VOID IMPRISONMENT

The eternal fall was the frame now—not nightmare overlay, not memory trick. Time dissolved. Subjective years piled up until they felt like five thousand and still had no floor.

Inside his ribs angelic light warred with devil energy without rest. The battle did not kill him. At some point he was not even sure anymore when the war had been in him, when the void had taken over, whether he was still fighting at all. He let go completely. The two fires harmonized as if they had always been one thing torn in half.

Power climbed inside the cage anyway, wave after wave, until something rebuilt on his back—three pairs of wings unfurling where Daniel had left ruin, white threaded with light-purple along the vanes. A full halo bloomed behind his head, light-purple, larger than his skull, burning steady in the fall. His pupils went blood-red; the whites of his eyes turned black, devil and angel wearing the same face.

Strength stacked high enough that the void itself should have cracked—and still did not. He had reached the peak in feeling and remained trapped. Strength was not exit.

Faces flashed when the blur thinned: Ashley, Alex, Liz—why they had gone quiet, why he had walked away. Lateresa after them. He could not tell anymore if he had ever really wanted her, or only clung to her face so something in the fall would stay solid. He had never said so either way. Memory and longing twisted together until he almost let go.

Nothing held together anymore. The void had no floor. His mind frayed—and somewhere in the fray, the male voice from the very start of the fall echoed back. Not words. Just the sound. He did not know who had spoken. It felt familiar anyway, from farther away than memory could reach.

He was one breath from breaking completely—and then he passed out instead. Darkness took him a heartbeat before the last thread could go.

He did not hear what came next.