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CAELUM DIDN’T SCREAM—RATHER, HE COULDN’T. The sound ferociously clawed its way up to his throat but never really made its way out, strangled by the sheer horror that sprouted in his chest. His mouth hung open, frozen mid-breath, as if his body refused to give voice to what he had just witnessed. The silence that followed was louder than any broken cry: a suffocating stillness that wrapped around him like a noose.
He’d opened the door because of a loud thud, which was accompanied by an odd smell. Not rot, not burning. Something clean, strangely clean, like the air before a storm: sharp, electric, and wrong for a hallway in a crumbling apartment complex that only he was residing in. He’d followed it down a flight of stairs, barefoot, old flashlight jittering over messily pasted linoleum. When people didn’t believe in omens, they investigated.
And there it was.
It was slumped between his washing machine and dryer—knees tucked in, arms limp, head turned away from him. Somehow human, yet also strangely animalistic. But in a silent, almost gentle way. It could have been a man, maybe, if men bled silver. If men had feathers that shimmered like oil in water and peeled off in sticky handfuls. Caelum gulped as the pit in his stomach only gave way to an even deeper level of fear, his eyes following the wing that was folded in what seemed like the wrong way. The other wing uselessly dragged behind the body, bent and twitching as though it hadn’t realized its counterpart was broken yet.
It was alive. It was alive.
“Fuck,” Caelum whispered, as if a curse could salvage everything. He even went so far as to turn away from the creature and then back again, as if that would make all this disappear. “Fuck. Fuck me.”
The thing then flinched. Moved, as if blindly searching for Caelum’s voice. As if the sound meant something. The creature’s head turned slowly, too slowly, and Caelum found himself looking into a face that was human—and somehow also wasn’t. His gaze drifted to where sideburns should’ve been, but in its stead were tiny feathers, forming two small pairs of wings on either side of its face, eventually blending and giving way to skin. Then, he noticed it: the eyes. There were so many of them. Three on each side of its face, blinking discordantly as it eyed Caelum up and down.
He had no idea how long they stared at each other. It felt like hours. Days, even.
The creature then opened its mouth, limbs weakly twitching as long, slender fingers reached out to the light emanating from his flickering flashlight.
“Cae… lum…”
Caelum bit back a sound of fear.
He hadn’t even said his name. Not once. Not out loud.
“No. No, no, no! What are you? How do you—” he choked out, taking a step back. The door was right there. He could leave. He should leave. But the creature—angel?—with one too many eyes, pupils too large, and irises too pale to belong to a human, flicked toward his direction again. It was trembling now. Not from fear. From the cold. Or blood loss. Or something else that lived inside its ribs and had no name. Just… beating, steadily.
“Veuliah,” it faintly said. Or at least, a handful of syllables that sounded like it. It didn’t open its mouth, as if merely shoving the words into Caelum’s head.
Caelum muttered curses under his breath, making his way closer to the angel. It didn’t answer. There were feathers scattered everywhere. Piled in corners. Clogged in the washing machine drain like dried leaves. Caelum’s eyes landed on a smear of shimmering silver shaped like a handprint. It led to the wall, where blood pooled by the windowsill, where the angel had struggled to crawl in. It had used its remaining strength to drag itself inside after the fall. Then, There was a click—not from either of them, but from the ceiling. The hanging bulb buzzed, flickered, and died, throwing them both into the dying white of Caelum’s flashlight. In that second, something shifted inside him. Not pity. Not awe. But a quiet realization that he could not let this helpless entity before him shrivel up and die, not when he’s already seen it go through too much that night.
“I can’t…” he muttered, “I can’t just leave you here, can I?”
The angel, Veuliah, blinked. Blood ran from his forehead and down its cheek like tears. Caelum exhaled, harsh and shaking, and stepped forward. His bare foot landed on a feather. It crumpled under his weight like paper.
Crouching down to the angel’s current height, Caelum reached out slowly—not to touch, not yet—but just to see what would happen. Veuliah flinched again, harder this time, and one wing spasmed.
A soft, wet crack filled the room.
“Shit!” Caelum hissed, kneeling beside him, before adjusting his tone as he realized he had unintentionally startled Veuliah. “Don’t… don’t move.” He could smell the blood now: metallic, but sweet too. Like rust laced with the sickening stench of vintage perfume. His hand hovered in the air before landing on Veuliah’s shoulder. It was burning hot. Fevered.
“I don’t even believe in you,” Caelum whispered to himself in pure disbelief, “this—this isn’t supposed to happen. You’re not supposed to be real, I don’t… I don’t do angels.”
Veuliah made a low sound in its throat. It might have been laughter. Or a labored breath. Or the beginning of some other word that never came. Caelum peeled off his hoodie and wrapped it around the angel’s shaking form, careful not to touch its wings. The skin under the feathers looked disturbed, ridden with fresh welts and open scars.
“You’re going to die.” Caelum muttered. “In my goddamn laundry room, no less. Fuck.”
And maybe it was that thought—mundane and absurd—that made something inside him snap. He braced his arm under Veuliah and, with the remaining strength that didn’t fade from the underlying fear, lifted it up.
The angel did not resist. It just leaned into him, wings uselessly hanging by its side, limp and heavy like twin burdens, as if it had been waiting a very long time to be held.
The fall was brief, lasting for not more than a few seconds. There was the helpless flailing of limbs, strands of hair rippling through the air like untamed ribbons, and then the inevitable crash. Bones snapped like mere twigs, jutting through porcelain skin in grotesque angles. The air from Veuliah’s lungs escaped through ragged gasps, yet no scream followed after. Its wings lay uselessly on either side of him, twisted, wrong, as if it had forgotten about its ability to fly and had become one with the mortals on earth. And the pain, sharp and searing, blooming through its shattered ribs as it pierced from every angle, but even the pain subsided, giving way to shock.
And then, warmth.
Not in the way that blood was, no, it was welcoming. Faint. Something that lived inside cloth and skin. The kind you would faintly see behind your eyelids, not the blinding and overwhelming kind. It opened its eyes, now met with soft golden rays, studded with dust motes. A pale ceiling with uneven paint textures, and the faint glow of the lightbulb hung above its head. Slowly craning its neck to the side, it gazed at the curtains, white and thin, drifting as if stirred by wind—yet there was neither breeze nor sound. The air was still and warm. The placement of things, the scent of lavender and old books felt too meticulous, like a memory manifesting itself without reason. Veuliah then looked down, somehow recognizing the warmth of the mattress beneath itself.
Then, someone was laughing. Far off in the distance, and it was gradually approaching. A voice of someone young, fearless. Someone human.
Someone eerily similar to Caelum.
Veuliah turned its head and saw him approaching. He was closer than before, no longer cautious, uncaring of distance. The bed dips as Caelum sits beside the angel, gently taking its wrist as if checking for a pulse.
Veuliah tried to speak. However, it suddenly forgot how words sounded, how they felt rolling off its tongue. As if something had harshly stolen its voice. But Caelum merely smiled.
“You’ll be safe here. I won’t let them take you back.”
Something swelled in Veuliah's chest, a feeling it couldn't explain. Was it gratitude? Longing? It was fierce, sharp, yet undeniably warm. It smiled, uncaring if it had lost the ability to communicate, as long as it could feel this same warmth forever. It felt complete. It felt human.
Slowly, it reached for Caelum’s hand.
And the skin came off.
Just like that—flesh unzipped like parchment, bones glinting through. Caelum’s smile didn’t fade. But now the teeth were wrong. Too many. Too white. His mouth kept moving, even as the face began to peel away and dissipate into tiny flakes. Veuliah flinched, flicking away the disintegrating patch of skin from its hand, before its gaze met Caelum’s—or at least, the one it thought was Caelum.
“You thought this was real?” The figure whispered, continuing to disintegrate as it rapidly started to rot right in front of Veuliah’s eyes. “Veuliah.”
As if on cue, it felt its spine snap up stiffly, its wings folding behind it. It stood on command: still, waiting. But something deep inside it was trembling. A bruise where a fading memory should have been.
