Sain began to distinguish the figures around him, not by their faces—for those were already fading—but by the small objects they had brought with them.
Here was an angel who still clutched a broken harp. She had been a singer of praises once, her voice weaving through the clouds. She stopped singing the day she heard a mother sing a lullaby to her child while simultaneously planning to sell that same child for money. The contradiction was too loud; it drowned out her music forever.
There sat one who held a shattered sword. He was once a guardian, assigned to protect the righteous. He laid down his weapon when he realized that the man he was protecting was building his fortune on the graves of others, and that the "villain" trying to kill him was actually seeking justice for his own slaughtered family. Where was the line between protector and bystander? He found no answer, so he came here.
Every object told a story. A shattered compass, a rolled-up map, a dried flower—each was a symbol of a duty abandoned, a faith broken, a truth too heavy to carry.
Sain looked at his own hands. He no longer held his book. He had left it floating in the space between realms, where it would drift endlessly. But even without the physical tome, the words were etched into his memory. He realized something new now, sitting in this quiet gathering.
He had always thought his job was to record events: what a person did, what they said, what they chose. But now he understood that the real story was never in the actions. The real story was in the why.
Why did the kind man become cruel? Why did the thief give his last bread to a stranger? Why did the believer curse God while the sinner prayed?
The answers were buried deep, layered with pain, hope, trauma, and love. They were so complex that even an angel with eternal life could not untangle them completely. And if those who were created to understand could not understand, then what chance did humans have of understanding each other?
"Confusion is our shared nature," Sain murmured.
Whether divine or mortal, everyone was groping in the dark, trying to do their best with the limited light they had. The Creator saw this. The Creator knew this. And still, He did not step in to light the way completely, because to do so would be to remove the very struggle that made existence meaningful.
Sain looked towards the invisible border that separated this place from the world below. He could feel the pulse of humanity down there—chaotic, loud, messy, and incredibly alive.
He thought about Leon again. That man's laughter was still the loudest sound in his memory. Leon hated the world, yes. But in his own twisted way, had Leon not also loved it enough to be hurt by it? If he truly did not care, he would have left quietly. He would have died without feeling anything.
Hatred, Sain realized, was often just love that had gone wrong. It was proof that the heart was still beating, still capable of feeling deeply, even if it was feeling pain.
Around him, one of the fainter angels finally lost his cohesion. The light that held him together simply dissipated, like mist melting into the morning sky. There was no funeral, no ceremony. He just became part of the void.
It was not a tragedy. It was simply the end of a burden.
Sain closed his eyes. He knew that eventually, he would follow. But until then, he would sit here, and he would think. Because thinking, even thinking about painful things, was still a form of being alive.
And somewhere far away, a new quill scratched against paper. Another cycle was beginning.