Chapter 22: A Moment, Whole
Samael stood in the broken clearing, wind tearing through the torn branches, light still bleeding in jagged arcs through the atmosphere.
Her hands throbbed with heat from the remnants of the shattered halo, her chest rising and falling as the weight of what had just occurred began to sink in. Kivas knelt among the fragments of her wings, sobbing in golden streaks that melted into the soil.
But it wasn't the end yet,
The divine pressure hadn't dissipated. The ground around Kivas' body vibrated with a rising current, a twisting cyclone of raw essence spiraling out from her core. Samael could see it—not physically, but within the soul-layer.
Threads of fate-weaving energies flailed in every direction, tangled and breaking against one another. Each one screamed instability.
Kivas' body was resisting collapse only by reflex, but her soul had begun to unravel into recursive loops, sparking flashes of transcendent structure inside her Well of the Soul.
"How troublesome..."
Samael's eyes narrowed. She knew how to end a Fateling. Cut the wings. Sever the halo. Break the anchors. Or better, immediately go in for annihilation. She knew how to prevent apotheosis. But she had never tried to preserve one intact with sanity.
This instability right before her would either devour Kivas entirely or erupt again in another chaotic surge that she might not survive a second time.
The wingless angel trembled as she knelt, arms cradled around herself. Her voice was small, crushed under the weight of everything, barely pushing past her lips.
"Everyone leaves me..."