The wind roared in Rhys's ears, a satisfyingly cinematic whoosh.
He was in a freefall, arrowing through the empty cerulean sky. Above him, the Argent Sanctum shrank with astonishing speed, a jewel of impossible beauty hanging in the void. Liora was a tiny, panicked figure at the edge, her starlight wings flared in alarm. Vesper and Theia were calm, observant statues.
Okay, check the visuals, Rhys thought, his mind slipping into its comfortable world-builder's critique mode even as he plummeted. Falling sensation: perfect. Wind effect: top-notch. Sense of scale: absolutely breathtaking.
This was infinitely better than just floating down to meet Liora. This had urgency. This had drama.
He angled his body, effortlessly adjusting his trajectory to match the falling angelkin. She was still a few hundred yards below him and falling slightly faster, her unconscious form creating less wind resistance.
"Right," he muttered into the rushing air, "time to engage the afterburners."
He didn't think about flames or propulsion. He just imagined himself faster. The world-dream, as always, complied.
FWOOM!
His descent accelerated dramatically. The empty sky became a blur of blue streaks. He was a human missile, closing the distance in seconds.
As he neared her, the corrupting influence of The Bleed became palpable. It wasn't the distant, theoretical hiss he'd heard on his island; it was a hungry, angry static that seemed to try and pull the warmth from his body. It felt like sticking your head in a freezer full of angry bees.
"Cool negative-energy environmental effect," he noted approvingly.
The angelkin herself was a tragic sight. She was younger than Liora, with hair the color of spun gold, now matted with grime. Her white robes were ripped and scorched. Her wings were a horror show. Where Liora's had been neatly decaying, this one's were being violently torn apart, entire feathers dissolving into plumes of grey static in real-time. It looked less like erosion and more like she was being actively consumed.
He pulled alongside her, matching her velocity with a casual thought. He was now falling in perfect formation with a dying woman.
"Alright, damsel-in-distress, let's get you patched up," he said, mostly to himself.
This time, he decided a direct reskin wasn't dramatic enough. He needed an intermediate step. He needed to show the struggle, even if he was just inventing it for effect.
He reached out and laid his hand on her back, right between the ruined wings. The moment he made contact, the corrosive static of The Bleed reacted with explosive violence.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE!
A wave of grey energy erupted from her wings, lashing out at him. To an outside observer, it would have looked like an attack. To Rhys, it was just the dream engine throwing some special effects at him.
"Ooh, a little pushback. Nice."
He channeled his intent, his belief. He didn't picture wings of starlight this time. He wanted something different. Something thematically resonant with this specific rescue. He'd dived from the heavens to catch her. She would be reborn not of the night, but of the day.
"Let's go with a 'solar' theme," he decided.
From the balcony of the Argent Sanctum, the three Apostles watched the scene unfold. To them, it was a terrifying and holy spectacle.
They saw their Progenitor, their God, dive into the very maw of the Unraveling. They saw the tendrils of grey non-existence lash out and engulf him.
Liora cried out in terror, her hands clenched into fists. "He is being consumed!"
Theia gripped her tome, her knuckles white. And The Progenitor took upon himself the affliction of the Lost One, battling the Great Unraveling not with force, but with his very essence...
Only Vesper remained impassive, her analytical gaze missing nothing. This was not a struggle. This was a demonstration.
Rhys felt the 'corrosive energy' wash over him. It felt like being splashed with cold soda. "Okay, that's enough of that."
He focused. He pictured light. Not the cold, distant light of stars, but the fierce, cleansing light of a sun. He imagined pure, condensed daylight. The concept of "dawn." The warmth of a "mid-summer afternoon."
His hand, resting on her back, began to glow.
VMMMMMM-CHHHHHHHHH!
A wave of brilliant, golden light erupted from him, a perfect sphere of radiance that blasted the clinging grey static into oblivion. The agonizing skreeee of The Bleed was replaced by a warm, harmonic chime.
The disintegrating wings on the angelkin didn't just stop decaying. They incinerated. In a flash of golden fire, the last vestiges of feather and bone were burned away, leaving nothing but smooth skin. It was a complete, perfect purification.
Rhys then began the act of creation.
From the woman's back, two nascent forms of pure, molten light began to emerge. They weren't solid. They were flowing, liquid structures of sunlight, like solar flares given sentient shape. They grew, arched, and then solidified.
Her new wings were not made of feathers. They were crafted from hundreds of interlocking, blade-like plates of what looked like solid gold. They were intricate and sharp, arranged in the layered pattern of a raptor's wing, gleaming with a brilliant, internal luminescence. When they moved, they made a soft, metallic shing-shing-shing sound, like finely honed blades being drawn.
With the creation complete, the angelkin's unconscious body stirred. Her eyes fluttered open. They were a brilliant, clear green, and they were filled with the dazed confusion of someone waking from a long nightmare.
She looked at her new wings of incandescent gold. She looked at the endless blue sky she was falling through. And then she looked at the smiling man who was falling right beside her, holding her steady with a single, gentle hand on her shoulder.
"...Am I dead?" she whispered, her voice a fragile rasp.
Rhys gave her a reassuring grin. "Depends. Do you dream when you're dead? Because if so, this is a pretty awesome one." He glanced up. The Sanctum was now a distant, glittering speck. "Right. The grand finale."
He wrapped a secure arm around her waist, pulling her close. "Hold on tight."
He didn't stop falling. He simply... reversed it.
WHOOOOOSH!
Without any sense of G-force or unnatural inertia, their plummeting descent became a meteoric ascent. They were a golden comet, shooting back up towards the hole in the dome, climbing thousands of feet in a matter of seconds.
As they approached the Sanctum, Liora, Theia, and Vesper watched in stunned silence. He had dived into nothingness, wrestled with oblivion itself, and was now returning with a redeemed soul in his arms. It was the stuff of the most sacred, foundational myths.
They shot through the opening in the dome and Rhys brought them to a feather-light landing on the crystal balcony, the golden wings of the newcomer flaring once as they touched down.
The hole in the dome behind them silently sealed itself, the Celestial Weave stitching itself back together without a seam.
Rhys gently released the dazed angelkin. She stumbled forward, her new metallic wings scraping softly against the crystal floor, before collapsing to her knees, overwhelmed and weeping with a mixture of terror, confusion, and a dawning, soul-shattering gratitude.
Liora rushed forward, her star-dusted wings rustling, and knelt beside the newcomer, a look of profound empathy on her face. "You are safe now, sister."
Rhys brushed some imaginary dust off his clothes, a self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips.
"See?" he said, mostly to Vesper, who was watching with a subtle, pleased glint in her eyes. "Spectacular."