A faint heartbeat.
Human breath.
Caelum.
Veuliah gripped the bedsheets as if to steady himself, to ground himself back to reality—however, the sheets pulsed beneath him like muscle, wet and sticky, sucking him in like quicksand. The room darkened from the corners, the curtains turned stiff like stone, and the dust motes froze mid-air. Looking down, he saw his feathers strewn across the floor like sacrifices, and only then did he feel an unbearable pain throbbing by the wing that was now rotting and melting into a thick slop from his back, leaving behind a gnarly skeleton beneath his angelic wing.
“You have forgotten your purpose.”
He strains his neck to look up at the voice. Before him stood a pillar of light. No face. No limbs. Just radiance layered upon radiance. The voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“You were never meant to stay.” It declared. “He will betray you.”
Veuliah curled inward, a scream caught behind his ribs. A few warbled sentences managed to slip from his lips, but every word felt like it physically clawed its way out, as if his throat would bleed if he spoke more.
“No,” he choked on his ragged breaths, “no—he—he saved me!”
The room split apart at the seams. The light drained through the cracks like blood.
“You dare disobey? You, who was made to serve?”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I remember!” He cried out. “I remember… warmth, I remember love, I’ve seen this before!”
“Veuliah?”
Just before the bed absorbed him, just before the room bled and the light reached out with hands of false holiness, he heard another voice.
“Veuliah!”
He woke with a jolt, vision immediately spinning violently from his sudden upright jerk, followed by the stinging pain of sweat seeping into his open wound. For a moment, the air felt too thick. Too heavy. Like Heaven hadn’t quite let him go. His wing spasmed—a lone one now, the other too damaged to feel—and he whimpered as the pain lanced through him. Familiar, terrible, yet somehow comforting. Because this, at least, was real.
The ceiling above him was the same uneven plaster. But there was a smell of antiseptic and mold. Real light illuminated everything—not golden, not blinding, but weak, coming from a lamp on the desk that was flickering now.
Caelum knelt beside the bed, causing Veuliah to glance at the makeshift bed the mortal slept in. He had been kind enough to let the angel sleep in his own bed, while he slept on the floor. Poor soul. He looked tired: dark, prominent circles blooming under his bloodshot eyes, his lower lip trembling with silent unease.
“You were, uh, thrashing—” Caelum hesitated, “saying my name like you were afraid of it.”
Veuliah stared at him, before tentatively reaching a hand out to cup Caelum’s face, causing the other man to flinch slightly.
His skin was warm.
Veuliah’s other hand gently rested atop Caelum’s, which was tightly gripping onto the covers.
His hands were human.
Everything was as it had been.
But the echo of the voice—the holy voice, the accusing one—still rang in his head like a cathedral bell. He almost believed the voice, believed that he should leave this mortal as quickly as he came, until he felt Caelum’s hand on his face, touching him as gently as he did, brushing a long strand of hair from his face.
“You look scared.” He whispered. “Didn’t know angels could be scared.” He chuckled dryly, attempting to lighten up the mood.
But Veuliah was silent, listening for inconsistencies, for echoes. Except there were none, only his ragged breath, and Caelum’s warmth radiating through the covers.
“Was it about where you came from?” Caelum asked, cautiously.
Veuliah gave a slow nod.
Caelum’s head dropped, his eyes glued to the floor, his voice softening ever so slightly now.
“I don’t know what you really are, Veuliah. Or what’s after you. Or who sent you.” His hand stayed on the angel’s arm. “But I’m not going to hurt you.”
Veuliah flinched, and something in the room shuddered after those words left Caelum’s mouth, imperceptibly, like a string being wound tight and snapping in another dimension. Veuliah felt the tension quickly disappear, like something watching had recoiled and retreated into the darkness of the night.
He exhaled. Slow, shivering.
“Are you okay?” Caelum asked.
Veuliah stared at Caelum in the dark, shuddering once more. Not out of fear, but with how badly he wanted to admit that he wasn’t.
“Yes.” He lied, speaking out loud for the first time.
The voices weren’t completely gone. And Heaven wasn’t capable of lies—not exactly. But they twisted words. They warned in extremes. They punished doubt. They feared things like affection and softness.
And for the first time since the fall, Veuliah entertained the possibility that maybe Heaven might be wrong.
The next morning, Veuliah lies half-draped in a blanket on Caelum’s couch, still feverish and twitching. The wings on either side of his face have disappeared and blended into the small feathers on the sides of his head, and his extra pairs of eyes are gone too. The TV murmurs in the background. A kettle whistles in the kitchen. Caelum is tending to the gnarled base of Veuliah’s wing, which cracked further during the night due to him tossing and turning in bed.
If Veuliah was created from sacred things torn loose from the divine, then Caelum was made of the fragments left after the fall. He was human, in a quiet and fragile sense: dark brown hair that curled disobediently in every direction, cut messily and most likely by his own hands, framing a face born from solitude. He was not a man that Heaven would define as beautiful, for he did not possess the grace that holy statues and tinted glass, but Veuliah found himself staring anyway. Shadows were always present beneath his eyes, his lips always chapped, a patch of stubble that seemed too stubborn to be shaved off. He blinked too hesitantly, spoke too gruffly, his gaze always distant as if dreaming. When the angel turned away from being caught staring too deeply, an ache that never existed nor had place in angelhood grew in his chest—an ache that seemed to whisper about how he wasn't meant to adore such a man, but that he still will anyway. Caelum was a man who did not believe in the divine, yet saw a future where he had to build his life around one.
“Hold still,” Caelum gently reprimanded him, “you tore this open again. Christ—”
“Don’t say His name.” Veuliah murmured lowly.
A low groan resounds throughout the apartment, as if threatening to collapse on itself. The lights flicker, coming back dimmer than before.
Caelum rolled his eyes lightheartedly, gently unwrapping the bandages to clean the wound and replace them, but a few of Veuliah’s feathers persistently stuck to it, as if refusing to unearth the damage he had done, and he hisses out in pain, knocking a few things off the table and sending them clattering on the floor when he thrashes about. At that moment, three things happened at once—the television glitches, rapidly changing channels until it becomes a steady static; the cabinet door opens and closes, sending plates clattering down, some broken; and from Caelum’s nose, a thin stream of blood steadily trickles down, at first unnoticed.
He immediately pinches his nose and leans forward, watching as droplets of blood stain his fingers, his heartbeat gradually becoming more and more audible from his ears as he panics. He blindly puts his hand out, feeling for the roll of tissue, before covering his nose and grumbling at the sight of bloodstains on his carpet. Great. Now it looks like he murdered someone.
“Is… is this you?” He asked, accusingly, before his tone softens after seeing the angel recoil back, guilty at what he had done. “Did you do this, Veuliah?”
“I—” he spoke, only for his voice to falter, “I told you, I cannot control it. This world is too soft, too small.”
Veuliah slowly tries to sit up, but strains himself in the process, and he yelps in pain, his wing spasming beneath the blanket, as the upholstery of the couch from across them splits into two, spilling out white foam like exposed guts, clawed by invisible hands. The TV starts repeating random phrases from channels, children laughing, news anchors, animated sound effects, even quoting from Veuliah’s voice.
“—don’t… His name—don’t say H-His name—don’t—”
Caelum firmly held onto Veuliah’s shoulders, who was now breathing erratically, the wings regrowing on his face, extending and retracting sporadically, his face now filled with too many eyes.
“Veuliah.” Caelum gently squeezed Veuliah’s shoulders, even shaking him slightly. “Veuliah, look at me!”
His gaze was outnumbered by the amount of eyes that returned his stare, but he didn’t feel afraid, only worried that the angel might just hurt himself more. His other nostril started to bleed more, as if he were crossing an invisible barrier that Veuliah had put up between them out of fear, but he withstood it and patiently comforted the shaking being.
“I know you’re in pain,” he reassured, loud enough to overlap the static, “but you’re not in Heaven. Breathe.”
