cores.

  Nothing answered.

  There was no resonance. No pressure. No pull.

  He was hollow.

  The eight cores that had once made him a mana monstrosity; the dense lattice of channels and pathways he had carved into his spirit over decades were gone.

  The thought struck harder than the fall ever could.

  Desperation spiked. He spread his consciousness through his spirit, searching blindly. A fall might cripple him temporarily. But this?

  This was erasure.

  Then… something.

  Faint. Dull. Drained.

  His awareness expanded, and the truth became unmistakable.

  Eight cores remained.

  Dead.

  Inert husks, identical to what had greeted him the first time he had ever entered his soul-scape as a boy.

  “No!”

  The word tore from his throat, lost instantly to the rushing wind.

  Rage swallowed the panic whole.

  A hellish fury ignited, raw and instinctive, and one of the dead cores answered it, barely. A soft pulse of red light flickered within the flame core, kindling an ember that sparked… then died.

  There was nowhere for the energy to go.

  No structure left to sustain it.

  Kain’s eyes snapped wide as the ground surged upward, trees rushing past his peripheral vision. He fell below the canopy, time running out in heartbeats.

  His hand shot to the onyx tag hanging from the chain around his neck. The only enchanted object he carried that required no mana to function.

  He ripped it free.

  The chain snapped.

  The tag flared blood-red as a spell circuit carved itself into the black stone.

  Kain detonated on impact.

  Darkness swallowed his senses.

  Slowly after nearly a full day had passed, sensation returned.

  Kain’s consciousness reassembled in fragments as sound, scent, and pressure crept back into existence. Grey matter reformed first, thought following structure. Bone knitted itself outward from his heart, his skeleton rebuilding piece by piece as flesh followed.

  By the time his body finished reconstituting, the Heart Saver spell had long since burned itself out.

  He lay whole once more.

  But diminished.

  A pale, clawed hand dug into the dry red dirt as Kain pushed himself up onto his elbows.

  The motion felt wrong.

  As he found his footing, he stumbled, his body unfamiliar, uncoordinated, weaker than it had been moments ago. Even his aura reflected the loss: thin, sluggish, a shadow of the oppressive presence it had once been.

  He stared down at his hands.

  Long, pale fingers tipped with claws flexed uselessly at the air, grasping as if they could seize what had been taken from him and drag it back by force alone.

  They closed on nothing.

  Kain lifted his gaze and took in the world he had fallen into.

  If one were being charitable, it could be called a forest. The ground beneath his feet was stained red with dried blood, spreading outward in a wide patch like a blood-angel pressed into the earth. Trees hemmed him in on all sides, their canopies blotting out the sky entirely and making time impossible to judge.

  But he could feel it.

  It was night.

  The air carried it. The energy clinging to the world whispered it.

  This was his hour.

  He turned in a slow circle, boots grinding against the dirt, as though one more rotation might reveal stone roads or torchlight something familiar, something that would lead him home.

  There was nothing.

  Only unfamiliar trees with peeling white bark and clusters of Deathkiss growths choking the underbrush. The tall, dark-barked trees bristling with green spines instead of leaves were at least recognizable, violently toxic, dangerous even to his kind. Enough exposure could slow regeneration to a crawl.

  “Where in the deepest pits of Zurith am I?” Kain muttered.

  As if in answer.

  A scream ripped through the forest.

  High. Shrill. Unmistakably feminine.

  Even weakened, even diminished, his vampiric senses caught it instantly. A dull ache flared in his fangs as the sound settled in, a visceral reminder of how long it had been since his last feeding and, how much blood his body had already burned rebuilding itself.

  Human.

  Very human.

  Carefully, Kain began moving toward the sound.

  He picked his way through the forest with deliberate precision, twisting between trunks and ducking beneath poisonous growths. Every step was measured. If there was a fight waiting for him and there almost certainly was he could not afford to be weaker still.

  Purifying toxins now would push him dangerously close to frenzy.

  And in this state.

  That would get him killed.