ARCHANGEL AND FALL

ArchAngel tier should have felt like victory. It felt like standing on a ledge.

One month plateaued into dread. Daniel's grin returned in memory's rearview—delight dressed as inevitability, sport-kill energy without the name for sport yet.

Daniel tore all four wings this time—left and right, delighted and careful. Lateresa in peripheral sight; crying uncertain. The memory blurred under pain and void until even Val's scream had no sound.

Falling again. Purple filled his throat; wrong heat under his breastbone—near-total, nothing left to hold it back. Short void wake. Then consciousness slammed back into the next layer of nightmare.

Daniel stabbed his chest. Devil energy punched wrong into his ribs. A Gate mouth opened in Mortal Realm sky and swallowed him. The toss was not the dream frame anymore. This fall was real: two pairs of wings locked on his back, trapped inside a cage whose rules would not bend even for strength he had not yet imagined.

Val hung in the drop with time dissolving around him and understood, too late, that height had never been escape—only a longer runway toward the same hand.

The eternal fall began for real.