Falling.
Burning.
Sinking.
The sensations blurred into a single, unending ache.
Azareel didn't know when the light of Aetherion had vanished, or when the cold of the Abyss had sunk its claws into his bones.
His back was a map of agony, the stumps where his wings had been screaming with every heartbeat.
His mouth tasted of metal, his thoughts sluggish, like prayers drowned in tar.
All he remembered was his own voice, whispering that he didn't hate them.
His kin.
His Father.
The light that had cast him out.
Even now, as the sky above dissolved into black stone and bleeding clouds, as the air grew thick with the stench of decay and forgotten screams, he didn't hate them.
The sorrow was too heavy for hate, a weight that pressed his heart into silence.
He closed his eyes, expecting stone.
Spikes.
Jaws.
The Abyss was supposed to be torment, wasn't it?
He was ready for it.
Or thought he was.
Then—
He landed.
Not on stone.
Not on bone.
But on something soft.
Warm.
Springy.
It smelled of wet fur and earth, with a faint tang of blood not his own.
His eyes fluttered open, blurred vision struggling to make sense of the world.
Beneath him, something trembled—a living, breathing earthquake.
"OOMPH!" A deep, feminine choke rumbled through whatever he'd landed on, followed by a voice—furious, guttural, wild. "What in the rotting gods' unholy scrotum just—?!"
Azareel tilted his head, his neck aching with the effort.
"Did you just LAND on me, featherless chicken corpse?!"
Golden eyes—massive, slit-pupiled, and blazing with outrage—stared back at him.
Sharp fangs gleamed in a snarling maw, lips curled in a growl that vibrated through the creature's chest like distant thunder.
Fur, black and jagged, framed a face that was both beast and nightmare.
He tried to sit up, but his arms buckled, his body too weak to obey.
"I… I'm sorry," he said hoarsely, his voice trembling with exhaustion.
The words came instinctively, as natural as breathing.
He didn't know what he'd landed on, only that it was alive, angry, and warm—a stark contrast to the cold void he'd fallen through.
His body curled forward, not in fear, but in apology.
His forehead brushed against fur, soft despite its roughness, and he closed his eyes.
"I didn't mean to hurt you."
The creature beneath him went silent.
The growl faded, replaced by a heavy, suffocating pause that filled the ruined cathedral.
Azareel didn't move.
He didn't beg or flinch.
He simply stayed still, his breath shallow, his blood seeping into the fur beneath him.
Not out of strength, but because he had nothing left to give.
His voice, barely a whisper, came again.
"I'm sorry."
The world swayed.
Darkness crept into the edges of his vision, his body giving in to the pain and exhaustion.
He collapsed, limp, unconscious, still half-curled on the creature's soft stomach like a dying prayer wrapped in blood and broken feathers.