# Bite of Destiny
## Chapter 1: Arrival on Earth
---
The fall lasted seven days.
Or perhaps it lasted seven seconds. Time had no meaning in the space between realms—that churning void where light bent backward and sound became color. Demri tumbled through it all, his once-magnificent wings trailing behind him like tattered banners of a defeated army. Each feather that tore free burned as it went, leaving trails of golden fire that spiraled into the infinite darkness.
He did not scream. Screaming was for those who still believed someone might hear them.
The Celestial Court had spoken. The verdict had been absolute. And now, as the last vestiges of heaven's warmth fled from his bones, Demri understood with crystalline clarity that he had been erased from the memory of paradise. His name, once sung by choirs of the faithful, would never again echo through the halls of eternity. His seat at the Council of Light—that obsidian throne carved from the heart of a dying star—would be given to another. His legacy, his triumphs, his thousand centuries of devoted service... all of it reduced to ash and silence.
*Traitor*, they had called him.
*Corruptor.*
*Fallen.*
The words still burned brighter than the void's cold fire. They had branded him with accusations he could neither confirm nor deny, for the truth of his alleged crimes remained locked somewhere in the fractured corridors of his own memory. He remembered the trial. He remembered the faces of those he had once called brothers—Seraphiel with his eyes of molten gold, Azareth with her voice like crystallized starlight—staring at him with expressions that held no recognition, no mercy, no love. He remembered the High Seraph's final judgment, spoken in a voice that shook the foundations of reality itself:
*"For crimes against the Eternal Order, for the corruption of sacred trust, for the violation of the Covenant of Light, you are hereby cast down. You are hereby cursed. You are hereby... forgotten."*
And then the floor had opened beneath him, and heaven had spat him out like poison from a wound.
Now, as the void began to thin and the first hints of mortal reality pressed against his consciousness, Demri felt something he had not experienced in millennia: fear. Pure, primal, paralyzing fear. Not of death—he was beyond death now, cursed to endure until his sentence was complete—but of what awaited him below. The mortal realm. Earth. That spinning sphere of chaos and contradiction where beings of flesh and bone struggled through their brief, brilliant lives, unaware of the cosmic forces that watched them from beyond the veil.
He had observed Earth before, of course. All celestials did. It was considered something between entertainment and education—watching the mortals fumble through their existence, making the same mistakes generation after generation, loving and losing and dying with such passionate intensity. Demri had always found them fascinating in the way one might find insects fascinating: worthy of study, perhaps even admiration, but ultimately insignificant in the grand tapestry of creation.
Now he would walk among them. Now he would become one of them. The irony was not lost on him.
The void released him without warning.
One moment he was suspended in nothingness; the next, gravity seized him with violent hands and hurled him downward. The sky above was dark—not the pure darkness of the void, but the soft, star-scattered darkness of a mortal night. Wind screamed past his ears as he plummeted, the friction of atmosphere tearing at his clothes, his skin, his very essence. Below, a landscape of shadows and distant lights rushed upward to meet him.
*This is how I die*, Demri thought. *Not in glory. Not in battle. But broken against the earth like a discarded thing.*
But the curse would not allow such mercy.
Fifty feet from the ground, his descent slowed. Forty feet. Thirty. The invisible force that had abandoned him in the void now cradled him with mocking gentleness, lowering him through the canopy of ancient trees like a leaf settling on still water. Branches scratched at his face and arms. Leaves whispered secrets in languages he should have understood but no longer could. And then his feet touched solid ground, and for the first time in seven days—or seven seconds—Demri stood still.
The forest around him was alive with sound. Insects chirped in rhythms that seemed almost musical. Small creatures rustled through the underbrush, their heartbeats thundering in his ears with supernatural clarity. Somewhere in the distance, water flowed over rocks, and the scent of it—clean and cold and impossibly pure—made his throat ache with a thirst he had never known.
He raised his hands before his face and stared at them. They looked almost human now. The golden luminescence that had once emanated from his skin had faded to a dull, barely perceptible glow. His fingers, which had once been capable of shaping starfire and bending the fabric of space, trembled with the weakness of flesh. Even his blood—he could feel it moving through his veins, thick and slow and mortal—felt foreign. Wrong. Like wearing someone else's skin.