Veuliah, normally incapable of humor, responded with a wry grin. “You say that as if the human realm isn’t worse.”
The moment Caelum laughed and gently started caressing Veuliah’s arm, the bleeding from his nose, the clattering of plates, and the static gradually stopped.
Sensing that the angel had now calmed down, Caelum could only fall back on the sofa tiredly, feeling lightheaded from the loss of blood, yet still managing to crack one more joke before he passed out. “You're like a walking EMP and poltergeist in one. You… you don’t like being hurt, do you?”
Stupid question. Only a masochist would entertain such a question. And Caelum was quite sure masochists didn’t exist in Heaven, of all places.
Veuliah merely brought up the mortal’s free hand to his cheek, burying his face into Caelum’s palm, breath trembling against fingers that were already growing limp from exhaustion. He stayed there for a long moment, other hand moving behind to gently cup the tired man’s head. Caelum’s fingers, once weakly clutching at Veuliah’s shoulder, loosened. The weight of his body shifted faintly against Veuliah’s shaking frame, no longer held upright and succumbing to sleep.
He didn’t dare to pull away, staying close, forehead now pressed against Caelum’s temple as if trying to connect himself and give some of his warmth. His eyes were wide and wet, unblinking, not quite fixed on something. The sound of his breathing—ragged, uneven, and nervous—was the only sound left in the apartment now. Everything else had gone still. Veuliah closed his eyes, pretending in his mind that they were ordinary. That blood wasn’t drying from Caelum’s face, that his apartment wasn’t an absolute mess. That angels didn’t fall, and humans didn’t suffer for showing them kindness.
However, the illusion was fragile, and morning was coming.
Days had passed after Caelum’s discovery. The sun filters through the blinds as Caelum lazily sits up, grabbing his fissured glasses from the nightstand. He makes his way to the kitchen, where the scent of scorched toast lingers in the air. The table was set, albeit rather messily, with two mugs—coffee powder mixed into lukewarm water, two knives on one plate and two forks on the other. It was clear Veuliah tried his best.
Caelum eyes the angel, who was sitting on a chair, hugging his knees close to his chest, his unbandaged wing still twitching mindlessly. He looks up at Caelum when he enters.
“You always sit here around this hour. Drink that bitter, murky water. Stare at the walls.”
Caelum slips into the chair across Veuliah, curiously poking into the toast that was incredibly burnt on one side. “It’s… coffee. And I don’t stare like that, I’m—”
Veuliah looks at him blankly, causing Caelum to resign, leaning back on his chair. “Yeah, uh, I guess angels are always right…”
His gaze lands upon Veuliah again. He was wearing one of Caelum’s sweaters, which now had two big vertical holes in the back that served as an opening for his wings. His hair was damp, too, and his skin smelled like shampoo instead of soap.
“You… got dressed?”
“It’s what you do, is it not? You rise. You wash. You cover your body in cotton. You drink things that burn. You look out the window and hope the sky is a little different from yesterday.”
Caelum smirks. “You’re catching on. Next you’ll be complaining about rent and existential dread.”
Veuliah takes a sip from the mug and immediately sputters, grimacing. “It tastes like soil. What is so enjoyable about this…” he scrutinizes the mug, “…coffee? You drink this by choice? Are you sure this is not a form of punishing yourself?”
Caelum chuckles softly, scraping away the burnt parts of his toast. “It grows on you. Like regret.”
Veuliah watches him closely, like a scientist probing a test subject, experimenting with different phrases to receive different responses. He then glances down at the cup in his hands, the surface of his drink reflecting his confused expression.
“And love?” He asks. Caelum raises a brow at Veuliah’s statement, so he continues. “Is love like coffee too? Something bitter humans learn to endure?”
Caelum is silent for a moment, fidgeting with a paper napkin in hopes that Veuliah would take his silence as a hint of him not wanting to answer the question. Unfortunately, Veuliah continued to stare at him for a response.
“Caelum?”
The angel noticed he always flinched whenever he heard his name. Caelum had never been with someone who called his name out with such tenderness, only ever hearing it from the mouths of people who were upset with him. He banishes the ironic thought of receiving care from an entity he shouldn’t believe in.
“It’s… complicated, alright?” He frowns, gulping down the remaining coffee in his mug.
Veuliah leans against the counter, wings slouched low and heavy behind him. He’s trying to stand like Caelum does—arms crossed, weight shifted lazily—but it doesn’t quite look right. Like a muse exaggeratedly imitating a painting’s pose. “I watched you sleep. You furrow your brow, you turn away from the wall, even when at rest you seem… angry.”
He flushes. “I didn’t know angels were supposed to be creepy.”
Veuliah grows silent.
“You have loved someone before, haven’t you?” The question was quiet, almost childlike. But it landed heavily, as if it had been asked a thousand times before and never answered right.
Caelum hesitated. His fingers tightened slightly around the handle of his mug, eyes staring into its empty depths. The question hung there, unanswered, like a breath held too long. He didn’t look at Veuliah. Didn’t need to.
He settled with silence.
“What does it do? To humans?” Veuliah whispered. “To you?”
He sighs, heavy. “It… makes you want things you know you can’t have. Makes you hopeful. Which is just, y’know, a longer way of hurting.”
Veuliah tilts his head, his gaze distant. “Even when it is reciprocated?”
“Oh, even more so when it’s reciprocated,” he chuckled, but there was no humor in his voice, only bitterness, “because then, you’ll have something to lose.”
Veuliah doesn’t look at him, watching his still-full mug of coffee ripple. “I think I was in love,” he spoke softly, almost reverently, “once, before the wings. I… I think I died because of it. Or, it might have been the cause of my fall. It must’ve been terrible if Heaven made me forget all of it.”
Caelum looked down at the floor, his throat tightening. He couldn’t bear to look at Veuliah—not now. Not when the angel sounded so lost. Not when his own chest was aching in response to words that felt too close. He’s all too familiar with the concept of being in love with someone that it completely ruins his life, he knows how his mind adapted to eventually forget, only to make the same mistakes over again.
“Will I become something awful,” Veuliah looked up at him, “if I remember?”
The lights flicker, as if waiting for Caelum’s response.
Once more, he settles with silence.
It was late in the evening. The kind of late that made the fine line of reality and imagination blur. Caelum lay in bed, utterly exhausted from work, half-asleep. The apartment was still, unnervingly so, and every now and then a faint static would ripple throughout the walls—quiet and irregular. Somewhere in the rhythm of the static was a distant, pulsing sound. Not quite music. Not quite a hum. It just existed, as if waiting for something.
At the foot of the bed, barely visible in the dim light, stood Veuliah. He was still, intently watching.
“Veuliah?” Caelum grumbled, voice laced with sleep. His voice was thick with fatigue, eyelids straining to keep themselves open throughout the conversation. “You okay?”
“I did not intend to wake you,” the angel replied softly, his voice apologetic, “I was just… watching.”
“Again?” Caelum shifted slightly, groaning as he turned over and over again, finding the comfortable position that he couldn’t remember he was in. “That doesn’t make it less creepy just ‘cause you said it nicely.”
Veuliah stepped forward. His bare feet made no sound on the cold floor, but the air moved with him. The space around them dimmed subtly, like the shadows themselves were drawing closer. He knelt beside the bed, far too close for comfort, watching Caelum’s face reverently. But under that reverence was something darker, something that ached.
“Your face changes when you sleep,” Veuliah murmured, tilting his head slightly, a hand hovering over Caelum’s face. “You look… frightened now.” He paused, searching for something in Caelum’s expression. “Is that because of me?”
Normally, with the angel’s closeness, Caelum would push him away or reprimand him concerning boundaries, but he felt too exhausted to care. He tried to sit up to create more space between them. “No, no, I just… it’s been a long week,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and laying back down.
