The petricite forest was in no hurry to release its grip. Each step I took was a negotiation with the dead earth, the basket held close to my chest like a fragile, warm secret. The pale trees stood as silent judges, bones of an ancient world where magic had been silenced. For a long time, the only sound was my own breathing, laboured in the power-starved air, and the tiny cadence of another life that now depended on it.
The chains on my wings are a choice, a vow I renew at every dawn. Links of dark iron, polished by time and constant friction, stitch my feathers together, forcing them into a humility that is not their nature. They are not to punish me, as my sister in her righteous fury would believe. They are to remind me. They remind me of the ground, of the pull of gravity, of the frailty of human bones that break so easily. They are the anchor that keeps me from soaring to a height where I can no longer hear the cries of the forgotten below. The sound they make when I move, a hushed and metallic whisper, is my prayer.
When the border of the stone forest finally yielded, the change was like a sudden thaw. The air had a taste again, a scent of damp earth and decaying leaves. Magic returned, not as a flood, but like blood returning to a sleeping limb, bringing with it a tingling, almost painful warmth. I felt it in my wings first: the nagging numbness was replaced by their familiar, comforting weight, a burden of my own choosing. The chains responded with a subtle clink, a sound of relief I silenced with a slight shift of my shoulders.
In the basket, the child was quiet. Her electric-blue eyes watched the forest canopy in its slivers of light and shadow, not with the vague fascination of a babe, but with an analytical stillness that sent a chill down my spine. I felt her warmth against my chest, a small, living brazier in the cold of the night.
I followed paths that exist on no map, trails woven from memory and shadow. I passed a fallen statue of an old Demacian king, his marble face now cloaked in moss, his nose broken by lightning or the simple contempt of time. It was then I heard voices, muffled by distance and foliage. Then, two beams of lantern-light sliced through the darkness below, hunting for shadows. Patrolmen.
"See anything?" said a young voice, full of a fragile bravado yet to be tested by the real world.
"Just squirrels and our own fear, lad," replied an older one, his voice stained with the weariness of a thousand nights like this one. "Keep moving. The sooner we're out of this cursed wood, the better."
I melted into a recess of shadow between two ivy-covered rocks. My body became still. My wings, though bound, spread just enough to create a cavern of feather and iron over the basket, a cocoon of protective darkness. The chains stretched with a low, protesting groan.
The scent of wet wool and blind righteousness drifted on the wind and was gone. The child, Azra'il, had not made a single sound. Not a whimper, not a sigh. Her silence was so absolute, so intentional, that it was more deafening than a scream. The rest of the way was a gentle climb through ancient beech trees whose branches seemed like tired fingers scratching at the sky. The sun began to bleed across the horizon, and the forest opened to reveal my cottage. It was no grand structure, but a healed-over wound in the hillside, made of dark timber with a roof of moss that made it almost indistinguishable from the forest floor. The door opened under the weight of my shoulder with a complaining creak. The inside smelt of cool earth, dried herbs, and old smoke. I set the basket down on the single, worn wooden table. For a moment, I just stood there, feeling the weight of the decision settle into the silence of the room, as final as the sound of the door closing behind me. I drew back the cloth. "Azra'il," I said again, the word sounding less alien in my mouth, more like a fact, like naming a storm. The child blinked, her impossible eyes watching me with an intensity that did not belong to a newborn.
First, warmth. I lit a small fire in the iron brazier; the flames danced and cast long shadows that made my chained wings look like those of a caged beast on the wall. Then, water. I warmed some in a ceramic basin with a soft touch of my hand, the steam rising like a ghost.
My hands were made for binding the unforgivable and healing the afflicted, for mixing unguents and holding another's pain. They were never made for the delicacy of washing a newborn. I hesitated, looking at my calloused fingers and the fine scars that criss-crossed them. The chains clinked as I leaned over, a link scraping the edge of the table, a constant reminder of restraint. With a sigh, I began the task, breaking it down into logical steps, as I would treating an injury. My hands were awkward, but steady. The warm water, the soft cloth, the fragile skin.
With the child clean and wrapped in a piece of old but clean linen, I held her up for a moment, against the firelight. I felt a moment of… quietude. A task well done. A small life, safe and warm in my hands.
And it was in that exact instant that a warm, unexpected stream erupted from the tiny body, scoring a direct hit on the dark fabric of my tunic over my abdomen.
I froze. Utterly still. The warm liquid began to seep through the cloth, a damp shock against my skin. It took me a full second to process the profoundly mundane indignity of what had just happened.
Slowly, I lowered my gaze to the child. And she... she wasn't crying. In fact, she was watching me, her head tilted slightly. A gurgling sound escaped her lips, and her small fists waved in the air. And for an instant, I would have sworn on my ancient soul that I saw a glint of deliberate, mocking triumph in her blue eyes.
A slow, weary sigh escaped me. It was a sound that came from centuries of battles and loss, but this time, it was drawn out by something entirely new. Looking at that tiny, undeniably self-satisfied face, one corner of my mouth quirked, a tiny, rusted movement that barely remembered how to be a smile. With another cloth, I dried both myself and her as best I could before wrapping her securely. Her gaze shifted to a whimper of impatience. Hunger. Another problem that demanded an earthly solution. I looked around my refuge. Herbs, dry bread, roots. For a moment, I felt a pang of helplessness. Then, my eyes fell upon a small leather pouch: goat's milk, acquired from a grateful farmer only yesterday.
The solution for feeding her was an improvisation born of need. I took a strip of clean linen, dipped it in the warm liquid, and brought it to her lips. She resisted, turning her head with a stubbornness that was almost comical in one so small.
"Come now," I said, my voice low, more to myself than to her. "Do not be more stubborn than a starving void-fiend." I tried again. She clamped her mouth shut, her gums surprisingly firm.
I tried a different approach. I touched the corner of her lips with the damp linen, letting a single drop of milk trickle in. She tasted it, hesitated for a second, and then hunger won out over stubbornness. Her small gums latched onto the cloth, and she began to suck eagerly.
I sat in the lone wooden chair, holding the child with one arm and the strip of cloth with the other. I watched her feed in the flickering firelight. The world shrank to the size of that simple, vital task. The celestial wars, the laws of men, the scars of the past… they all faded away. All that remained was the soft rhythm of her suckling, the warmth of the fire, and the weight in my arms. When she finally slept, a warm and sated weight against my chest, I settled her back into the basket, now lined with a soft sheepskin. And with a practical, rehearsed motion, I unfastened the end of one of my chains from the bracer on my back and secured it to a thick iron peg in the wall beside the hearth. The relief in my shoulder and wing was immediate and more than just physical. A small piece of freedom, traded for a new responsibility.
I brought the basket close to the fire, where its warmth would keep her safe through the cold night to come.
"For now," I said to the sleeping form, and the words sounded less like a condition and more like a promise, "you stay here."
The cottage fell quiet. Not the devouring silence of petricite, but a living silence, filled by the crackling fire and two sets of breath. Outside, Demacia continued its hunt for shadows. In here, for the first time in a very long time, my chained wings were not just an anchor, but also a shelter.
And that, somehow, felt like the right kind of justice.