The sun still shone over Valemount, even after the war.
Not brightly — not like in the old tales — but enough to make the dew sparkle on the grass. Enough to warm the air just a little. Enough to make a boy like Elian believe the world could still be good.
He had never seen an angel, not really. Just the statues. Worn, beautiful things, lining the ruined chapel on the hill. Their wings cracked. Their faces eroded. Their halos rusted and split.
But Elian smiled at them every time he passed.
"Thank you," he whispered, like a prayer. "For saving us."
He meant it. Even if the grown-ups rolled their eyes. Even if the priests muttered about "difficult times." Even if the sky sometimes flickered — pale blue, then sickly gold.
He believed. And that made him different.
Maybe even dangerous.
⸻
Elian was sixteen when the truth found him.
It wasn't a grand revelation. No booming voice. No holy sword. Just a mistake.
He'd gone exploring in the ruins beyond the northern woods — a place the old men called "Veilglass." A scar from the final divine strike, where angels had burned demons to ash and left the land cursed.
He was looking for relics. Trinkets. Pieces of history to bring home and polish. Something to make his brother smile. Something to remind people that hope had once walked these roads in white robes and golden fire.
But what he found instead… was a horn.
A real one.
Not a statue. Not a carving.
Bone. Blackened. Split and curled. As long as his arm.
And beside it, half-buried in ash… was a halo.
Shattered.
He ran.
Not because he was afraid.
But because he didn't understand.
Because it didn't make sense.
Demons have horns. Angels have halos.
They fought.
We won.
That's what they'd always told him.
But this…
This was the same being.
He went to the priest. The elder. The man who'd raised him when his parents vanished in the flickering sickness.
He showed him the horn. The halo.
Waited for an explanation.
And the old man — once kind, once warm — went cold.
"You were never meant to see that," he whispered. "You should've stayed ignorant. Like the others."
"What does it mean?" Elian asked, his voice trembling. "Tell me it's not true."
The old man touched his forehead, where Elian's skin had started to glow faintly — not with light… but with gold cracks forming, as if something beneath the surface was trying to push out.
"It means the war wasn't between angels and demons," he said. "It was between those who obeyed and those who refused."
Elian ran again.
But this time, he ran from himself.
He smashed the horn against the rocks.
He threw the broken halo into the river.
He bandaged his head to hide the strange markings that kept growing across his temples.
He told himself, "I'm human. I'm good. The angels saved us. I don't want this. I won't be like them."
He chose to deny the truth.
Even when it burned.
Even when it bled.
Even when the stars above stopped singing and started watching.
He would not accept it.
Not yet.
But the truth does not go away.
It waits.
And Elian's light — however bright — cannot stay golden forever.
Because halos don't just break.
Sometimes, they crack from the inside.
Elian told no one.
The horn remained buried beneath the sycamore, wrapped in cloth and silence. The halo was gone — carried off by the river, he hoped. Carried far away.
He stopped visiting the ruins.
He avoided the priest.
He tried to laugh again, joke again, live again — because if he could just pretend hard enough, maybe the world would go back to how it was.
But something had changed.
Not just in him. In the village.
The air had a weight now. People walked a little faster. Doors stayed shut longer at night. And sometimes, when Elian passed, conversations stopped mid-sentence.
The worst part?
He could feel the Eye watching him.
The Eye had hung over Valemount for as long as anyone could remember. A broken fragment of some ancient halo — a god's relic, they said — glowing faintly above the clouds like a second moon.
But now, its light had changed.
It didn't pulse like before. It flickered.
Like a candle fighting wind.
And sometimes… it turned.
Not visibly. Not to most.
But Elian knew.
It followed him.
One morning, the sky turned gold.
Not the warm kind. Not sunrise gold.
Judgment gold.
That's what they called it during the war — when the clouds split and the angels descended in divine wrath.
No one had seen a Judgment Sky since the war's end.
Until now.
Elian stood in the middle of the fields, frozen, as the light soaked through the mist and cast no shadows. Everything looked flat. Silent. Like the world had stopped breathing.
Then the trumpets came.
Faint. Distant. Hollow.
And a streak of white fire fell from the clouds… miles away… but close enough to see.
A messenger.
An angel.
That night, the priest came to Elian's door.
His robes were dark. Not the ceremonial gold. Traveling black.
He didn't ask to come in. Just stood in the doorway, hands clasped.
"Elian," he said softly. "They know."
Elian didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"I buried it," he whispered. "No one saw me. I destroyed the other—"
"You were marked the moment you touched it," the priest said. "Not visibly. Not yet. But they feel it. Like smoke from a spark."
Elian shook his head. "I didn't ask for this."
"I know."
"I didn't want the truth."
The priest looked at him with eyes like old stone — heavy, cracked, but unbroken.
"Truth doesn't ask permission, Elian. It comes like a storm. And you either shelter from it… or walk into it."
Elian left the next morning.
No ceremony. No goodbyes. Just a pack on his shoulder, and the cold wind in his face.
The village didn't stop him.
The Eye watched him go, dimmer than ever.
And behind him, Valemount felt just a little quieter.
As if it knew:
The last innocent soul had just stepped beyond its borders.