The sky trembled with a dim bronze hue, the clouds grinding against one another like the bones of giants.
From that storm of ash and thunder, Lidia emerged. Her wings snapped open with a tired shudder, feathers smeared with soot, trailing threads of shadow like dying embers. She hovered just beyond the battlefield's smoke, her throat catching on a whisper meant for no one but herself.
"...ummm… sorry."
Her apology was too thin to touch the world. The wind shredded it away before it left her lips, but still she spoke, because silence felt heavier. She could still hear it — his rage, his roar, the way it had split her bones when he'd beaten her in the first layer.
Fear knotted itself tight inside her ribs, a fear she hadn't shed since. It had only deepened.
She had failed him.
