Lute stood alone in the quiet hall outside the High Seraphim chambers, a pale sliver of Heaven’s light stretching across the polished floor like a blade meant for someone else. The air felt too clean. Too soft. It used to taste like purpose—steel, certainty, righteous fire—but now it only lingered in her lungs like the aftershock of a scream she refused to give voice to.

She stood perfectly still, because stillness was the one thing she had left. If she moved, the world might tilt again, and she’d spent too many days bracing for a fall that never quite came. Her hand hovered near the place where her weapon would rest during an Extermination, fingers twitching with muscle memory. There was no mission. No burn of descent. No blood to spill in Adam’s name. There was only the echo of orders that were not hers—and a throne she would never sit beside again.

Abel’s command. Abel’s voice. Abel’s calm authority sliding into the space Adam once filled like it had always belonged there.

It burned. Not like fire—Heaven’s fire had purpose. This pain was shapeless, a wound without a neat edge. Abel wasn’t cruel. Abel wasn’t even wrong. Abel was simply… not Adam.

And Lute had simply failed.

Her jaw tightened at the memory. The last mission had been hers to oversee. Hers to finish. She’d been the one who insisted they could push further, strike harder, crush Hell’s growing bravado before it sprouted teeth. She’d been the one who believed that vengeance could be shaped into something clean if she held it tightly enough.

Instead, she had watched the plan crumble, watched Hell push back with uncharacteristic coordination, watched Abel restructure the retreat with the same deliberate precision Adam used to wield. Her chest tightened with a familiar ache. Each order Abel gave landed like a feather and a hammer—gentle, decisive, irrefutable.

Sera had thanked Abel.

Emily had praised Abel.

None of them had looked at Lute for more than a moment.

She exhaled sharply, wings flicking in an irritated shiver. The motion stirred the air, disturbed the beam of light, fractured it. Good. Let it break. She felt broken enough for both of them.

Adam’s voice—her Adam, the one that only lived behind her eyes—whispered at the edges of her mind, a ghost made of memory and need.

You would have done it better.

You only needed one more chance.

They should have listened to you.

Lute clenched her teeth until the echoes faded. She hated how easily they slipped in these days, how quickly they latched onto the guilt coiled beneath her ribs. She knew they weren’t real. Knew it the way she knew her own wingspan—instinctively, undeniably. But knowing didn’t stop the phantom warmth at her shoulder, the imaginary glance of approval she craved like breath.

She lifted her head, forcing her spine straight, forcing her thoughts into a cage with iron bars and godly locks. She could not shatter here. Not where the walls still remembered Adam’s footsteps.

Heaven was not weak. *She was not weak.(

Even if the cracks ran deeper than she cared to admit.

Footsteps sounded in the distance—someone approaching the corridor. Lute drew in a steady breath, sculpting her expression back into cold precision. Whatever came next, she would face it standing tall.

If she could no longer be the blade leading the charge, then she would be the shadow beside it. And if Abel held the reins now… then she would learn how to work within that leash without choking on it.

Still, something in her posture shifted—the slightest quiver of tension, a faint scorch of frustration tucked carefully behind her eyes. The moment was fragile enough that anyone stepping into it could catch the scent of raw temper and rawer grief lingering in the air.

Heavenly light flickered above her. Lute didn’t look up.

She was waiting. For a distraction. For a fight. For anything that let her feel like she wasn’t fading behind someone else’s command.