*This is your prison*, a voice whispered in his mind. Not his own voice, but something older. Something that carried the weight of judgment. *This is your cage.*
"I know," Demri said aloud, and even his voice had changed. The harmonic resonance that had once made mortals weep with the beauty of it was gone, replaced by something rough and ordinary. The voice of a man, nothing more. "I know what this is."
*Do you?* The voice carried a hint of cruel amusement. *Do you truly understand the terms of your exile?*
He did not answer. The terms had been made painfully clear during the trial, repeated and elaborated upon with the precision of a death sentence—which, in many ways, it was.
*The curse can only be broken through corruption*, the voice continued, as if reading from a cosmic ledger. *One-third of the pure ones must fall before your feet. Their light must be extinguished by your hand. Their faith must crumble. Their hope must die. Only then will the gates of heaven reopen. Only then will you be restored.*
"And if I refuse?" The words came out before Demri could stop them, carrying a defiance he did not truly feel.
The voice laughed. It was an awful sound—thunder and broken glass and the dying screams of stars.
*Refuse?* it echoed. *You misunderstand, fallen one. The curse is not a choice. It is a hunger. It will grow within you, day by day, hour by hour, until the need to corrupt becomes as essential as breathing. You may resist at first. They always do. But in the end, the darkness always wins. It must. That is the nature of the fall.*
The voice faded, leaving behind a silence that felt heavier than sound. Demri stood motionless in the forest, processing the implications of what he had just heard. A hunger. Not a mission, not an assignment, but an actual, physical need that would grow until it consumed him. The celestials who had cursed him had not merely banished him—they had transformed him into a weapon against the very beings he was meant to protect.
It was, he had to admit, an elegant punishment.
For a long moment, he considered simply standing here forever. Letting the forest grow up around him. Becoming a statue, a monument to divine cruelty, until the earth itself crumbled and time lost all meaning. Perhaps that would be its own form of resistance. Perhaps...
His stomach growled.
The sound was so unexpected, so absurdly mundane, that Demri almost laughed. Hunger. Mortal hunger. His divine form had never required sustenance—he had fed on starlight and cosmic radiation, on the ambient energy of heaven's eternal flame. But now his body demanded food, and the demand was surprisingly insistent.
*One crisis at a time*, he told himself. *Survive the night. Understand this new existence. And then... then decide what to do about the rest.*
He began to walk.
---
The forest gave way to cultivated land after perhaps an hour of stumbling through undergrowth. Demri's night vision, though diminished, was still sharper than any mortal's, and he could make out the neat rows of some crop or another stretching toward the horizon. A farm, then. Which meant people nearby.
The thought of encountering humans filled him with an unexpected anxiety. He had observed them for millennia, had studied their languages and customs and curious social hierarchies, but observing was not the same as participating. What would he say to them? How would he explain his presence—a stranger emerging from the forest in the middle of the night, dressed in clothes that had once been the ceremonial robes of a celestial dignitary but now hung in tattered ruins?
*You were human once*, a small voice reminded him. *Before the ascension. Before heaven claimed you.*
But that had been so long ago that the memories felt like borrowed dreams. He remembered a name—not Demri, but something simpler, something worn away by centuries of celestial existence. He remembered a village, stone houses with thatched roofs, the smell of bread baking in communal ovens. He remembered hands calloused from labor, a back that ached from bending in fields not unlike these. But the details were ghosts, insubstantial and fleeting, and when he tried to grasp them, they dissolved like morning mist.
A light caught his attention.
It came from a building at the edge of the farmland—a small structure, perhaps a barn or storage shed, with a single window glowing amber against the darkness. Movement flickered behind the glass. Someone was awake.
Demri approached cautiously, keeping to the shadows more out of instinct than strategy. As he drew closer, the building resolved itself into greater detail: weathered wooden walls, a peaked roof covered in moss, a door that hung slightly ajar. The light came from within—a lantern or candle, judging by its warm, unsteady quality. And the movement...
He paused at the window and looked inside.
A child sat at a rough-hewn table, no more than eight or nine years old, her dark hair falling in tangles around a face smudged with dirt and tears. Before her lay an open book—a picture book, by the look of it, with illustrations of fantastical creatures and bold primary colors. But she was not looking at the book. Her eyes were fixed on the darkness beyond the opposite window, and her small hands were pressed together in the unmistakable posture of prayer.
