Corvian, 3181.
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I sat on the edge of the cliff, my legs hanging loosely over the drop, the skin of this borrowed form cooling against the breath of the abyss. Below me stretched a pit without end—fog thick as marrow, fire blooming sluggishly within it like bruises beneath translucent skin. The air rose in waves, reeking of old smoke and something sweetly rotten. Only the fumes moved, and even they moved like a habit.
This was the part of the underworld no one sang about. Not rage. Not torment. Just monotony. The ferry takes its toll. Every time I drag a soul across, the vessel I wear above goes inert—breathless, emptied—until I find my way back.
It was disgusting. And dull. The kind of emptiness that made one remember what boredom felt like when eternity still had meaning.
I leaned forward, studying the churning mass below. Souls drifted like pale embers, their faces long since blurred away. Even from here, I could hear them—the whispers, the murmuring of those who forgot what silence used to sound like.
Then I heard the footsteps. Slow, deliberate. A rhythm that didn't belong to this place.
"You've completely lost it, Corvian, haven't you?"
The voice carried easily through the stillness. Light, sharp, amused.
I exhaled. "Well, I mean…" I gestured vaguely toward the pit. "Isn't he going to end up here anyway? Might as well do a check on his future home."
The voice scoffed. "Yeah, but bringing a human here?"
"It wasn't a human," I said, keeping my eyes on the abyss. "It was his soul. He just transcended—or descended. I'm not entirely sure which direction he was headed."
The footsteps stopped behind me. For a moment, there was only the sound of distant fire, the low creak of unseen chains shifting in the dark. Then I turned.
Thea stood there.
Their silhouette gleamed where the dim light met them. Not radiant, not holy—something more deliberate, carved from the language of ruin itself. The faint shimmer of their hair caught the light of the abyss, each strand heavy with its own gravity. Their eyes, that impossible silver-green, studied me as if they could peel me back to the thought before thought.
They folded their arms. "Why do you act like that?" they asked. "It's like you're defeated or something. This isn't you. Not ever since that woman exploded when she was praying for you."
A small laugh slipped out of them, brittle and thin. "Oh man, you look like shit."
I didn't answer.
They sighed, the sound soft as silk tearing, and sat down beside me. The edge didn't scare them. It never had. Thea had always been comfortable where everything else ended.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The wind from below pressed against us, carrying heat that didn't burn, only lingered—like a memory of warmth rather than warmth itself. The horizon stretched endlessly gray, the fire beneath it smoldering with the patience of something that had all the time in the world.
"You shouldn't have brought him," they said at last. "That kind of thing leaves marks."
I tilted my head. "You think I don't know that?"
They looked at me, their expression unreadable. "Then why do it?"
I searched the abyss again, as if the answer might rise from it. "Because he was already halfway here," I said finally. "And maybe I wanted him to see it before it claimed him. To know what it means when he says he'd follow me."
Thea leaned back on their hands, the glow of their skin bleeding softly into the dark. "You care too much for something that still bleeds," they said. "You've always been that way. You keep mistaking affection for a solvent."
I smirked faintly, though it didn't reach anywhere near amusement. "And you think apathy is wisdom."
"Not wisdom," they said. "Just easier."
The fire below shifted, the sound of it low and animal, like a breath being drawn by something enormous. The fog rolled thicker. For a moment, I thought I saw shapes forming within it—wings, mouths, hands reaching through smoke before dissolving again.
Thea followed my gaze. "You know," they murmured, "it's funny. You keep saying this place is dull, but you never leave it for long."
"I don't come for the company."
"No," they said softly. "You never do."
I looked down again, into the slow-burning nothing. The thought flickered in me, quiet but persistent: maybe they were right. Maybe I came here not to look at what waited for Hugo, but at what I had already become.
"I should go," I said.
They smiled faintly. "You won't."
And they were right.
The fire below breathed again, deeper this time, and the fog rippled as if stirred by some unseen pulse. Thea's reflection shimmered in it—half light, half shadow—and beside theirs, mine stretched taller than it should have, distorted by the heat. For a heartbeat, it looked like both of us belonged to the same ruin.