Veuliah’s voice softened, almost like a confession. “I want to be close in the way humans understand. But when I try to mirror it, something twists. Perhaps… I might be doing it wrong.” He leaned in slowly, pressing his forehead first to Caelum’s shoulder, then lower, down to his chest. It wasn’t affectionate. It wasn’t tender. It was searching, analytical—like he was listening through the skin, trying to find meaning underneath his skin and breath.
He curls against Caelum’s side, still, unmoving. Like coils waiting to snap. He was too warm, and did not have a heartbeat, and neither did his chest rise like how humans did when they breathed. He had been watching too many romance TV shows again, particularly interested when two characters could cozy up to each other like so. Reluctantly, Caelum gives into the angel’s fantasy, stroking his golden locks.
Oddly enough, it felt quite nice.
“I can feel your heart,” Veuliah murmured. “It’s beautiful. Loud. It’s always pounding.” He paused. “I want to cut it out and keep it so it never forgets me.”
Caelum tensed, fingers pausing mid-air. “Don’t say that.”
Veuliah lifts his head, confusion and a tinge of hurt flickering across his face. “Heaven has only ever taught me worship. Sacrifice. And a pain so bright it would erase the entirety of me.” His hand rose to cup Caelum's jaw with a melancholic tenderness, the kind of gentleness one uses when cradling pieces of something already broken.
“Veuliah…” Caelum breathed, his voice nearly lost. “You’re not supposed to love like that.”
The angel leaned in until their foreheads touched. His breath was shallow, trembling, close enough for Caelum to feel it brush across his lips.
“I don’t know another way,” Veuliah whispered.
Caelum’s hands rested on Veuliah’s head, trembling, not quite pulling him close nor pulling away, his thumbs moving as if to merely satisfy the angel temporarily. He didn’t know which to choose: both choices felt like stepping off a ledge.
“Tell me how,” Veuliah whispered again, desperate now, fingers curling into Caelum’s shirt, “before Heaven makes me forget again.”
The weather seemed to come hand in hand with Veuliah’s sudden appearance. The sun would shine brightly when the angel was around Caelum, and it would often be a rainy day when Caelum left for work.
However, this time, it was Veuliah who left; and behind him were stormy clouds of unspoken words.
It was the kind of rain that didn’t patter or drum or speak. It just… existed. Muted touches of gray draped itself over the windows, turning the apartment into something cocooned and distant from the rest of the world.
Caelum sat alone in the kitchen, staring at his untouched bowl of soggy instant noodles, mindlessly stirring it with a fork as if the action would convince an onlooker that he was eating. He felt emptiness—not from his stomach, but somewhere in his chest. The lights overhead flickered and then steadied, casting the room in a dull, almost yellowish glow. Everything looked slightly off-color under it. His reflection in the bowl of soup was wrong, faceless. The ticking clock on the wall sounded too loud, like it was counting down to something instead of keeping track of time.
He gazed at the clock.
4:45 PM.
Veuliah hadn’t returned since morning.
He’d said, “I'm going out for air,” his voice strained like an instrument out of tune. There was an unnamed tension knotted behind his words, something thick with impending dread that neither of them wanted to acknowledge, nor name. His wings were tightly hidden under the trench coat he borrowed from Caelum—a perfectly imperfect disguise to appear human.a Feathers subtly peeked through the collar and hem like emotions too deep to be contained. He was trembling and pale, along with his fingers.
Caelum had watched him leave, standing in the doorway longer than necessary, as his lips parted to say something—please don't go, you don't look right—but his voice never cooperated. Rather, it didn't feel fair for him to say those out loud. Now, the silence of the apartment pressed down like a weighted blanket. Empty and expecting, like the kind of silence that felt like you were being watched, even when you were sure you were all by yourself.
4:50 PM.
A knock came at the door. Not loud. Not frantic. But perfectly measured, as if someone had rehearsed for that moment. Caelum blinked, wondering if Veuliah had finally decided to return. However, he knew that the angel wasn't the type to knock on doors, preferring to simply barge in without bothering to introduce his presence. Caelum wasn’t expecting visitors either, for he wasn’t the kind of man people would willingly visit. He had erased that part of his life a long time ago.
Cautiously, he walked across the kitchen, then the living room, each footstep replaced with the thumping of his nervous heartbeat—a quiet warning in his chest that pulsed alongside the rain. He opened the door halfway, not welcoming, but not rudely either.
A man stood there. Tall. Pale. Clothed in white. However, it was not the dull white one would usually see in fabric. It was eerily pristine. He was untouched, bathed in the kind of white that refused the concept of dirt and time, basking in the darkness just to contrast itself. His coat was long and buttoned to the throat, not a single wrinkle in sight. His hands were gloved, golden cufflinks catching the faint flicker of the hallway lamp. His skin was pale—bloodless and nearly translucent, as if he hadn't felt the sun in centuries. Perhaps ever. A large-brimmed hat of the same blinding white was on his head, obstructing Caelum from meeting his gaze.
Then, he smiled. It was too perfect, practiced. The kind someone might attempt in the mirror over and over again until they memorized the right shape, but never mimicked the feeling correctly.
“Good afternoon.” He spoke. There was a weight to it, not loud, but uncomfortably pressing. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
Caelum's fingers tightened around the edge of the door. “…Can I help you?” He asked tentatively.
The man acknowledged him with a gentle nod. “We’re searching for something misplaced,” he said. “Or someone, rather. I believe it might have… sought refuge in your residence.”
Caelum’s mouth went dry.
“I don't know what you're talking about. I live alone.”
The man’s smile didn't move, as if expecting the answer from Caelum, however his eyes shifted underneath the shadow of his hat. He wasn't human. His eyes were hollow, absent. Colorless like glassy water bearing no reflection, no bottom. One could fall in and never resurface.
“It is not a matter of belief,” he spoke calmly. “We are aware it is here.” His eyes looked over Caelum’s shoulder, taking in the disarray of his space. “Or, was.”
The tall man reached into the folds of his coat, and Caelum flinched, his body automatically assuming a fight or flight stance. But the man merely chuckled, slowly withdrawing a slip of paper. Noticing that Caelum wouldn't extend his hand out, he took matters into his own hands, grabbing Caelum’s wrist and firmly pressing the paper—or, at least, something that seemed like paper—into his palm. Caelum looked at his hand in horror, while the unnamed man merely watched in amusement. The slip was soft, something in between cloth and skin, pulsing and even warm to the touch, like a living thing. It was marked with an recognizable language, the letters squirming faintly at the edges, writhing as if hiding from Caelum’s eyes, bending and rearranging themselves to match whatever part of his brain was most vulnerable. At first, it was a sigil, then a prayer, then a warning. Finally, it settled.
It was a list, with Veuliah's name at the top.
“The instructions will reveal themselves unto you,” the man spoke, tone of voice unchanging. “They are gentle. Harmless. Returns things to where they belong. Where they are made for.”
Caelum's eyes snapped up. “You make it sound like he’s a criminal.”
The man tilted his head, as if Caelum had said something unhinged, like the sky was red, or that gravity didn't exist.
“You misunderstand.” He smiled again, gesturing vaguely with his hands as if to clarify, emphasizing how little he valued this angel. “It is not being punished. It is being recalled.” His lips curled slightly upward, enough to disturb the symmetry of his face. Enough to make Caelum feel sick.
“You should leave.” Caelum muttered with gritted teeth.
The man inclined his head in a slow, ceremonial motion, as if mocking a bow. He stepped back, movements fluid, rehearsed.
Caelum shut the door, expecting the man’s silhouette to pass by his fogged windows, but it never came, and he simply vanished without a trace.
Behind him, the apartment felt different. As if it were now occupied, with someone—or something—just sitting out of sight, watching, waiting for Caelum’s next move. The air was still, but it wasn’t calm.
Caelum looked down at the pulsing slip in his hand again, and he heard the man’s voice echoing in his head.
“You are not meant to keep what falls from Heaven, mortal.”
