Page 71 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

SORIEL

I pull back enough to look at her face again.

The last fragile fibers of her essence waver with the weight of death, dim and disoriented.

She hovers like a dying star, still anchored to the broken shell in my arms. I feel her slipping through my fingers as every passing second pulls her further out of reach.

If I hesitate now, she’ll be lost to me forever.

The Legion would let her disappear without ceremony, their faces turned away the moment her attacker struck. They cared nothing for the spilled blood of the innocent. I was forbidden to interfere, my hands bound by celestial tradition while she screamed and pleaded for someone to save her.

Lowering my head, I press my lips to her temple. “They allowed your cries to be silenced,” I whisper, my breath warming her cold skin, “I will make them echo forever.”

I spread my wings wide again, not to comfort, but to summon. A low hum emerges at the edges of the storm above, drawn to the defiance rising inside me. Thunder rumbles its warning as lightning veins the clouds like fireworks.

Taking my hand, I press my palm to the ruin of her chest. Her blood becomes one with my skin, a final testament, sacred and unhallowed, sealing the pact I now forge in defiance.

This is no gentle healing. It is an invocation of wrath and justice, an ancient mercy.

Her death was the prayer, and my touch is the answer.

“This is not resurrection,” I command, voice firm with power and wrath. “This is reckoning.”

A diminished luster appears muted beneath her skin, a delicate radiance building from the inside out.

Light gathers where flesh was severed, drowned in pain and cruelty.

A slight tremor vibrates under my touch.

Sharp cracking sounds begin to fill the silent space around us, not from violence, but reformation.

Ruptured tissue bends and molds in an attempt to repair itself.

Her soul shudders, suspended between agony and release.

The air around us bends inward, and gravity shifts with the unnatural weight.

She is not returning as she was; she is becoming what they forbade her to be.

The luminescence below her skin begins to fracture outward, forcing itself through the wounds her body can no longer contain.

Tiny convulsions start in her lower legs, building to a roaring crescendo up her torso and arms. Her spine arches mercilessly, compelled by the new command as if her soul is tearing loose from its prison.

I clutch her tighter, not to restrain her, but to remind the remnants of her being that she is not alone.

A cry ruptures from her lips, jagged and anguished, while the floor quakes in response. The storm above mirrors her agony now. Sharp flashes and thunderous rage rip the air apart, electrifying every breath.

Beneath my touch, the brutal reshaping of a mortal frame begins.

Shattered ribs pop and lengthen, spine elongating, aligning into something no longer built to crawl or cower.

Shoulder blades snap open with a resounding crack—slick with ichor and flame—as the first hints of wing-bone push free from skin.

New bone splinters appear raw and gleaming, yet magnificently alive.

Feathers follow, silver like mine, but tipped in garnet, not blood, but memory.

They stand for the pain and resilience of everything she survived and for everything she has yet to endure.

Despite this, there’s something else pulsing underneath the grace.

It’s an indescribable blaze, pointed sharply and laced with an untapped darkness.

The power rising in her is not only sacred, it’s unforgiving.

It spirals and surges with the fury of the wronged, the condemned, and the forgotten.

A primordial being the Legion would never dare name, and would deny could ever come from one of their own.

The spirit wails, a soundless scream pressing into my chest like a second heartbeat. I hold her through each unrelenting second, whispering her name again and again, grounding her to this moment with me.

“Stay with me,” I say, voice steady despite the storm. “Become what they feared.”

The light surrounding us is no longer soft.

It sears the room, engulfing the kitchen in a frenzy of divine and retributive fury.

The world around us recoils, blistering the walls and thickening the air with pressure.

I did not simply return what was taken. I called forth something the Legion feared: an angel not made, but unleashed.

This is not a return of a daughter the heavens once cast their gaze upon; this is the rise of a buried myth.

She will not rise as one of their pure and perfect flock. What awakens before me is the ascent of the fallen. Those erased from memories, too weak and snuffed from existence for daring to burn brighter than their keepers. And now, my Nhialii joins their ranks, but will speak for those muted.

The light begins to recede, collapsing inward like a supernova folding into a blackhole. The storm outside doesn’t fade; it waits. A breath held as if the sky itself dares not disturb what comes next.

They rest motionless in my arms. The tremors, the convulsions, the screaming spirits all settle to a hush.

Only one breath lingers, shallow and new, as though the world waits to rebuild.

Then, with the intensity looming around us, their eyes flutter open.

Slow and uncertain at first, a door sealed shut creaking with the weight of what waits beyond.

Amber, once warm and earthly, now burns a stunning variation of molten gold laced with red. Blazing from within, they’re with darkness; a bruised fire, fury molded into flesh. They frantically search the space between us, distant for one long aching moment before locking with mine.

They see me.

I don’t see them as the woman I lost, but a new being forged in her absence. No longer mortal, but far more eternal, more terrifying. And yet, they’re still my Nhialii. Their gaze holds vast and ancient now, neither tethered to one specific realm. My breath hitches.

“Nhialii,” I say, reverent and shattered.

They blink slowly. Their lips part, but no sound escapes, just a rasp of air, raw and unsure. Their pale hand twitches upon my chest, a thread of memory reaching out, weak but unmistakable. She returned… but not alone.

I cautiously hold them closer, unsure if I’m cradling salvation or destruction.

The woman I failed lies inside this reformed vessel; however, an ethereal creature, vast and furious, now moves through the veins.

They stare at me as if they’re trying to remember the name of a dream, and I can only beseech with whatever followed her back will allow her to stay.

Their wings twitch behind them, half-unfurled, the last sparks of her essence quiver in my arms. “Soriel,” they say. My name, broken and practically inaudible, falls from their lips.