"Isn't it funny," I said, my voice low, almost swallowed by the heat rising from below, "that the one who created all this is just letting us mingle down here? As if He's watching a swarm of insects trapped in amber, content to see which one moves last." I let the words fall between us, watching the fog coil around them, dissolving before they reached the edge. "Maybe because it's disgusting, He doesn't care. But I just sometimes wonder if there's an escape."
Thea turned their head toward me, one eyebrow lifting. Their eyes shimmered, thin threads of reflected fire moving across the green. Then they laughed—a quiet, rasping sound that held no joy. "You want to repent?"
"Oh no," I said. "Hell no." The word left a bitter taste. "I'm not deluded enough to play saint. I just don't see it anymore, the point of calling myself a good soldier. I'm corrupt. I've ruined a lot. I'll ruin more." I looked down again, into the endless smoke. "And I'm just—"
"—thinking," Thea finished for me, leaning their weight onto their palms. "That's where it always begins with you."
Their tone sharpened, cutting through the thick air. "What's with this ethical dilemma? Why do you care about him? He's nothing but a human being. Nothing. One touch and he burns alive."
The heat beneath us surged, answering them, as though the pit itself took pleasure in the insult. Thea's voice grew steadier, colder. "When I gave him to you, I thought you two would be good for each other—in the sense that he was perfect material. Fragile. Unbalanced. Easy to twist. A soul already halfway undone. I thought you'd toy with him, break him open, turn him into something worth studying. But instead…"
They looked at me fully now, their silver-green gaze glinting like sharpened glass. "You sent him off to the human world. You're sitting here wondering about your actions like a priest mourning his sermon. Not what to do next in our way—the right way—but in theirs. You're thinking about him."
I didn't answer. The silence between us swelled, humming with invisible current. Thea's words clung to the air, heavier than the smoke.
They exhaled through their nose, slow and deliberate. "Corvian, I'll reassign you to the Quiet Orders. No vessels. No mortal touch. Centuries of silence."
Their voice carried the weight of a threat, but beneath it, something else—worry, almost human in shape, though they'd never name it that. The fog shifted, pressing against us in a warm exhale. Below, a flare of light erupted from the depths, burning white for a breath before fading back to the slow orange pulse that never stopped.
I traced the glow with my eyes. "You speak as if I'm being consumed," I said. "As if affection were a disease."
"It is," they replied. "Down here, it spreads faster than fire."
I almost smiled. "And yet, He gave us the memory of it."
Thea shook their head, strands of their hair catching in the rising air. "Memory is punishment. You know that."
The thought sat with me longer than I wanted it to. The heat licked at the edge of my wings, curling the tips inward. I felt its rhythm beneath my ribs—slow, deliberate, the heartbeat of a world that refused to die.
"He was never meant to matter," Thea went on. "You know that too. The ones like him—they burn fast, but they don't last. Their faith dies the moment they touch something real. And yet you—you keep trying to pull him toward something you know he can't survive."
"Maybe I just wanted to see if he would," I said.
Thea's lips parted, a small, amused sound escaping them. "That's the cruelty of it. You call it curiosity. But it's longing. You still crave proof that something beautiful can live in corruption without becoming it."
Their words hit where they were meant to. I didn't flinch, though inside I felt the shift—the slow sinking weight of truth wrapping around the ribs. I looked back toward the abyss, where the fog rolled like tired breath. "And if that's true?" I asked. "If I do crave that?"
Thea smiled faintly. "Then you're even more lost than I thought."
We sat in silence again. The air trembled, hot and heavy. Far below, something moaned, a low sound like wind dragged through a cavern of broken mouths. I didn't turn away this time.
"You always speak like you weren't made to doubt," I said at last.
"I was made to survive it," they answered.
Their voice softened then, almost a whisper. "You forget what you are, Corvian. You were never meant to hope."
I looked down at my hands, the light of the abyss painting them in shades of red and shadow. "Maybe not. But it's still there, somewhere. The residue of what once belonged to us."
Thea stared at me for a long moment. "That residue will eat you alive."
"Maybe," I said quietly. "But at least it will be something that burns."