A sudden wave of fatigue slammed into Caelum like a crashing tide, catching him off-guard with its harshness. It wasn’t the slow, creeping kind of tiredness he was used to after consecutive sleepless nights—it was sharp, unnatural, and almost forced. His knees buckled without warning, and a strange numbness spread through his limbs. He staggered backward, eyes fluttering with effort, his surroundings blurring at the edges. The walls tilted, the light seemed to bend, swaying like a room underwater, and eventually his vision started to dim. With a muffled thud, he collapsed knee-first, then fell to his side, unable to even break his fall or register the pain surging through his system. His eyes remained half-open, just enough to consciously recognize the feeling of slipping fast into sleep.
Caelum opened his eyes to a world he didn’t recall falling asleep in. It was deceiving, a facsimile of his apartment. The shape was the same, the same walls surrounded him, the weight of the ceiling above him was familiar, along with the scent of leftover coffee and dust—but something was wrong. Not noticeably, immediately, or violently wrong. It was subtle. Too perfect to be recreated from a mere memory. As if it were fabricated specifically for him, strained and artificial.
All of the lights were on, yet the atmosphere was still thick with darkness, every bulb glowing with an unpleasant, almost feverish intensity, buzzing with an unnatural hum. It wasn't a comforting sound. Light illuminated every corner of the room, but it did little to steer away any feelings of unease, revealing too much whilst still keeping Caelum in the dark.
The furniture was soaked, thoroughly so. Not just damp, but utterly drenched, with remnants of water dripping onto the floorboards in slow, measured, and deliberate droplets. The air was heavy with moisture, clinging onto his clothes and hair. It was as if it had been raining inside for hours, and not a single window was open to let the water and condensation out. On the floor, scattered across warped wood, lay feathers—white and delicate, their tips dusted with that same silver angel blood. Some were crumpled, some stuck mid-fall, aiming but never quite reaching the ground. They looked less like remnants of wings and more like pieces of a regret forcefully forgotten, plucked from something once living.
In the corner of the room, the television crackled to life, catching Caelum's attention. He hadn't touched it, neither did he recall leaving it on.
Static flooded the screen, gray noise hissing from a mouth with no shape. Then, a voice. Or perhaps voices—dozens layered atop one another, overlapping until altered into something else entirely. It was hollow, dissonant, yet eerily choral. A choir whose divinity had faltered long ago.
“This is what remains of you, should you keep him.”
As if controlled by an unseen force, Caelum turned, slowly, his body sluggish as if he were underwater. The hallway changed before his very eyes, stretching out unnaturally, as though stripped off all masks and pretenses and baring the fangs of its true form. The walls along the corridor he walked through seemed to move in slow, pulsing expansions, like lungs learning how to breathe again. At the end of the hallway, the bathroom door was left slightly ajar. From the gap beneath was a thick, viscous liquid that looked like the rusting decay of angel blood.
He stood there, overwhelmed by a sense of morbid curiosity, bare feet touching tiles that seemed to grow warmer with every hesitant step closer to the bathroom. As he pushed the door, he was then enveloped in suffocating darkness. But as his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he saw that the mirror was fogged, but something stirred behind the glass. He caught sight of his own reflection—or, at least, what he thought was his own. The figure staring back at him wasn't entirely him. His eyes were lifeless and hollowed out, his face bruised and starved, lips cracked and filled with dried blood, skin pale with sheer despair, mouth hung open as if it were unhinged mid-scream with soundless agony frozen in time. There was not a single shred of humanity in the reflection's gaze—only the absence of something that once was.
And from the darkness of the reflection, a pair of eyes manifested.
Veuliah.
But not the gentle, curious angel he knew before. This one loomed in the mirror like a holy statue defiled, and Caelum had to glance behind him to make sure Veuliah was only a faintly glowing reflection in the glass. His wings were no longer feathers, but jagged bones twitching erratically, each movement sharp and wrong. His halo hovered above his head, cracked down and bleeding molten gold that dripped into the reflection’s shoulders like burning oil. His palms were forcefully stuck together in prayer, and his mouth was sewn shut with threads of divine light, and yet still he spoke—his voice low, melodic, full of a grief that burned like reverence.
“I stayed,” the reflection whispered in Veuliah’s voice, smooth and unsteady, as if the words literally carved themselves into his ear. “And you let me become this.”
Blinding lights started flickering overhead, and the floor right before Caelum's feet split with a fierce and sudden crack. He stumbled back, heart pounding, breath quickening, turning and fleeing into the kitchen, holding onto a frayed rope of hope of something—clarity, safety, anything.
But the kitchen had changed, too.
Bloody symbols covered the walls, cabinets, and ceiling. Intricate sigils spiraled outward from the floor, drawn in patterns Caelum had recognized too quickly for his own good. They matched the ones on the slip of paper the visitor in white had given him.
But these weren't written in ink.
He looked down at his hand, which started splitting in half from a deep, vertical cut on the wrist, rotting before him, growing pale, limp, and lifeless.
It was written in blood.
His blood.
Then came the scream.
A shiver ran down his spine as he recognized it was Veuliah’s.
Raw and ragged, like a caged animal wailing. The intensity of his cries split through the apartment like a trembling faultline.
Caelum ran to the window and threw it open. However, there was no city. Only an endless, yawning chasm of nothingness greeted his eyes. As if the world around him had long ended, and spared his home the misery of being cast into oblivion. At the edge of the abyss, barely visible amidst the gloom, knelt a weeping Veuliah. He was bound—divine light wrapped around his limbs and across his chest like chains forged from compulsory righteousness. His wings twisted upward, twice its usual size, and grotesquely coiled around his throat like a tightly-wound noose. He looked up at Caelum with eyes that no longer shone with curiosity, nor wonder—only sorrow. When he spoke, his tone was tired, resigned.
“You could have sent me back.”
Then, the light fractured. The mouth of the earth beneath Veuliah opened wide with a hiss, and he fell. Writhing and screaming in agony.
Caelum didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Only watched.
What else could he have done?
He watched as the scream dissolved into helpless cries as the angel faded into the void. Watched until his angel was swallowed whole, never returning to his doorstep ever again. Watched as the window shattered into fragments, bursting inward with an invisible force, slicing a line of pain across Caelum’s face, like a brand of impending punishment.
Caelum jerked upright, gasping in quick, shallow bursts—his heart hammering wildly as if it yearned to be free from his ribcage. Sweat clung to his body, soaking his shirt and pooling at the small of his back. Every intake of air felt like it passed through a tight space, as if he were choking on smoke.
His room was intact.
Nothing broken. No blood. No sigils.
The apartment looked as it always did, except for one thing: a faint glow in his chest.
Reaching from underneath his shirt, he retrieved the same slip of paper. The one he had shoved into the farthest drawer in the deepest recesses of his apartment in attempts to forget. Now it lay flat, almost innocently, weightless yet impossible to ignore. It pulsed faintly with warmth, as if imitating human life, and its symbols glowed with a soft light.
He clutched the slip tighter, pulse hammering behind his eyes. He didn’t know if what he’d seen was a dream or a warning. He didn’t know if it had already happened or was yet to come.
For the first time since Veuliah had fallen from the sky and crashed into his life, Caelum didn’t know if keeping him close was an act of mercy, or the first step into damnation.
But he knew one thing with painful certainty.
Heaven had done its work.
The apartment was no longer a home—perhaps, it was never meant to have the warmth of one. Its familiarity was hollowed out and replaced with something colder. It had become a shrine, an altar to indecision and fear. Every corner bore the signs of failed rituals: ash smeared on the floorboards, chalk dust fluttering in the air like slow-falling snow, and half-melted candles that never gave enough light. Droplets of wax dried against the wood. Some circles were erased messily, some too small, some too large to be finished.
Caelum hadn’t slept in days.
Not truly. Not without waking up gasping, throat raw from screaming into a pillow. The dreams persisted, waiting behind his eyelids like predators timing when to pounce. Every time his eyes fluttered shut, Heaven showed him visions, more violent and blinding than the last, of what could be—what would be—if he kept holding on. Cities fogged up with smoke. Choirs of faceless angels circled overhead like vultures. Children burned beneath halos that wept light and spilled heat. Caelum himself was in the eye of the chaos, surrounded by feathers and flames, Veuliah's voice ringing in his head despite the turmoil.