Demri felt something stir in his chest. A sensation he could not immediately identify.
"Please," the child whispered, her voice carrying clearly through the thin walls. "Please let Papa come home. Please let him be okay. I'll be good, I promise. I'll be so good. Just please..."
The prayer trailed off into silence. The child sniffled, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and returned her gaze to the book. But she did not read. She simply stared at the pages, seeing something that existed only in her mind.
*A pure one*, the cursed voice hissed. *Can you feel it? The light in her? Untouched. Unspoiled. Ripe for corruption.*
Demri recoiled from the window as if struck. Yes—he could feel it. The child's soul radiated a warmth that was almost visible, a soft golden glow that existed just beyond the threshold of mortal perception. Faith. Genuine, uncomplicated faith. The kind that only children possessed, before the world taught them cynicism and doubt. It called to something dark within him, something that had not existed before the fall. A hunger. A need.
*Take it*, the voice urged. *Corrupt it. Begin your work.*
"No." The word came out as a snarl. Demri stepped back from the building, his hands clenched into fists, his entire body trembling with the effort of resistance. "She's a child. A child."
*They are all children*, the voice replied. *Children of a universe that does not care for them. You would be doing her a kindness. Showing her the truth. Freeing her from the burden of false hope.*
"I said no."
Silence. Then, almost reluctantly: *Very well. For now. But the hunger will grow, fallen one. And there will come a time when no will not be enough.*
Demri fled. There was no other word for it—he ran from that small building with its innocent occupant, crashed through the cultivated fields without regard for the crops he trampled, and did not stop until his mortal lungs burned and his mortal legs refused to carry him any further. He collapsed at the edge of a road—an actual road, paved and marked with signs he could not read in the darkness—and pressed his forehead against the cold ground.
What had he become?
The question echoed through the hollow chambers of his soul, finding no answer. He was not the being he had been in heaven—that was clear. But neither was he fully the monster the curse seemed to want him to become. He existed in some terrible middle ground, capable of feeling the pull of corruption while still retaining enough of his former self to resist it. At least for now.
*The hunger will grow.*
Yes. He believed that. Which meant he had a limited amount of time to find another way. Some loophole in the curse, some alternative path to redemption that did not require the destruction of innocent souls. There had to be something. The cosmos was vast and strange, and even the most absolute judgments sometimes contained hidden clauses.
Or perhaps he was simply telling himself stories to stave off despair.
A sound reached his ears—mechanical, rhythmic, growing louder. He raised his head and saw lights approaching along the road. Two bright beams that cut through the darkness like searching eyes. A vehicle. One of those motorized conveyances that humans used for transportation. He had observed them before, had found their noisy inefficiency somewhat amusing compared to celestial methods of travel. Now, as the vehicle drew closer and he realized he was lying directly in its path, amusement was the furthest thing from his mind.
He tried to stand. His legs refused.
The vehicle's horn blared—a harsh, urgent sound—and the brakes squealed against the pavement. Time seemed to slow as the headlights filled Demri's vision, as the massive machine bore down upon him with all the inevitability of divine judgment. He closed his eyes and waited for impact.
It never came.
The vehicle stopped perhaps three feet from where he lay. Its engine continued to rumble, a low mechanical growl, but the machine itself was still. Then a door opened, and footsteps approached.
"What in the—" A woman's voice, sharp with alarm. "Sir? Sir, are you all right?"
Demri opened his eyes. The headlights made it difficult to see, but he could make out a silhouette standing over him—female, average height, with hair that caught the light in a halo of dark curls. Her face was in shadow, but her voice carried genuine concern.
"Sir, can you hear me? Are you hurt?"
He should respond. He knew he should respond. But the words seemed to have fled somewhere beyond his reach, leaving only exhaustion and the cold numbness of the ground beneath him.
The woman knelt beside him. This close, he could see her face: young but not quite youthful, with features that spoke of mixed heritage and eyes that reflected the headlights like dark mirrors. She was dressed practically—some kind of uniform, he thought, though he did not recognize its significance. Her hands, when she pressed them against his shoulder, were warm and impossibly gentle.
