The cathedral existed in a space between breaths, where architecture defied the laws of physics and sanity alike. Selena walked through corridors that curved upward into themselves, her boots echoing against floors made of compressed starlight and fossilized screams. The walls wept a substance that might have been water or might have been liquid memory she couldn't tell anymore, and the distinction seemed increasingly irrelevant in this place that existed outside the normal flow of time.
She had been walking for hours, or perhaps minutes, or perhaps years. Time moved strangely here, pooling in some corners like stagnant water while rushing past in others like a flash flood. Her wings those magnificent, terrible appendages that had marked her as something more than human, something destined for either greatness or damnation hung heavy against her back. They ached with a deep, bone-grinding weariness that no amount of rest could cure.