You could have let me go.
You could have saved us both.
What have you done?
He wasn't so sure if those voices were dreams anymore.
His body, heavy-laden with sleep, swayed as he moved. His hands shook, his limbs were heavy, but he still lit the candles. Only six this time, not seven. The last time he had used seven, the walls had bled—not metaphorically. Not as a vision. Real. Dark streaks seeped from the plaster like the apartment was cut open and dissected. Sigils crawled across the floor in an overwhelming tapestry of chalk, ash, and dried blood from his own torn palms. Some marks had been erased and retraced countless times that they blurred into each other, like old wounds pried open. His fingers were coated in callouses and white dust, the skin raw around the cuticles, nails cracked and stained at the edges. His knees were scraped and had stopped feeling pain hours ago, and he still knelt there, hunched and determined. Beside him, the folded piece of pseudo-paper lay like sacred scripture. It was left open for so long that the creases softened. He no longer flinched when he reached for the paper, the sigils no longer blurred before his eyes. It was no longer foreign to him anymore, only familiar. Like a part of him, as if he belonged here, at the center of the ruin.
“If this is what it takes,” Caelum muttered, voice husky from disuse, “then maybe… maybe it’s mercy.”
The word “mercy” got caught in his throat. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. His jaw clenched. His eyes were sore and burned.
“Maybe he doesn’t belong here,” he whispered. “Maybe I don’t get to keep him.”
The final symbol was drawn slowly, reluctantly. The chalk dragged unevenly as he finished the circle, closing it shut. As soon as it was complete, the air changed—not warmer, not colder, but it simply felt like two worlds had silently collided. As if the atmosphere was holding its breath. Like something ancient and invisible was emerging from the drywall. Time bent, subtly, the edges of Caelum's vision warping. And it wasn't just from sleep deprivation. The walls breathed in. The ritual was working. He took in a shaky breath, lips parting to speak the final lines, the ones that would seal the command upward. He barely managed to whisper the first syllable when the door creaked open behind him.
No knock. No rush of wind. Just a slow, deliberate opening. As if the hinges whispered a melody for something awakening. He heard the sound of wet footsteps against the tiles. The storm outside was clear as raindrops hit rooftops, before becoming muffled again as the door closed. Then, a softer rustling, like cloth, but heavier. Denser.
Caelum didn't turn. He couldn't.
He knew.
“You chose them.”
The voice was hollow. Neither accusing nor cruel. Just… empty. Like something thriving had been carved out from its ribs and never returned.
Caelum’s breath faltered. His head lowering, his muscles trembling. He was helpless, and knew better than to defend himself.
When he turned, the air behind him felt thick with remorse. Veuliah stood in the doorway, engulfed in dying candlelight. His coat was torn at the hem His wings, half-emerged, hung damply behind him, feathers matted with dried blood, broken bones jutting out like splinters. His eyes—once an inquisitive glow—were sunken, drowning in lifetimes of sorrow and grief. His feet were dirty and scabbed, like he walked with no clear destination in mind, succumbing to wherever fate may bring him.
But worse than the bruises, worse than the blood, worse than the aimless journey, he wasn't angry.
He simply looked tired, terribly so, as if something inside him was giving up, and seeing Caelum sprawled about haphazardly with sigils he most likely didn't even understand just gave him enough force to fall off the edge he was standing on.
Veuliah stepped into the room, gaze falling to the floor, not bothering to look at Caelum. He didn’t want to imagine what pitiful look the mortal would have on his face right now. His eyes skimmed over the ritual he interrupted, whose symbols were still glowing. Caelum immediately blocked his gaze.
“You were gone,” Caelum said, trying to steady his voice. “I—I thought they took you. I thought—”
“So you decided to send me back,” Veuliah said, finishing the sentence for him.
I thought I'd lost you, was what Caelum wanted to say, forever.
But the words died down his throat.
Veuliah crouched, slowly, beside the circle. His knees creaked from fatigue. His fingers brushed one of the sigils, smearing the chalk slightly—just enough to ruin the line. The light in the shape dimmed instantly.
“I told you what Heaven was,” he murmured. “What they do to the things they want to keep.”
“They showed me things,” Caelum said. His throat ached. Not from how long he hadn’t spoken, but by the sudden wave of emotions that washed over him after days of nothing but numbness. “Visions. Of what you might become.”
“And you believed them.”
The silence that followed was unbearable. It made Caelum feel smaller than he’d ever been.
“I didn’t want to lose you,” he whispered. His hands quivered in his lap. It was close enough to what he truly wanted to say.
“But you did,” Veuliah said. His voice didn’t rise. He did not point fingers and accuse. “Not in body.” He pressed a hand gently to Caelum’s chest, just above his heart. “But here.” His fingers lingered there for a moment before he looked down at the broken ritual, the circle flickering faintly as the last remnants of intention bled out into the floor. “And I still came back anyway.”
Caelum could barely breathe. The images from his dreams flared behind his eyes—but none of them matched the sight of what stood in front of him now.
“Tell me,” Veuliah whispered, settling beside Caelum, “did I look like a monster in your dreams?”
The words barely formed in Caelum’s throat. “No,” he said. “You looked… sad.”
Veuliah smiled. Just barely. The kind of smile that had no emotion in it. Just understanding. The smile someone makes when they’ve been hurt before and knew it would happen again, and they would endure it willingly.
“Then maybe they showed you the truth after all.”
He stood, slow and silent. The candles flickered once, then died in perfect unison. The symbols around them lost their light, bleeding into the floorboards like ink into water.
The ritual ended. And the room was left cold.
Caelum woke up to unnerving silence. It wasn’t the peaceful kind that gently eased a person back into reality. There was no birdsong, or a humming fridge. Nor was there a familiar thump of footsteps from the residents living on the floor above. It was a different kind of silence. Thick, flat, and final. His shoulder ached from resting on the hard floor, body curled beside the smudged remains of the ritual circle. The candles had burnt to nothing but mere nubs of stiff wax. The symbols had faded, smeared by sleep or sweat. He sat up slowly, every motion unfamiliar as if he were carefully going through his routine for the first time again. It took him a full minute to realize it was already morning—or at least, it appeared to be. Pale gray light filtered through the windows, colorless, like it had forgotten its purpose to provide warmth. Dust flitted through the beams of light, and the room looked like a photograph not properly developed.
Caelum found himself wondering if it was all a dream. He rubbed at his eyes, even pinched himself. Had Veuliah really come back? Had they really spoken in the makeshift altar that was his apartment, circled in symbols, eyes locked with that looming quiet between them? Had he really seen him in such a state—hollowed and tired, grieving in a way that made him feel the angel's pain for himself?
“Veuliah?” He called out groggily.
No response.
Caelum pushed himself up, legs protesting as circulation returned in painful pulses. The apartment was too still.
He shuffled into the hallway, each step quiet against the floorboards that once used to creak beneath them both. The bedroom door stood ajar. The bed hadn’t been touched. The pillows were untouched, sheets still folded into sharp, empty corners like no one had dared to disturb them. No weight. No warmth. Just absence.
He moved to the kitchen. Empty. No signs of coffee. No jacket thrown over the back of a chair. No wing pressed awkwardly against the fridge like always when Veuliah forgot how to make himself small. Everything was in place. Wrongly so.
Then he noticed the bathroom light.
But inside was silence. The water wasn't running, but he could smell something off—metallic, sharp, and nauseatingly fragrant. The thick, unmistakable scent of copper.
“Veuli—” His voice caught halfway up his throat.
The light was a pale yellow, flickering weakly, casting the entire scene in a sickening warmth that made the gore picturesque. The tub was full, brimming to the cusp with murky water, mixed with the angel's blood. Feathers floated pointlessly, some like dying lilies, some like dead moths. Some pristine white, others still veined and sticky with clots of silver. The drain gurgled, muffled, as if it was unable to drink any more of what was offered.
