Page 107 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

T here’s something no one tells you about being haunted.

It’s not the screaming. Not the shadows. Not the bloody hallucinations or voices in your head. Those, you can brace for. Those are noise.

The real horror is the silence between.

The way your own thoughts begin to feel like foreign invaders. How the memory of your mother’s voice comes through sounding like him. How even when you pray, you’re not sure who’s listening.

Somehow I find myself back at the rented home but I don’t question it, I don’t question much anymore. I try not to sleep that night. But exhaustion has teeth, and eventually it drags me under.

That’s when he returns. Not with wings or fire but with my private memories.

My childhood home in Ipoh. The kitchen light flickering overhead. The quiet hum of my mother singing an old Hokkien lullaby as she chopped ginger.

But something is off . The air shimmers. The ceiling blinks. And when I turn to face my mother, her face isn’t hers .

It’s Solareth’s. Soft. Angelic… and smiling.

“You remember this because I allow it,” he whispers, his voice echoing from her lips. “Memories are mine to rearrange. Isn’t it lovely when I wear your grief like a garment?”

He grabs me by the throat and slams his mouth on mine, slipping his nefarious tongue between my lips before I realize what’s happening. A low, guttural sound rumbles from his throat as he deepens the kiss—possessive, commanding, as if he’s claiming more than just my mouth.

I’ve had relationships before. I’ve touched and been touched, explored bodies like maps I was never meant to read.

But I never let it go further. Every time, just before the moment turned irreversible, something in me would fray—like a thread pulled from the edge of reality.

A strange dissociation, sudden and cold, would take hold.

Like my soul stepped sideways and left my body behind.

I never understood it. I blamed nerves. Disinterest. A quiet kind of shame.

But now… I begin to wonder.

Was it something older? A curse etched into my bones before I ever took my first breath? A ward to keep others out, to keep him in?

For a heartbeat, my mind fractures under the heat of kiss, drowning in the confusion of sensation.

Then, clarity pierces through the haze. A flash of reason, of refusal.

I shove hard against his chest, my palms colliding with muscle and heat.

My hand rises, instinct-driven, and strikes his face with a sharp crack.

His neck twists horrifically before it cracks, and with jerky movements comes back into place—a sinisterly beautiful smile slowly blooms, revealing fangs.

I scream and the dream collapses into flame right before I jolt awake—sweat-soaked, shivering, fists clenched so tightly that my nails cut half-moons into my palms.

He’s invading me, violating me again.

The worst part? A profane part of me wants to let him in. Just to stop the torment. Just to hear that comforting, silken lie he whispers about purpose, about destiny.

Somewhere along the spiral of this unraveling, my body begins to crave him—not with desire, but with desperation, as if it's forgotten how to want anything that doesn’t ruin me.

The village is decaying.

I see it the moment I step outside the chapel’s ruined grounds the next day. The air is sour—flies swarm without reason, birds fly in erratic patterns. The leaves on the trees curl inward like burned paper.

The villagers still avoid me. Some watch from windows, their eyes hollow and glistening. Others walk in slow, drugged patterns through the streets, lips moving without sound—reciting verses, perhaps, from rituals they no longer understand.

Were they always part of it? Were they all threads in this underground cult, woven without me ever seeing the pattern?

And the sky— God , the sky. It pulses with veins of light, like something beneath it was pushing outward. The veil between his world and this one is thinning, melding together.

By evening, the first plague hits .

It starts with the children. Their mouths fill with ash. Their skin blisters into sigils that move. Their parents weep, begging the old gods, before eventually offering gifts at the chapel ruins.

I find dead birds nailed to the door. Teeth in little jars. A newborn’s blanket soaked in what I hope is wine.

They’re worshipping .

And Solareth drinks it in like wine, like a scream offered on bended knees. His eyes gleam with unholy hunger, lips parting slightly as if to savor the taste of their fear, their fury… and my failing resistance.

Every tremor in my soul is a prayer he answers with silence... and possession. His essence wraps around me the same way his hand did around my throat—marking me.

When he chooses to speak to me again that night, it’s not in dreams but through the people.

An old man in the marketplace turns to me as I pass and whispers in perfect clarity.

“You’re the gate. The beautiful gate. We were locked away, but now you’re opening. Thank you.”

Then he coughs blood and collapses, smiling.

I flee to the edge of the woods. Somewhere deep in the roots of the land, I believe I can still find answers to this nightmare—something buried, anything that will help me understand how to fight this.

But he’s always there. Just behind the trees. Just beneath the skin. Whispers. Illusions. Faces of the dead turning toward me, their lips parting in his voice.

“I offered freedom, they begged for chains. So I gave them silk and called it truth. And still they wept for more.”

His words slither, slick with half-meanings and buried knives. I press my hands to my ears, but it’s useless. The laughter doesn’t need sound anymore—it rides my breath, curls in my bloodstream.

“Stop,” I snap, voice shaking. “Stop twisting everything.”

The sky splits—reality tearing. A wound across the horizon, wide and seething with gold. The clouds twist around it like flesh around a blade. And from that rift, his wings emerge first—massive, radiant, molten wings.

The villagers drop to their knees. They chant. They scream. Some claw at their own eyes in joy.

And understanding strikes me.

He isn’t preparing for redemption. He’s preparing for domination .

