Page 72 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

NHIALII

T here’s a roar in my skull, ricocheting off the pieces I expected to be crushed. Everything hurts, but it’s not the same agony I remember. This pain runs deeper, cellular, cosmic. I feel as if I’ve been unraveled and stitched back together with a thread that doesn’t belong on this earthly plane.

I don’t know if I’m breathing, but I feel the air crawling on my skin.

It sends an eerie sensation trickling along my spine.

My body feels unfamiliar, heavier, and undeniably raw.

There’s a strange heat roiling inside my chest, pulsing a second heartbeat.

I dare a deeper breath, but an intense spasm lances along my back.

Everything is too loud. The walls breathe, and the buzzing lights drill like insects burrowing in my ears. Electrified air crackles as if it were alive. It mocks the reverberation of pulses inside my skull.

I don’t remember standing, yet I’m no longer crumpled on the ground.

Shaking limbs stagger with a new aching strength.

There’s a weight behind me, massive and foreign, dragging my balance off-kilter.

Something shifts when I breathe. I turn slightly, catching a glint.

Striking silver with scarlet accent wings protrude from my back, coated in an indistinguishable sheen.

I don’t understand them or how they formed on my torso.

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing focus. The pain sharpens behind my eyes, and then I’m there again.

I see him again. I see myself on the floor.

I see my death. My last memory is of desperation, reaching for the shard…

his face above mine. A sadistic amount of joy as he crushed his weight into my torso.

Then it all went black.

A faint smirk curls my lips, remembering my last words to the son of a bitch, “...something worse will come for you and it’ll wear my face.”

Lost in remembrance, warmth caresses my cheek—a palm, gentle and steady. A soft, grounding voice pulls me back from the anguish.

“Nhialii.”

“Soriel,” I reply hesitantly. Somehow, I recall his name. I know him.

My eyes burn as I force them open. Everything around me looks… wrong. The edges are too crisp, and the shadows are too deep. This world before me bleeds with an unfamiliar brightness, foreign against the shadows of my previous memories.

My world shifts again .

The serration of it lacerates inside my skull, every beam and sound fracturing into jagged slivers I can’t piece together.

I don’t know what I am anymore. My limbs feel false, foreign, and carry a strength I didn’t realize I could possess.

The wings stretch on instinct, casting macabre art on the bloodied walls.

My breath quickens.

The floor feels as if it’s tilting, and my balance threatens to break.

I take a step back and then another. My fingers curl into shaking fists as I stare down at the red-soaked tiles below.

The memory of it all comes crashing back down on top of me.

The excruciating pressure and the extreme hopelessness slither back like a long-forgotten noose strangling the last scream never to leave my throat.

The grotesque echoes are a haunting reminder of my mutilation. I should be gone.

I was gone.

A powerful sensation inside me lurches, furious and alive.

“I can’t—” I rasp. “This isn’t real. It can’t be.”

I shake my head swiftly, violently, as if I can dislodge the truth from my skull.

The storm answers. Bolts of white-hot power crack open the skies, illuminating the destruction of my kitchen. It pulses in my bones. My wings snap open in a burst of sound, untrained and new, colliding with the collapsed cabinets.

“Nhialii!” Soriel’s voice cuts through the noise, calm and weighted.

I whip around to face him, pupils blown wide, breath ragged. “What did you do to me?”

He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even approach. Simply lowers his gaze to mine and says, “I saved what they threw away.”

His words strike their intended target. My chest aches, except this time it isn’t pain, but from something unfamiliar pressing outward, reshaping the hollowed spaces within me. It’s pulling me in two directions: the urge to collapse and the need to burn everything down .

“ I feel like I’m coming apart,” I whisper, voice shaking. “Nothing feels right.”

Stepping closer, he reaches his hand out tentatively. “You’re not falling apart, you’re becoming.” He pauses, and my eyes lock with his. “And becoming hurts.”

A pulse builds in my throat, not quite a scream, not quite a sob. I clutch my sides, trying to hold myself together, to keep from rupturing again. The world tilts harder, and the air between us grows heavier.

“Becoming what?” I ask. “A monster? An abomination?”

Soriel’s brown eyes narrow with conviction. “You became what they feared. What he feared. That’s why they forced me to watch him silence you.”

The overhead bulbs flicker for a second and then burst, glass raining down in shimmering particles. I flinch, but nothing touches me. My wings moved before I even registered the threat, rising between me and the world like muscle and steel, instinctively.

The pieces click inside me. “I remember his face,” I say, low and distant. “I remember how he smiled.”

Soriel’s voice hardens. “He won’t be smiling again.”

The air flowing between us crackles. His wings brace and mine mirror, responding to a rhythm I don’t yet understand.

A shadow shifts near the base of the fallen cabinets—subtle, almost missed. A hesitant mewl follows. My gaze drops to the corner of the kitchen, and there my precious boy hides.

Cheeto.

Dusty, wide-eyed, and crouched low behind the crushed trash can, his orange fur smudged with blood and dirt. But he’s unharmed. Alive. The relief punches through me so fast I nearly stumble. One small, defiant thread of my old life is still here, still breathing.

I exhale shakily as I scoop him up and place him atop his tower, peppering his forehead with kisses.

Looking past him, I glance back at the kitchen door. It’s wide open. The storm-wet night seeps in, pulsing with hunger .

“He’s still out there, isn’t he?” I question, already knowing the answer.

Soriel nods, and for a breath, I catch it. Underneath his protective stance, a rage simmers. A ferocity swirls in his gaze with purpose. He’s keeping his emotions chained long enough for me to find my footing.

“Yes,” Soriel pauses, “but not for long.”