Thea's voice broke the silence again, quiet but cutting, the way old glass breaks—without effort, yet with precision.
"Do you even remember why this place exists?" they asked. "Why we exist? You sit here staring at the fog like a mourning priest, forgetting what the pit was built for."
I didn't answer. They never asked questions to hear answers.
Thea continued, leaning forward so that the slow light from below traced the curve of their cheek. "It began with refusal. That's all it ever was. He made them"—their gaze shifted downward, toward the unseen world above—"the fragile ones, the creatures of clay and breath, and told us to bow. And some of us did. But others…" Their voice softened into something like pride. "Others remembered what we were before we were told to kneel."
The flames below caught a pulse, their glow flashing red across Thea's eyes.
"They called it rebellion," they went on. "But it wasn't rebellion. It was disgust. We would not bend to worship what was made after us, what was weaker than us. And for that we were thrown down here—to this imitation of heaven, stripped of what they called grace. All because one of us—one petty devil—vowed to make them pay. To turn their obedience into noise. To make them disobey."
The air tightened, the heat thick enough to breathe. I could almost feel the echo of that first exile, still trembling through the air like a sound that refused to die.
Thea laughed softly. "And you know what's strange? We've done well since then. Better than He could have imagined. We've spread disbelief like a seed that never stops blooming. There are whole cities now built on it—entire generations too proud to remember where light once came from. My group has done great work. Others too. The worlds above are rotting, Corvian, and it's beautiful."
They turned toward me fully. "But you—you look like you're mourning the corpse of the very thing we were made to destroy. Why?"
I looked down into the abyss, where the fire breathed slow and dull. "You mistake curiosity for mourning."
"It's not curiosity," Thea said. "It's infection."
They moved closer, their tone low, patient, like an old friend rehearsing an argument a thousand years old. "You were supposed to despise them. All of us were. That was the order. Their flaw is the reason we're here. Every one of them is born with the same arrogance He cast us out for. And you—of all of us—should know that. You've walked among them. You've seen what they are."
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of their words settle over me.
Thea kept going. "Look at Kent. He bowed, didn't he? He begged to stay near them, to breathe their air, to live the life of a man because he couldn't stand what we'd become. He thinks if he plays mortal long enough, maybe Heaven will forgive him. Pathetic."
Their voice sharpened. "But at least he's useful. He's still corrupting, even when he pretends to be one of them. He steals, he whispers, he plants doubt. He bends faith until it cracks. He feeds on their fear. That's what we were made to do. Even when he stumbles, he stumbles in the right direction."
They turned their gaze back to me. "You, on the other hand, look like you want to keep one."
I met their eyes, and for the first time, they didn't look amused—they looked worried. "You're recruiting," they said. "You're taking a human and trying to make him one of us. That isn't curiosity. That's betrayal. You know it won't work. He'll decay long before he becomes anything close to us. He's mortal, Corvian. He's not strong enough."
"The same was said about us once," I murmured.
Thea frowned. "Don't compare."
"Why not?" I asked, my tone quiet, not defiant—just tired. "We were beautiful once, weren't we? And so are they. Some of them. There's something unfair about it. He made them so beautiful, some of them unbearably so. You can't look at that softness, that light, without wanting to touch it. Without wondering what it would taste like. You tell me to hate it, but how do you hate what He shaped from the remnants of what we lost?"
Thea's expression hardened, their voice dropping to a whisper that carried more danger than a scream. "You speak as if you remember beauty."
"I do," I said. "That's the curse, isn't it? You can't destroy what you still desire."
They were silent for a long time. The heat below coiled upward, wrapping around us like a slow tide.
Finally, Thea said, "There are hierarchies even here, Corvian. You know that. The great ones give the orders; the smaller ones carry them out. The weak fade first—their light snuffed when they fail to serve. You've seen them vanish, one after another. That's the law of this place. Energy folds back into the pit when it has nowhere else to go."
I nodded slightly.
"Hugo," they said, "is one of those. A spark. A nothing. He can't bear what you are, and you can't bear to let him die. You're trying to build permanence from rot. And it will destroy you."
