The sky above the Sanctum of the Veil had forgotten how to be blue.
It hung instead in layers of bruised amber and violet, as though the heavens themselves nursed an old, festering wound. Wind howled across the floating plateau, carrying the scent of scorched myrrh and distant lightning. The altar at the center an obsidian slab older than the first war between angels and their fallen kin drank the dying light and gave nothing back.
Kaelen Virel was the first to step onto the cracked celestial marble.
His boots rang like a death-knell. The ceremonial robe black silk shot through with threads of living flame clung to his frame as if reluctant to let him go. The Ashbinder sigil blazed on his chest: an ouroboros of smoke devouring its own broken eye. He did not look at the others yet. His gaze was fixed on the Astral Nexus hovering above the altar, a sphere of braided starfire and void, pulsing like a heart that had already decided to stop.
"No sentries on the eastern ledge," he said, voice low, edged with the rasp of too many oaths. "They left the back door open for us. That's never a good omen."
Selene Myrr drifted to his left, barefoot, silver veil floating though no wind touched her. Her eyes were half-closed; pupils dilated into pale moons. "The Veil is… listening," she whispered. "It remembers the first rebellion. It remembers wings burning as they fell."
Tomas Vale spat over the edge of the plateau and leaned his weight against the weathered column. Woundsteel his soul-forged blade rested across his back like a sleeping curse. "Let it remember. We're here to stitch the damned thing shut, not reminisce about Morningstar's bad decisions."
Iria Dareth knelt at the altar's rim, painting final glyphs with ash mixed from the bones of seraphim who had once hunted the Watchers. The chains wrapped around her forearms iron links inscribed with every vow she had ever sworn clinked softly, as though nervous. "This stone drank the blood of the Grigori," she said without looking up. "The gods themselves stood here when they cast the rebels down. We are treading on the exact spot where pride first cracked the firmament."
Behind them, the three initiates waited in uneasy silence.
Lirael Kaelen's former pupil clutched a satchel of binding relics, knuckles white. Brother Cael, mouth stitched shut by sacred vow, stared sightlessly toward the Nexus, tears of light leaking from blind eyes. Nym the mute forge-mage traced sigils of fire in the air that died as soon as they were born.
Kaelen unrolled the divine scroll. The celestial script writhed like captive seraphs trying to escape the parchment.
"By direct decree of the Court of Hollow Thrones," he read aloud, voice carrying the weight of inevitable doom, "the Ashbinders alone are permitted to approach the rift. No other hand may touch the seal. No other eye may witness the mending."
Lirael's scoff cut the wind. "Convenient. Send the half-breeds to do the dirty work, then burn the evidence."
Tomas grinned without humor. "If it's a trap, little star, it's the prettiest one they've ever built."
Selene turned slowly, veil catching the bruised light like a shard of fallen moon. Her voice dropped to something older than mortality.
"It wants to be opened," she said, staring at the Nexus. "Not closed. It's been waiting since the first angel screamed on the way down."
Kaelen's jaw flexed. The brand beneath his robe still dormant, still obedient gave a single, treacherous throb.
"Then we bind it anyway," he said. "Even if it burns us to cinders."
He looked at each of them in turn. Four Ashbinders. Four living reminders that the gods once forged weapons from the children of Watchers and men.
"Positions," he ordered.
The wind died. The Nexus pulsed once, hungry.
Above them, unseen, something with too many wings and too few mercies turned its burning gaze downward and waited for the spark that would begin the second Fall.
The circle of vowfire flared white-gold, then bled crimson.
Iria's chains snapped taut, ringing like cathedral bells as she anchored the four of them to the cardinal points of the altar. Selene stepped into the heart of the rift's vertical wound, palms open, veil whipping around her like torn wings. The Nexus hovered inches from her chest, breathing.
"Begin," Kaelen said.
Selene pressed her hands to the wound in reality.
The world screamed.
A single, perfect note neither sound nor silence tore through every realm at once. The plateau bucked. Obsidian cracked like old bone. Threads of violet and gold lashed out from the Nexus, wrapping Selene's arms, her throat, her eyes. She rose, crucified on light.
"It's not sealed," she cried, voice layered with a thousand fallen tongues. "It's starving!"
