Darkness.
Not sleep. Not peace.
Oblivion.
Alaudi Himejima hung in it, weightless, lungs burning even though there was no air to breathe, no body to breathe with.
His last memory was firelight.
The Himejima shrine.
Kneeling in the center of a ritual circle as robed elders chanted, faces carved with old, cold hate.
"Born in sin."
"Impure blood."
"Unfit to bear our name."
They talked like he wasn't there. Like the boy kneeling on the stone wasn't thirteen. Like he hadn't spent years trying to be exactly what they demanded.
Holy power. Talismans. Exorcisms. Obedience.
What he had instead was… wrong.
The first time it slipped, the flames had come out violet.
Not golden. Not sacred.
Thick, heavy, hungry. Stretching across the floor, licking at the walls, multiplying instead of fading.
They'd looked at those flames like they were looking at a curse.
And now he was here.
"Your weakness is a sin," one of them had said. "For that, we exile you from the clan."
No chance to speak. No chance to beg.
The ritual flared.
Space tore.
The world peeled back, and Alaudi was thrown into howling color and nothingness—the Dimensional Gap, the place that unmade anything stupid enough to drop in.
Now the void pressed in on him from all sides, shredding skin, bone, soul—
—and something inside him snapped.
No.
Violet fire erupted from his core.
It wasn't clean. It wasn't holy. It was a furious, sprawling burst that clawed outward on instinct, grabbing at the emptiness and refusing to let go. Flames coiled tight around his body, then spread further, webbing out like barbed clouds.
The Gap pressed.
The flames pushed back.
Every second should have erased him. Every second, the pressure only made the fire grow denser, wider, more absolute, turning emptiness into a crude, defiant territory that whispered one idea:
Mine.
Pain ripped a laugh out of his chest.
"They threw me away," Alaudi rasped into the void, voice shaking but alive. "Guess it didn't take."
Something moved beyond the violet light.
Black wings cut through swirling colors, feathers carved from twilight. A man stepped through the impossible like he was just walking across a room, coat fluttering lazily in the storm.
Silver eyes studied the boy wrapped in unnatural flame.
"Well, that's new," the Fallen muttered. "A Himejima brat who doesn't dissolve out here."
Alaudi glared back, violet burning around him.
The stranger smiled—not kind, but interested.
"Name's Azazel," he said. "Governor-General of the Grigori. Professional hoarder of weird crap."
He tilted his head.
"You want to live, kid?"
The Gap screamed. The flames surged. Alaudi's answer came out low and certain.
"Yes."
Azazel's grin sharpened.
"Good. Let's see what that stubborn little cloud of yours can do somewhere that isn't actively trying to delete you."
Black wings folded around violet fire.
The void shattered.
And the boy the Himejima clan tried to erase did not die.