The silence after the awakening was unbearable.
It was the silence of a world holding its breath, waiting for the next god to scream.
The chained fallen stood before them—vast, impossible, his wings bound by frozen iron that pulsed faintly with light.
His face was both human and not: beauty cracked by ruin, divinity dulled by centuries of grief. His eyes burned dimly beneath a layer of frost, watching them with the quiet patience of a star long fallen.
Around him, the air trembled.
The ice groaned like bone beneath the weight of his presence, and from the shattered mirrors along the walls, the Fallens began to descend.
Dozens. Then hundreds.
They fell from the shadows above, landing silently in the snow, their wings folding around them like cloaks of ash. Their armor was black and rusted, their halos shattered, leaving only fragments that floated faintly behind their heads.