Veuliah sat in the center of it all. Slumped, still, neck bent forward, half-naked and trembling. Knees pulled up to his chest and fingers digging into his limbs as he hugged himself, leaving crescent-shaped marks on his arms. His skin was paler than when he first got here, if that was even possible. And beside the tub, half on the floor and half hanging uselessly over the rim, was what once was a wing. The joint had been broken, jagged and torn, snapped at the base. Bile rose in Caelum's throat at the thought of the angel's failed attempts of hacking the wing's bone clean through. Strips of feather and sinew clung to the floor tiles, along with droplets of sticky silver ichor, stuck like meat to a butcher's hook. There were feathers everywhere: on the sink, the mirror, some stuck to the walls. The violence of it all was still fresh, still echoing. The walls were cracked, the mirror was in fragments, showing the pain that the angel had distributed to his surroundings. At the base of his shoulder, where the limb had once rooted itself so proudly, there was now only ragged flesh—torn muscle, peeled tendon, shredded sinew clinging to fragments of bone.
It had been done by his own hands. Caelum knew that instinctively.
Veuliah didn't flinch. He didn't even raise his head at first. Caelum staggered forward, breath stuck in his chest, caught between a yell and a choked sob. The room seemed to contract around him. He couldn't muster the courage to raise his voice, not at the sight of an angel that just tore its wing off.
“Veuliah—Jesus—what… what did you…?” The words trailed off. There was too much to say, too much to ask. He couldn't even reach out to touch him, he was afraid to, afraid that doing so might confirm that all of this was real, that it wasn't just another sick vision Heaven was forcing into his head.
Veuliah's eyes fluttered open, looking up at Caelum, dazed but lucid. His voice was soft, a little louder over the bubbling drain.
“You were meant to sleep longer.” He spoke softly, watching as Caelum dropped to his knees, reaching out to stroke the human's hair in comfort, despite the fact that it should've been the opposite.
“Why?” he choked. “Why would you—why would you do this?”
Veuliah blinked slowly. His gaze didn’t hold regret. It didn’t even hold sorrow. Just the distant calm of someone who had passed through a door he could never return from. The calmness of going through something irreversible and not having to think twice about it.
“I am weary,” he whispered. “I cannot stand being an other. Being divine. I cannot fathom being loved only when I'm pure.” He inhaled—ragged, shallow, like he had to learn how to breathe each time. “I wanted to feel small,” he continued. “I wanted to bleed. I wanted to hurt the way mortals do. And perhaps… if I tore it away, this remaining part of me that Heaven still owned, maybe I would finally feel…”
He glanced up into Caelum’s teary eyes.
“…free.”
Caelum shook his head, trying to process the devastation before him, the pain carved into skin and bone and silence.
“That’s not how it works, Veuliah.” He tried to firmly state a point, but it came out cracked, powerless.
Veuliah closed his eyes for a moment. “Then, what will remain of me, when Heaven takes you away from me?” He spoke, a trembling wish, as if he hid his voice in shame from the heavens.
The water shifted as he moved slightly, flinching with the effort. The bone of the severed wing still jutted from his back, trembling faintly. The limb twitched once, like it wasn’t yet convinced it was destroyed, a nervous impulse.
“You weren’t meant to see this,” he whispered again, softer.
“You think this makes you human?” Caelum accused.
Veuliah’s gaze met his. This time, something moved behind it. Not light. Not divine radiance. Hope. A Small, fragile, and desperate hope that seemed to shatter in the face of a harsh reality.
“Does it… not?”
The question shattered something in Caelum. Not because it was childish or naive, but because it was honest. Raw. It was the question of someone who had given everything, who had tried to carve his way out of holiness with blood and bone, came out alive with chipped nails, and still didn’t know if everything they’d done had been enough.
Caelum leaned in, pressing his forehead gently to Veuliah’s. He could feel the fever on his skin, the shivering, the smell of blood thick between them like iron fog.
“You didn’t have to do this. You were already—” he broke off, unable to finish, as warm tears pooled and trickled down his cheeks. “I would’ve kept you. Wing and all.”
Veuliah smiled weakly. There was no beauty in it. Just tragedy, shaped into the curve of his mouth.
The apartment was different now. Not just in appearance. Although that, too, had changed. The bathroom mirror was still cracked through its center like a wound that refused to close. The towels were stained and stiff with old blood, forgotten in the corners where Veuliah had collapsed after mutilating himself. Chalk sigils still clung to the wood of the living room floor, half-smudged by frantic feet going to and fro, some reduced to meaningless scribbles like the remains of a prayer no one bothered to finish. But it was more than that. It was the air, heavier, denser. Like something sacred had died there, and the walls were witnesses. The atmosphere carried the hushed reverence of a helpless chapel after desecration—when the believers have all fled and summoned the wrath of its gods. A divine connection had been severed, and celestial beings above had sensed it. Even the light was different. It came in dimmer, slower, as if mourning.
Veuliah hadn’t spoken much since. For two days, he moved like a ghost through the flat that seemed to decompose along with the unarticulated words down their throats. He didn’t cry. He didn't scream. He didn’t rage. There was something terrifying in his stillness, as if he was still watching, waiting for the world to end. He never complained of pain, but Caelum always saw it—etched in his furrowed brows, the tightness of his shoulders, the way his hand would tremble before he even held onto something, how he avoided mirrors and touched his back as if fearful that his wing might grow back. He flinched when breeze seeped through the windows, recoiled when doors shut too loudly. Every sound seemed to resonate with him.
Just like how Veuliah set the table clumsily, not quite wrapping his head around the concept of human routine, Caelum did what he could. Brought him tea, bandaged what little flesh had remained where the wing used to be, replaced sheets and towels with firm-turned-gentle hands, apologized in quiet sobs, again and again, even though Veuliah never told him to. They both knew they weren't prepared for another confrontation. The hurt was too fresh, too sharp to hold between them.
Hence, they spoke little.
Never about the ritual.
Never about the visions or dreams.
Never about the part of Veuliah that now lay somewhere in the bathroom, decomposing.
Instead, the silence grew between them, filled with unsaid things. It wasn’t an angry silence—and, in the irony of it all, he had wondered if a full-blown argument would hurt less.
On the third evening, the sky turned into a strange color—a bruising violet with blue and yellow hues hovering somewhere between dusk and storm. It poured into the apartment in rays, blurring the corners of the room, tinting everything with imminent grief.
Veuliah stood by the window, motionless as usual. His remaining wing hung limply behind him, twisted and frayed, now more of a burden than a flight-aiding limb. Caelum was stretched out on the couch, feigning rest, a blanket pulled halfway across his chest. He figured pretending to sleep would ease the tension between him and the angel. He watched from behind heavy lids, waiting for something he wasn't quite sure was.
Veuliah spoke first, voice almost too weak to catch.
“I can feel them again.”
Caelum stirred, blinked slowly. “Who?”
“They have become quite close now,” Veuliah continued, eyes locked on something far beyond the glass. “Rather, they never left, not really. But they are moving quickly.” He turns to Caelum, slowly, as if afraid to startle him. “They have grown tired of watching. They’re approaching.”
Caelum sat up. “Like the man in white I told you about?” Veuliah shook his head.
“No,” he said, and his voice was thinner than usual. “Much worse. They are… less interested in mercy.” He finally turned, meeting Caelum’s gaze. There was no heat behind his eyes. No accusation. Just a strange, hollow calm. “They’re tightening the circle,” he said. “Every breath I take with you beside me, they see it as a sin.”
Caelum’s heart thudded. The weight of it sank in, slow and sick. He stood, blanket falling away. His knees were unsteady, but his resolve was suddenly sharp.
“Then we need to leave,” he said.
Veuliah didn’t respond right away. The room held its breath.
“You’d do that?” he asked finally. Not incredulous, but quietly astonished. “You’d… you’d run?”
Caelum gave a small nod.
A silence bloomed between them.