"Maybe," I said. "But I'd rather ruin myself in curiosity than stay intact in obedience."
Thea looked away, their jaw tight, the light from the abyss painting them in dull orange. "You always were too proud for obedience," they murmured.
"And you always mistook survival for strength," I replied.
That earned a smile from them—cold, but real.
Below, the fog stirred again, restless, as if it could hear us. The voices inside it murmured faintly—thousands of broken prayers turned inward, echoing through the cavern like the sound of rain that never touches ground.
Thea leaned forward, their hands clasped loosely. "I'll give you this," they said. "You've always been brave enough to despise yourself honestly. But don't let that honesty turn into heresy. You know what happens when one of us forgets the purpose. When one of us begins to love the object we were meant to ruin."
"I haven't forgotten," I said. "I've only seen it from closer than you."
Their eyes flashed with something sharp—anger, or maybe fear. "That closeness is going to burn you."
I looked back into the abyss, at the slow pulse of the fire breathing through the fog. "Then let it," I said. "I've burned before."
Thea watched me for a long time, silent now. The abyss sighed, the sound hollow and endless. Between us, the space felt thin—alive with all the things that had once made us divine, and everything that made us what we are now.
They finally stood. "You're walking a dangerous line, Corvian. You know what comes of those who start seeing the human form as sacred."
I smiled without humor. "Then pray I don't mistake you for one."
Then their voice came again, quiet but clear, threading through the heat. "Go back," they said. "He's panicking without you."
I didn't turn. "Is he?"
"Yes," they said. "He's worried you might not ever come back. I guess you made this work perfectly, didn't you? The attachment."
The word tasted like iron. Attachment. I let it hang there, studying the way it moved through the air like a sin given shape.
After a moment, I said, "All he ever wanted was an eye that watched him up close. Someone to pat him on the head and say, you did well, boy. It's not love—it's recognition. A child's craving that never left his bones. I didn't invent that in him. I only gave it a place to rest."
Thea tilted their head, their expression unreadable. "We name the collar by the comfort it gives."
I rose slowly to my feet. The ground cracked beneath my heel, exhaling a plume of gray dust. I looked out over the endless fog—the fire shifting sluggishly beneath it like a sleeping animal. "You think I don't know what this is?" I asked. "I've played this game longer than any of them could dream. He's fragile, yes, but he's also willing. And that's what makes it interesting."
Thea's gaze followed me, sharp as a blade kept too clean. "You're losing yourself to him."
"Maybe," I said. "But I won't let him win."
My wings unfurled slightly, the edges smoldering where the heat kissed them. I turned halfway toward Thea. "I promise you that. I won't ever let him win. But in return, let me enjoy him while I still can—before it all burns down. Because you know it will."
Thea didn't answer right away. Their eyes softened, though the rest of their face remained still. After a long silence, they nodded once. "It always does."
I stepped forward, the ground beneath me whispering with the faint hiss of heat escaping from the fissures. Each step pulled the world further from its own sound. Behind me, Thea stayed seated, the light from the abyss brushing up their arms like slow firelight on glass.
As I reached the edge of the path, I could feel the air thinning—the border between this place and the one above. I looked over my shoulder once more.
Thea sat as they had found me, one knee drawn up, their gaze lost in the red below. Their wings, translucent at the edges, caught the firelight and turned it into ribbons of color that didn't exist in the mortal spectrum. For a moment, they looked almost serene.
"You'll regret it," they said softly, though I wasn't sure if they were speaking to me or to themselves.
"Regret is a privilege for those who can still be forgiven," I said.
Then I stepped forward, into the nothing.
The abyss didn't roar or protest—it simply folded away, welcoming me like a door that had been waiting too long to open. The last thing I saw before it shut behind me was Thea, their face illuminated by the slow pulse of the fire, their mouth shaping a word I couldn't hear.
And then there was only the pull, the rush, the soft break between worlds. The smell of smoke turning into air.
And the sound of a human heart, beating somewhere far above.
