Page 76 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

NHIALII

T he motel squats at the edge of nowhere, hunched like a rotting corpse in the storm’s embrace.

Rain swallows its crumbling frame as dense fog crawls across the parking lot.

The overhead lights stutter weakly, flickering in and out as though the building itself senses what’s coming.

It reeks of desperation and neglect, the perfect hiding place for the pitiful excuse of a man to hide.

A place the world forgets, where filth festers and convinces itself it’s safe.

I land soundlessly on the rooftop. The storm clings to me like a cloak, rain sliding off the ridges of my wings, ringing as it hits the pavement below.

Beneath the veil of thunder, I listen. I can sense his pulse before I hear it, slow and steady, it pounds.

The same rhythm it beat when it caved me open—slow, constant, and arrogant.

He thinks he’s safe, basking in false security that comes with thinking a corpse won’t rise.

I take a single step forward, the rooftop groaning under my weight. The rain bends around me, rolling away in obedient currents. My bones hum with fury, matching the intensity of my purpose.

The wind howls louder, desperately slamming the flimsy door that leads down to the motel’s second floor.

With a sharp snap, the hinges surrender.

The door bursts open, wrenched free and tossed aside without my touch.

This floor appears to be vacant except for the soft fragments of light escaping from his room three doors down.

I take my time walking toward the short distance.

With each step my boots make against the warped floorboards, it counts down each second before I come face to face with the man who cut short my human existence.

I feel the motel lean inward, straining under the gravity of what’s about to unfold. The air pulls tight around me, charged and foreboding. Even the rain seems to hesitate now. The sensations in this new form are intoxicating. I bask in the untapped power coursing through my body.

My hand reaches for the handle, pausing inches from grasp. My palm hovers over the worn-down wood. The number is barely visible, scratched half away—room 209. Fitting. A soulless box to store filth.

I don’t knock. I have no reason to announce myself.

I take a half step back and launch my boot at the door. The impact is cataclysmic. It instantly caves under the force, splinters explode, and the lock snaps like brittle bone. Hinges scream as the frame crumbles and the door crashes to the floor in a roar of broken wood and metal.

The vile man from my memory stands in front of me, not ready and unarmed. His smug expression collapses the moment he sees me .

“No,” he chokes, stumbling back. “No… that’s not. You’re dead.”

I step inside, soaked in rain and pulsing with ancient power.

My wings fold tight to my back, glistening with stormlight, the scarlet tips trailing rivulets of rainwater onto the floor.

Behind me, Soriel’s towering frame fills the entrance to this squalor, blocking any attempt Eddie might use to escape.

The rancid scent of iron thickens the air. My blood stains the room, sour and unwashed. He never properly cleaned himself, of course, he didn’t. He’s too used to thinking the dead stay buried.

Used gauze and wrappers clutter the end table.

Filthy, blood-soaked bandages lay balled beside an empty bottle of rubbing alcohol.

He must have used one of my kitchen towels to put pressure on the gash I gave him—a lovely parting gift left to fester.

He stitched himself back together like a butcher sewing his own split hide.

Hiding beneath the table, a bloodied shirt is crumpled on the floor, tossed away carelessly.

The denim jeans beside it are caked with dried gore, a grotesque testament of his life’s brutality, as if the act were nothing more than a chore to be discarded.

He didn’t even attempt to erase what he had done. He lives in it. Breathes in the stink of my suffering, bathing in its perfume.

“Surprised?” I taunt, voice cold enough to crack stone. “Were you expecting a ghost?”

He stares, mouth ajar, infusing the room with his putrid odor. A notebook lies open at his feet—his precious diary of horror. I notice pages are blank where my story should be. He has yet to finish our story.

“I ended you,” he pleads, voice trembling. “I felt you die.”

“You did.” I take a step forward. “And death spat me back out.”

With a beat of my wings, the lights above us explode. Glass rains down, frozen midair by my spread wings. They hover, poised like suspended knives .

He recoils, a cornered animal cowering in fear.

I smile, a venomous curl. “What’s wrong, Eddie?” I croon, voice dipped in mockery. “You look as if you’ve seen a monster.”

“I—I didn’t know. You’re not supposed to—this can’t—” His voice fractures as he backs away.

“I—I—I,” I mock, tilting my head. “Cat got your tongue?” I advance slowly.

Each step steals the air from the room, shrinking it smaller and smaller until there’s nowhere left to run. He hurls himself toward the bag of supplies on the table, a knife perhaps? I don’t give him the chance.

I strike first.

With a single wingbeat, the table blasts across the room. It smashes into the far wall with a deafening crack, shattering it on impact. It’s reduced to small wooden fragments and scattered bolts.

“I remember your face,” I muse, feeling my heart hammer under the cold fury. “I remember the joyous sound you made when you broke me open. I even recall the last words you etched onto my dying soul.”

He freezes, the words hitting sharply, a blade turned inward.

I take two deliberate steps forward, backing him closer to the wall.

“ Until we meet again, little rabbit .”

I spit the line back at him, low and guttural.

The words crawl up my throat on their own, dredged from the marrow he shattered.

His voice, poured from my mouth, a curse I’ve claimed and turned inside out.

The look on his face fractures into something almost pitiable.

Almost, but pity died with the woman he murdered.

His knees buckle, and he begins crawling away, trying to escape me. No clever lines this time. No power, only mortal flesh .

“I should’ve torn out your throat,” I tease, “but this is better.”

I see the realization dawn in his eyes. The raw understanding that he’s not standing before an inferior woman anymore, not even a corpse.

He’s cowering before a being sharpened by death and fueled with vengeance.

And she— they —are staring him down with eyes lit from the inside by every soul he and the Legion thought would stay silent.

“Please,” he stutters, hands raised in defense. “I was…sick. I wasn’t?—”

“I don’t care!” My voice, a sharpened blade, cuts the air. The stormlight dances across my gauntlets, silver and red. My blackened steel daggers beg for blood in their sheaths.

“I’m here to make you beg.”