And then, gently, Veuliah stepped forward. His fingers reached out—not like before, when he touched Caelum with reverence or restraint, but this time with fear. Knowing that he wasn’t allowed to be anywhere near him anymore. His hand brushed against Caelum’s, light as air, and laced their fingers together. “I’m not whole anymore,” Veuliah whispered. “I don’t know if I’ll make it far. I don’t even know if I’m worth carrying.”
“You’re not a burden,” Caelum whispered. “You’re the reason I haven’t stopped breathing.”
Veuliah exhaled, sharp and shaky. He looked toward the horizon again, eyes wet but not weeping.
“I want to try,” he said. “To run. To see if the sky still opens somewhere else.”
In that flickering half-light, between broken mirrors and fading symbols, between the echo of divine judgment and the soft hush of mortal choice—they stood together.
Not ready. Not safe. Not quite free.
But together.
That night, Caelum packed the bare minimum. A flask of water. A battered road map. His cracked phone. Veuliah took nothing. They left before dawn. The streets were dead silent—no people, no wind. Even the streetlights seemed uncertain whether to glow or fade. The car creaked under their weight as they climbed in, side by side.
The sun broke somewhere behind them, but the sky stayed bruised. They didn’t speak much, content with the hum of tires on pavement.
They drove for hours. Long enough for the city to dissolve behind them, mile by mile. Long enough for the skyline to vanish in the rearview mirror like a smudged memory. The farther they went, the more the world seemed to soften, as if distance itself was some sort of wretched salvation. The rising sun gave off warmth again, and the road stretched on for miles, framed by golden fields and rustling trees that whispered of something else—somewhere safer, somewhere free of guilt and sin.
The sickening weight of Heaven's stare no longer pressed against their ribs. It felt as though it had been peeled away, layer by layer, until the silence inside the car became something almost gentle.
“Tell me again,” Veuliah spoke softly, “what it feels like… to be nothing more than a man.”
Caelum glanced sideways, his eyes were rimmed red from unshed tears and the lack of sleep. “You ache,” he murmured. “You doubt. You wake up wanting, and you go to sleep wanting even more. It's not pretty. It's messy.”
Veuliah nodded. A strange, sad smile crossed his lips. “Perhaps I'm almost there.”
Caelum focused on the road, jaw tight, eyes scanning the horizon. The wheel sat steady in his hands, knuckles pale from the grip. Every mile felt like a breath exhaled from a place in him that had forgotten how to breathe.
But then… things began to repeat. Caelum had noticed a pattern. It was subtle, at first. A billboard with an advertisement faded beyond recognition. A field of purple hyacinths. A crooked mailbox leaning forward slightly, as if wilting, with a crow perched atop, craning its neck to look straight into Caelum's eyes.
A mile later—again. Same billboard. Still unrecognizable. Same smudges of rust at the corner. Then, the field of flowers. The bent mailbox with the crow turning his way.
Another mile.
The billboard.
The field.
The mailbox and the crow.
Caelum's brows furrowed in confusion, wondering if his sleep deprivation had his sight acting up. He squinted at the dashboard clock.
5:55 PM.
He blinked. Looked away. Looked back.
5:55 PM.
Caelum shifted in his seat, muscles stiff. His shoulders ached from the tension he hadn’t realized he was holding. He dragged in a breath, deep and shaky, his eyes flicking between the endless stretch of road and the quiet passenger beside him.
Veuliah hadn’t moved. He sat still as a statue, head leaned faintly toward the window, eyes fixed on the outside world as if trying to hold it in place.
Caelum cleared his throat. It came out dry. “…Hey,” he said, trying to mask the unease curling in his gut. “Didn’t we pass that already? The billboard?”
No response.
He tried again. “And that mailbox. And the flowers. The same crow.”
Still nothing.
His voice dropped. “Veuliah?”
Veuliah blinked slowly, as though coming out of a trance, but he didn’t turn his head. Instead, he spoke so softly it barely reached Caelum’s ears.
“They’ve found us.” He spoke, resigned.
“What?”
Veuliah finally turned his gaze to Caelum. There was something hollow behind his eyes—like he’d already seen how this ended.
“They’re not letting us go.”
The world around them had already begun to shimmer—barely visible distortions along the edge of the road. The kind of warping you’d see over hot pavement in summer. Except it wasn’t heat. It was something else. Like the sky was folding inward. Like reality was… tired.
He checked the dashboard again.
5:55.
Still.
Still.
Caelum’s fingers reached out and turned the radio knob. Static. He turned it again. More static. Then, between the hissing, a voice.
“You cannot flee.”
It wasn’t, nor was it aggressive. It was benevolent. Like a warning whispered through a keyhole.
He shut the radio off.
The billboard appeared again.
Then the hyacinths.
Then the mailbox.
The crow hadn’t moved.
This time, its beady eyes followed the car longer than they should have—its head turning unnaturally, neck stretching, feathers beginning to char as if catching fire without flame. Caelum swore under his breath.
He slammed his foot on the brakes. The tires screeched as they skidded to a halt in the middle of the road. The wheel vibrated beneath his hands.
“They’ve looped it,” Veuliah gasped, as if breaking free from another trance, “bound the earth into a cage stitched within time.”
The road stretched before them like an uncoiling noose. Caelum yanked the gearshift into reverse. The car jolted. He spun the wheel, turning them around. Back they went. Tires crunching. Engine whining.
The billboard.
The flowers.
The crow.
5:55.
Always 5:55.
The same hour. The same fucking minute.
The same numbers glaring at him.
Caelum’s pulse beat behind his teeth. He screamed—raw, ragged, full of something he hadn’t let himself feel since the first dream.
As if sensing his unease, the windshield split straight down the center. A jagged vein of glass fissured like something had struck it from the inside. The engine stuttered. The car swerved. The wheel twisted in Caelum’s hands, too strong, like an invisible force had hijacked it. The tires lost traction. They veered off the road. A ditch awaited—gaping, inevitable. The car tilted sharply. Caelum felt the lurch of gravity betray him. His shoulder slammed into the door. Veuliah’s body flung sideways, his forehead smacking the window with a dull thunk. Branches whipped past the windshield like reaching hands. Then—impact. Metal screamed. Glass exploded. Steam hissed.
Caelum’s head snapped forward, vision flashing white. Something hot dripped down his temple, his chest aching from the seatbelt.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move.
Beside him, Veuliah was slumped, unconscious or worse. Blood pooled down from the edges of the linen around his wing.
Caelum’s eyes flickered. The last thing he saw, through the spiderwebbed windshield was the crow, perched on the hood. Watching. Waiting.
“Veuliah!”
He woke up to silence.
The sky above him was gray, diffused with an eerie softness. He was on the side of the road, alone, in his car, parked in front of his apartment.
He unlocked his car door with the dull exhaustion of someone who had worked too many shifts and thought too little of the consequences. His clothes smelled like stale coffee and rain. His back ached. His head throbbed. There was an odd stiffness in his fingers, like they had gripped something too hard for too long.
Fishing his keys from his pocket, he unlocked his apartment and stepped inside. The lights were already on, though he didn't remember leaving them like that. They buzzed faintly, flickering in an uneven rhythm, and for a moment he wondered if he had to go out tomorrow and buy a new set of lightbulbs.
He then noticed the air. Humid. Not with rot, not with burning. But something clean, like the air before a storm: sharp, electric, and wrong for a hallway in a crumbling apartment complex that only he lived in.
He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day. Perhaps that was it.
The floor creaked beneath him as he shut the door. And then, a crash. Loud. Sudden. Right above him. Then, the sound of something heavy being dragged across the roof, then the soft crack of something hitting the ground, and then a disturbance down in his laundry room. Caelum froze. Something twisted deep in his gut. A reflex. Something familiar on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't quite name.
The television turned itself on, filling the room with the unpleasant buzz of static, followed by a voice he didn't quite recognize.
But Caelum stared, rooted in place.
“This—This is what—what remains… o—of you… should you k—keep him.”
Somewhere just outside the veil of time, Veuliah had fallen again.