Kaelen lunged, but the air itself burned him back. Then the brand came alive.
Fire not the tame flame of their oaths, but something older, hungrier erupted beneath his ribs. A sigil of impossible complexity seared through robe and flesh: a seven-pointed star cradled by wings of living gold. The Ascendant Flame. The very light Lucifer had once worn as a crown before it scorched him into the Pit.
Kaelen fell to his knees. Visions detonated behind his eyes.
He saw the Watchers descending in their hundreds, beautiful and terrible, teaching mortals the arts of war and enchantment. He saw the first kiss of forbidden knowledge passed from angelic lips to human skin. He saw the heavens open and the rebels plummet, wings burning like comets, screaming not in terror but in ecstasy.
And he understood: the Flame had never been taken from them. It had been waiting for someone willing to fall again.
The Seraphim arrived on wings of law.
They dropped from the bruised sky in perfect formation twelve of them, armor white as judgment, halos spinning like blades. At their head strode High Warden Malcer, once Kaelen's oath-brother, now the very image of Michael after the rebellion: cold, immaculate, merciless.
Malcer did not speak at first. He simply raised one hand. A shard of Veil-memory blossomed in the air between them a perfect, looping vision.
In it, Kaelen stood alone at the altar, both hands plunged greedily into the Nexus, laughing as the Flame poured into him. Selene lay forgotten. Tomas and Iria were absent entirely. The lie was flawless.
"Kaelen Virel," Malcer intoned, voice ringing with the authority that once cast down a third of heaven, "you are charged with attempted ascension, consorting with the Ascendant Flame, and treason against the Hollow Thrones."
Tomas barked a laugh that turned into a snarl. "You rewrote the memory, you sanctimonious bastard."
Malcer's eyes storm-grey, unreadable flicked to the brand glowing through Kaelen's torn robe. Something almost like sorrow passed across his face, gone before it could be named.
"The Flame chose him," Iria said quietly. "You fear what that means."
"I fear nothing," Malcer answered. "I obey."
He gestured. The Seraphim advanced.
Tomas drew Woundsteel in a howl of phantom voices. Iria's chains exploded outward, coiling around two enforcers and crushing their halos into sparks. Lirael hurled a binding relic that burst into chains of frozen starlight. Nym burned runes into the air that detonated like hellfire.
Kaelen rose slowly, the brand blazing so brightly it painted the plateau gold. When he spoke, his voice carried the echo of every fallen prince who had ever dared to say no.
"Then obey this."
He took one step toward Malcer, and the ground beneath the High Warden cracked like the firmament on the day pride first shattered it.
Night bled across the mountains, thick as old sin.
They huddled in the bones of an abandoned watchtower carved into the cliff during the first war against the Watchers. Wind moaned through arrow-slits like the distant weeping of angels who had chosen the wrong side.
Selene lay unconscious, veins glowing faintly beneath translucent skin. Tomas cleaned blood from Woundsteel with a rag that had once been white. Iria sat apart, chains dim and lifeless across her lap, staring at nothing.
Kaelen stood at the broken window, shirt stripped away, the Ascendant Brand pulsing like a second heart. Every beat sent ripples of gold beneath his skin.
Lirael limped to his side, voice small. "Master… are we fallen now?"
He didn't answer at first. Outside, the stars refused to shine as though even they feared to witness what came next.
"We were never allowed to rise," he said finally. "So yes, little star. We fell the moment we were forged."
He turned to the others. The brand cast long shadows that looked, for a moment, like wings.
"But the first ones who fell taught mortals how to make fire. How to forge swords. How to name the stars." His voice dropped to a whisper that still filled the ruined tower. "They paid for it with eternity. We will not."
Tomas looked up, eyes hard. "Then what do we do, First Flamebearer?"
Kaelen smiled, something sharp and beautiful and terrible.
"We go back to the beginning. We find the truths the Court buried when they chained the Watchers beneath the earth and pretended the war was over."
He pressed a hand to the brand. It flared, eager.
"The Great Rebellion never ended," he said. "It was only waiting for new wings to burn."
Somewhere far above, thunder rolled like the laughter of something ancient and amused.
The second Fall had begun.