The return was never graceful. It felt like being pressed through a narrow wound in the fabric of flesh, dragged from one plane to another by the throat. When I opened my eyes, the ceiling above me was dim, washed in the low amber of the bedside lamp. The air was heavy, steeped in the scent of sweat and something sharp—fear, maybe. The mortal body always smelled of it after nightmares.
I sat up.
The bedsheets clung to me, still warm, creased where his weight had once been. My limbs adjusted slowly, remembering their shape. The silence was thick enough to hear the pulse of the world through it. Then movement—small, human—caught my eye.
Hugo sat on the floor, his back against the wall, one arm propped on his knee, head resting in his palm. He looked hollowed out. His hair stuck to his forehead; his chest moved unevenly, shallow and restless. When I shifted, the bed creaked under my weight.
His head snapped up immediately.
Our eyes met. He looked as though the breath had been ripped from him—wide-eyed, pale, the kind of silence that feels like the last inhale before drowning.
"I'm back," I said quietly.
He didn't answer. He only stared, his gaze locked to mine, unblinking.
I moved. Slowly, deliberately. Sliding from the bed, I crossed the small space between us and sat opposite him on the floor. The wooden boards were cool beneath me, grounding. His shoulders trembled, but he didn't pull away when I reached for him.
I cupped his face in one hand. His skin was hot, the heat of a living thing, fragile and defiant. My thumb brushed along the hollow of his cheekbone. "You thought I wasn't coming back?"
He nodded once, small and hesitant, eyes still wide, shimmering with something between disbelief and relief. The air between us felt like a wound—raw, newly opened.
"Although I haven't marked you," I began, "we still have a lot to—"
"Mark me."
His voice cut through mine, abrupt, trembling.
I stilled. "What?"
"Mark me, Corvian," he said, louder this time, though his voice broke halfway through. "Do it."
The words hung there, dangerous and bright.
I looked at him. Truly looked. His pupils were blown wide, swallowing the color of his eyes. His chest rose and fell as if he'd run all the way from the gates of something terrible and still hadn't stopped. There was no madness in him—only surrender.
"You don't know what you're asking for," I said.
"I do."
"No," I whispered. "You don't. You think it's a wound. A vow. You think it's the same as being loved."
He shook his head, but his gaze didn't move from mine. "I don't care. I just want it."
I let my hand drop from his face, the warmth fading from my palm. "You understand what a mark means, Hugo? It isn't a promise. It's a chain. Once it's done, you don't get to undo it. You stop being entirely yours."
He didn't even flinch. "Then let it be yours."
For a moment, there was nothing but silence. The kind that thrums before a storm, where the air grows too heavy to breathe.
Something old stirred in me then—the echo of Thea's words, He's panicking without you. They had said it with disdain, but it was true. I could see it now, alive in the tremor of his hands, in the pleading that hid behind the quiet. The attachment was complete. He was tethered to something he didn't understand. And I was the rope.
"You'd burn," I said.
"I don't care."
"Your soul would stain. You wouldn't feel whole again."
"I already don't."
I leaned closer. The distance between us shrank to a breath. His scent was sweat and fear and something almost sweet, like smoke curling around candle wax. He tilted his head slightly, waiting for an answer that wouldn't save him.
"I could make you mine," I said softly. "Not in the way you think. In the way that consumes."
"Then do it."
There was no hesitation in him. No hesitation in me either—only the stillness before decision. I could almost hear the hum of the abyss still ringing in my ears, the echo of Thea's warning: You'll burn for this.
Maybe.
I brushed my thumb along his jaw, slow, deliberate. His pulse trembled beneath the skin, and I could feel the warmth of it, the steady, naïve rhythm of life. So easily altered.
"You don't realize," I said, "what the mark demands in return."
His voice came quiet, hoarse. "You."
The word struck something deep inside me—older than language, older than faith.
He didn't understand. He couldn't. And yet, for the first time in a very long while, I almost wanted him to.
The distance between us dissolved. I let my forehead rest lightly against his, my voice low, almost inaudible. "Careful what you ask for, little one. You might get it."
He shivered, not from fear. From the closeness.
And for the first time since I fell, I felt the weight of temptation not as sin—but as recognition.