A god not by right, but by devotion twisted into obedience. He doesn’t need to possess them. He needs them to choose him.

To love him. Worship him. Need him.

He’s building a kingdom of voluntary chains.

And I’m the key.

Solareth’s expression shifts, ever so slightly toward amusement. A patient predator watching its prey rationalize the trap it already stepped into.

“I’m not twisting,” he says, softly now, almost mournful. “I’m revealing. You think you’re defying me?” He tilts his head. “They died because of your resistance.”

I falter, guilt flickering.

He steps closer, his form refracting, flickering between shadow and light. “Do you think they would have suffered if you had just said yes?” he whispers. “If you had let the wound open clean, rather than rupture it with denial?”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“No,” he agrees. “But it asked for you. And you—like your mother before you—kept pretending you could turn away.”

I shake her head, rage and fear at war in my gut.

“You think denying your fate makes you strong.” His voice is velvet and venom. “But what is strength that gets others killed? What is defiance, if it feeds the fire it swears to smother?”

My eyes snap open to find him towering over me. When did I close my eyes? He leans down and my lids involuntarily flutter at his proximity, at the way his warm breath ghosts along my skin before his large hand cradles my face .

“What if surrender isn’t weakness, angelica?” His gaze sharpens, cutting past my defenses. “What if it’s the only way you save anyone?”

Fight it! Don’t let him put you under his spell!

The screams beyond the trees become a distant, muffled haze—like voices underwater. His presence presses in, thick and absolute, drowning out the world until there’s nothing left but him… and the pull of something ancient and vile that thrums in the marrow of my bones.

Reality warps around his gravity. My thoughts blur. My body betrays me—heat coils where fear should be, a tremble not entirely from dread.

“Get away from me,” I snarl, the words brittle on my tongue. But my limbs don’t move. My body doesn’t listen. Instead, it aches— reaches for him.

He smiles, all patience and poison. “Is that truly what you want, angelica?” The pet name curls in the air like smoke, a mockery of affection. “To deny me? To be the spark that razes what remains of this village to ash?”

My breath stutters. I blink. “What are you talking about?” I whisper.

But I know. I fear that I do.

“Your resistance is a storm, angelica. A beautiful, useless storm. Every time you say no, the wound widens. The veil thins. The balance unravels. Is your pride worth their screams?”

His wings snap open behind him—vast, bladed things of bone and burning light, etched with symbols that shift when I try to read them.

For a moment, they radiate a grotesque kind of grandeur, like the corrupted echo of something once holy.

Then they move slowly, and sensually, arching inward until they cocoon us in a prison of celestial ruin. A cage of divinity gone wrong.

Intimate. Inescapable. Worship turned to possession.

“They’re not dying because of me,” he breathes against the curve of my neck. His fingers tighten around my chin, forcing my gaze up to his. “They’re dying because you keep pretending you’re something fragile. You keep pretending you are one of them.”

His lips hover just above mine, not touching—just close enough to poison the air between us.

“You could end this. You could save them. All it takes is one word, one surrender. But no… you cling to a fiction. A life that was never yours to begin with.” His voice softens to a purr, cruel and coaxing. “Tell me, angelica—how many more have to burn before you stop lying to yourself?”

My knees threaten to give but I force myself to stand my ground.

He presses a chaste kiss on my lips and my eyes widen at his unexpected restraint. “You are stronger than I imagined.”

He says it like a compliment. I don’t understand the underlying hint of pride.

I boldly stare into the golden burn of his gaze. “You want their love so badly you’ll destroy them for it.”

“No,” he says, tilting his head. “I will reshape them. Break their will, and give them mine .”

“You’re not freeing anyone. You’re enslaving them and calling it salvation.”

He smiles, slow and merciless, his eyes fixed on my lips. “They crave it,” he murmurs. “They’re tired of the gray—of choice, of doubt. They want absolution. Something final. Something holy.”

His tongue traces the seam of my mouth, deliberate and invasive. I flinch, try to turn away—but his hand clamps around my jaw, firm, unyielding.

He tsks, dragging my face back to his with a grip that borders on reverent. “Don’t look away. This is the part where you begin to understand… that resistance only makes the surrender sweeter.”

The kiss begins slowly—achingly tender, like an apology wrapped in heat. It seduces rather than seizes, lulling me into the illusion that I have a choice, that I might pull away if I only wanted it enough.

But when I press my lips shut in quiet defiance, his patience curdles.

A low growl rumbles from his throat—not anger, but something deeper, more primal.

A warning. His hand tightens at the base of my skull as his mouth claims mine fully, stripping away the pretense of gentleness.

His dominance floods the space between us, dragging my body into a betrayal of my will—responding, yielding, trembling beneath him.

“You will crown me with their longing. With your blood. With your name,” he breathes between us.

“You made a mistake,” I tell him.

“Did I?”

“You thought I’d kneel. But I’m not here to open the gate. I’m here to shut it. ”

He smiles, slow and sovereign, like a god-king watching the first flicker of insurrection ignite in his temple. Not with fear… but fascination. Approval. Amusement.

Somewhere beyond us, a scream tears through the air—raw, mortal, final. The scent of blood follows, metallic and warm, curling around us like incense at an unholy altar.

“Then fight, angelica.” He presses his lips to mine again. “And let me savor your ruin.”