The cave should not exist.

Seraphiel knew every passage of the Celestial Realms, every spire and sanctum etched in Light. But this place… this crevice carved into the shadowed rim of Heaven’s edge, hidden beneath a withering arch of forgotten stone—he had never seen it. The air around it was still and heavy, as if even the divine wind refused to pass.

He stepped forward, his white boots silent on the blackened marble. Veins of obsidian spidered across the floor beneath his feet. The further he descended, the colder it became—not temperature, no, but silence. A silence so absolute it felt like drowning.

His wings twitched, instincts clawing at the base of his spine.

There was a light ahead—dim, blue, flickering like breath on ice. He moved toward it, the pendant on his chest pulsing softly, uncertain.

And then he saw her.

At first, she was only a shape in the dark, crouched low, unmoving. Then the chains caught the light—thick, brutal links wrapped around her shoulders, her wrists, coiling down into the stone like roots of iron.

Her wings unfurled as she stirred, black as the void between stars. Not darkened by sin—no, this darkness was ancient, untamed, as if shadows had birthed her.

She looked up.

Eyes.

Vivid, cold blue. Not unlike his own, but where his were forged by law and order, hers were oceans caught in storms—wild, wide, terrified. She scrambled back with a metallic rattle, her bare feet sliding against the stone. The chains yanked taut, anchoring her in place.

“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice barely audible, hoarse with disuse. “Not again. Don’t touch me.”

Seraphiel froze. Not from fear—but from something deeper. Confusion. Instinct. Recognition that had no name.

“I won’t harm you,” he said softly, raising his hands.

She didn’t believe him. He saw it in the way her body curled inwards, how her black hair clung to her damp skin, how the chain around her throat had been rubbed raw into her collarbone.

He stepped closer, slow. “Who… are you?”

Her lips parted as if to speak, then shut. Her breath trembled. Her gaze flicked to his wings, then to the insignia on his chest. Her eyes changed—not relief. Not admiration. Dread.

“They sent another,” she murmured, backing further, though the chain allowed no escape. “Another blade with golden blood.”

“I wasn’t sent,” he said, voice firmer now. “I found this place by accident. I didn’t know there were prisoners in Heaven.”

At that, she laughed—a broken sound, all teeth and bitterness. “You think this is Heaven?”

Seraphiel glanced around. The walls were jagged, unformed. The floor was laced with divine runes, cracked and old. And above her, high in the stone ceiling, a single shaft of light bled in through a wound in the world. A spotlight in an abyss.

“Who chained you here?” he asked.

She looked at him for a long time. Something shifted behind her eyes—an old flame flaring briefly in the ash.

“Your Father.”

He stepped back.

Impossible.

“No one is cast into chains by the Most High without reason,” he said. The words felt wrong the moment they left his mouth.

She tilted her head. “Then what was my reason, angel? That I didn’t bow to your Devil? That I dared fight him and nearly won?”

Seraphiel’s breath caught. A name flickered on the edge of myth. A legend buried even among angels. The Black Flame. The Queen of the Broken Thorns. The One Lucifer Couldn’t Break.

“You…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You were real?”

Her eyes gleamed. “Once.”

Silence bloomed between them.

“I thought… you were just a story,” he said.

“So did the rest of you,” she murmured, bitter smile curling her lips. “Until your God ripped me from the battlefield and buried me here like a mistake.”

Seraphiel approached again, more carefully. She did not retreat this time, but her posture remained tense, every muscle ready to defend what little she had left.

“What is your name?” he asked.

She blinked. It had been so long since anyone had asked.

“…Elaris,” she said at last.

He knelt.

Not out of worship. Not out of submission.

But to see her pain more clearly.