Time bled strangely in that world. Days were neither counted nor named. The sky, ever bruised, shifted in slow agony, and Raphael—if he still dared to think of himself by that name—walked through it like a dream without waking.
He had begun speaking to the wind. Humming to trees. Touching stones as if they might remember Heaven for him. He himself knows that Heaven was far more wonderful then where he was at the moment.
Then one twilight, deeper than most, he heard voices.
Laughter — rough, broken, laced with bitterness.
Drawn by the sound, he followed it through a jagged canyon of black glass and molten roots. There, gathered near a dying fire, stood a small group of the fallen. Their wings were ruined like his, their eyes tired, but a strange fire burned in them — not hope, but a shared defiance. A makeshift brotherhood forged in exile.
They turned as he approached. Some nodded, curious. Others stepped back, wary. One of them — a tall angel with cracked golden feathers and a jagged burn running down his face — stood.
He scowled.
"No," the golden one said flatly.
"Not him."
Raphael paused, hands open, no threat in his frame. "I mean no harm."
"You mean to belong." The golden angel spat. "You reek of softness. Of regret." He stepped forward, voice rising. "You fell like the rest of us, but you still cling. You still hope."
The others shifted. A few looked away.
Raphael's voice was quiet. "Is that wrong?"
Gold laughed, bitter and sharp. "Wrong? No. Just dangerous. We crawl in ash, not light. There's no place for angels who wish they hadn't."
Another voice cut in — a dark-haired angel with quiet eyes. "That's enough, Gold."
But Gold wouldn't stop. He stepped closer, his burned face twisted in scorn. "You'll only slow us down. You'll hesitate when it's time to burn. So run along, ember-boy. Go pray to a silent sky."
Raphael stood still. He did not defend himself.
He simply looked into the fire, then at the others.
There was hunger there — not for food, but for meaning. He hadn't known this feeling before, but he could feel it in himself that he is very hungry.
Even Gold, for all his venom, was only trying to feel strong where Heaven had torn strength away.
Raphael bowed his head. "Then I'll go."
He turned without anger, without a word more, and vanished into the wind.
But as he walked alone once again, something new stirred within him — not despair, not yet defiance. A choice. A clarity.
He may not be welcome among the fallen.
And he could no longer return to the heights.
But perhaps — perhaps — there was still a place for those who remembered the light… and refused to forget.