WINGLESS TO HERALD

Daniel's hands found his back when Val was still Messenger.

Feathers and bone ripped free in a silent scream he could not voice. Blood ran down his spine. Lateresa stood behind a line of light—witness, frozen. School faces piled over the pain—good and bad indistinguishable. The pain outgrew thought. Darkness took him.

When he woke still falling in the void between memory layers, purple had spread past half his body—wing hollows open, nothing sealing them. Fear spiked. The fall pulled him under again.

He was wingless for two years that felt like standing in a room with the door removed. Daniel's message had landed. Val learned to read delight dressed as inevitability in a man's smile and still could not avoid the hand when memory replayed it.

Herald promotion restored his wings—a small mercy after years wingless. The climb continued, but the first tear never really left his back.