The winged creature could endure the darkness no longer. It had become less a torment than a relentless habit. Obstructive, suffocating... a shroud that smothered the imagination of kingdoms and the evils dwelling within them. Darkness could never be a color, if such a word could contain it; not enough to describe the hidden realms encountered so far. Rather would he choose pain, palpable and flesh-bound,
for at least pain gave release, something real, something the angel could touch.
Better to embrace tangible torments, wounds carved into flesh, for pain at least released something real, something the angel could touch. To let the blood, still stained and impure, flow with tears that seemed destined never to end, but instead to pour in rivers without end.
Darkness offered nothing but absence. Absence of life, of time and space ceasing their eternal embrace. It was an emotional paradox: a void where the angel hung, deaf, mute, blind, without skin, without tongue.
New questions arose, more enigmatic than the last, yet no less piercing. They all converged upon a single figure: the savior of the abyss. Still within the angel's mind echoed the sparks, their reverberations joined by smoky tides condensing slowly against his skin. Of that vision, one detail alone endured, beyond the grey wasteland, beyond the heroic stance that froze the angel in awe.
And when his thoughts circled again and again, a new spark ignited. The darkness recoiled before that fragile glimmer, retreating as the light spread outward like spilled oil. A drop had struck a still lake, and its solemn ripple carved strange shapes and borders, until at last the angel could see.
The sea's surface had been reached. His senses crept back into his broken body. Sight, once blurred, grew sharper. Touch and scent returned. The scalding cold of his swim gave way to gentler air, and the raging waters ceased. Liquid hardened: not ice, but something far more jagged, as though the sea had congealed, layer upon layer, forming a stage for the next act.
All the nameless one could perceive was a single mystery: the light that cut through his prison of shadows. Gone was the scent of salt, gone the sound of waves. In their place, silence, fractured at times by distant, indistinguishable voices.
The angel's gaze clung only to the light, now shaping itself, moving in rhythm with his hand. Moments later, he discerned the outline of his right hand. The strange radiance stirred within its perimeter, shifting whenever his fingers moved. By instinct, he reached with his other hand and touched something solid, thin, and old against his skin.
A ring.
He had never known it was there, not even when he beheld the horror of his own flesh upon regaining sight. It gleamed with metallic grey, mirroring the distant bonsai of the Creator still blazing against the unchanged sky. Only the sea had been forever undone.
Then, among pale and sorrowful hues, another entered. Red. Dark. A thread of blood slipped from his left finger, pierced by a needle attached to the ring. The jewel bore no adornment but that cruel thorn, sharp enough to penetrate even stone.
Whispers drew nearer, but the angel ignored them. He toyed with the needle as if it were a relic, pressing it beneath nail and flesh, feeling the matrix of his finger. Pain sharp, biting, yet somehow a gift: proof that he still lived.
"How do you not hesitate?" a voice demanded.
"Why do you torment yourself so?" came another.
"Disgusting…"
"So strange…"
"Forget him."
"What? After seeing those wings? Are you serious?"
The nameless one shed no attention, welcoming instead the joyous agony, his tears mingling with blood.
"I can't—hhnngh—I'm a-about to throw u-up!"
"Repulsive!"
"Ahahaha! Do it again! Again, again!"
"Should we help him?"
When he finally lifted his gaze, the winged warrior saw them: figures, some tall, some small. Hair long or short, bodies lean or thick. Like him, they bore human features, but none possessed wings. A few of them had their eyes stitched, while others closed, together with their mouths. Yet they spoke without voice. And their attention fell only upon the feathers half-fallen from his back.
Around them stretched not sea but death. An endless plain of corpses, limbs woven into mouths and ears, knit together into a grotesque tapestry. Horror seized the angel; he staggered back.
"Just as I thought... Another coward," one muttered, head bowed in bitterness. "I would do as #%^¥\ said, and leave."
Despair claimed their eyes. Groups gathered, sharing silent grief. They had appeared from nothing, too many to count. Some spoke without words, others lingered in isolation. All immersed in that dead sea, all unseen by the Creator's sunlit bonsai. Yet they rose, they moved, they spoke.
"Whose side are you on?" a voice suddendly whispered by the angel's feet.
He lifted his leg. Beneath it, a face emerged from twisted limbs, pierced by jagged bone and black blood. "So? What will you choose?"
The winged one could not answer. Silent, he crouched, his feathers brushing the dead unintentionally.
"Ah... so soft…" the voice sighed. Their fragments stretched across immeasurable distances, yet still they felt touch, heat, cold: a cruel awareness beyond the grave.
"Tell me… what are they for? Those wings?"
The nameless angel raised his hand, revealing the ring, hoping to receive some answer.
"Oh… your hand is beautiful," the voice said. "But that is no answer."
Could only the angel see the ring? What of the Creator?
"I knew it," the face whispered. "Another echo lost in shadows, a fragment of hope shattered and buried. No matter… it is enough. I have lost count of dawns, perhaps centuries, since I was bound to this limbo. No flight, no escape among the wandering throngs. I could... yet I will not. Here lies my refuge, a cradle that hides me, that lets me touch with voice those far beyond time's tides. Forgive me... I speak to the void, as though silence were my companion. Perhaps I'm delaying you. Yet there is comfort in offering words to a face unknown, as if the abyss itself were listening."
Its eyes never opened, but a faint smile lingered. And the angel knew: each soul there had been abandoned by Creator, or perhaps by God Himself. Chaos was their master. Their thoughts tangled into endless streams, with no true beginning, no certain end. Only a savior could sever them.
But no clear word came from the Creator. And so the angel knew too well: understanding was never enough. Worlds shifted, crumbled in an instant. Few truths remained.
"Run with me in the blood of the dead. Take my hand, and let us feign resurrection." The angel heard children's voices singing, not enough glorious to change his mood. "The great flames are here; they wish to play. They will not burn us, they promised. And we promise to never again fear the resurrection. Hail the great flames, hail infamy and deceit. Hail the death of the Self!"
Their chorus echoed, skipping across corpses, trampling fragments of the unrisen. But which among them were the previous shades of the abyss? And why did hatred fester between the dead and the risen, in this limbo warring against a heaven filled with unseen flames?