"Okay, you're conscious. That's good. Can you tell me your name? Do you know where you are?"
"I..." His voice emerged as a croak. He swallowed, tried again. "I don't... I don't know."
It was not entirely a lie. He did not know where he was—not in any meaningful sense. And his name? Demri was a celestial designation, a title as much as an identity. The name he had been born with, that human name from millennia ago, remained lost in the fog of forgotten memory.
The woman's brow furrowed with concern. "Okay. That's okay. You might have a concussion, or... look, I'm going to call for help, all right? Just stay still. Don't try to move."
She pulled a small device from her pocket—a phone, he recognized it from his observations—and began pressing its surface. But even as she raised it to her ear, her eyes remained fixed on him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. As if she could see something in him that should have remained hidden.
"This is Aylin Kader calling from Route 17, about two miles past the Millbrook junction. I've got a man lying in the road. He's conscious but disoriented, possible head injury. No visible trauma, but..." She paused, still staring at him. "But something's not right. Please send an ambulance. Yes, I'll stay with him."
She ended the call and returned her attention fully to Demri. "Help is coming. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Can you tell me anything about what happened? Were you in an accident? Did someone hurt you?"
*Someone*, he thought bitterly. *Something. Everything.*
"I fell," he said, because it was the truth and because he lacked the energy for elaborate fabrication. "I fell a very long way."
The woman—Aylin, she had called herself—glanced upward, as if expecting to see a cliff or building from which he might have fallen. But there was nothing above them except stars and the faint glow of light pollution from some distant town. Her confusion was evident, but she did not press the point.
"Okay," she said instead. "Okay. Well, you're safe now. Whatever happened, you're going to be all right."
*Safe.* The word was almost laughable. There was no safety for him now—not anywhere in the mortal realm or beyond it. The curse would follow him wherever he went, growing stronger with each passing day, until eventually he either succumbed to its demands or found some way to break it entirely.
But as he lay there on the cold pavement, looking up at this stranger who had stopped her vehicle in the middle of the night to help a man she did not know, Demri felt something else stirring alongside the hunger. Something warmer. Something almost like hope.
*She cannot save you*, the cursed voice warned. *No mortal can.*
Perhaps not. But for the first time since his fall, Demri was no longer alone. And in that moment, it was enough.
---
The ambulance arrived eleven minutes later. Demri was loaded onto a stretcher, despite his protests that he could walk, and subjected to a battery of tests he did not fully understand. Lights were shined in his eyes. Questions were asked about his medical history, his allergies, his emergency contacts. He answered as vaguely as possible, claiming memory loss whenever a question became too specific.
Through it all, Aylin remained nearby. She had followed the ambulance in her vehicle—a modest sedan, he now saw, marked with some kind of insignia on the door—and stood just outside the circle of medical activity, watching with an expression he could not quite decipher. When the paramedics finally declared him stable enough for transport, she approached the stretcher.
"I'll check on you tomorrow," she said. "At the hospital. If you remember anything—anything at all—you can tell me then."
Demri studied her face in the flashing lights of the ambulance. There was something about her that set his instincts on edge, though not in an unpleasant way. She radiated a quiet confidence, a sense of purpose that seemed at odds with her relatively young age. And beneath that...
He felt it again. The glow. Fainter than the child's had been, tempered by years of living in a complicated world, but unmistakably present. Faith. Hope. Light.
*A pure one*, the curse whispered. *Another pure one.*
Demri closed his eyes against the thought. "Thank you," he said. "For stopping. You didn't have to."
Aylin smiled. It was a small smile, touched with sadness, as if she were accustomed to finding broken people on dark roads. "Everyone has to," she said. "That's the whole point."
And then the ambulance doors closed, and she was gone, and Demri was left alone with the beeping of machines and the weight of his new, impossible existence.
*This is your cage*, the voice reminded him. *This is your punishment.*
Yes. He understood that now. But as the ambulance carried him toward whatever awaited in this strange mortal world, Demri made himself a promise. He would not become what they wanted him to become. He would not corrupt the pure ones, would not extinguish their light, would not prove the celestials right in their judgment.
He would find another way.
Or he would burn trying.