Hyaline has seemed quieter since Gale left, though not exactly what she would describe as peaceful. It was more of a silent tension, like the kind that exists waiting between a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. It made her uneasy, as if the storm itself was brewing beneath her skin, only she couldn’t pinpoint the reasoning for it. Perhaps because she has seen this far too many times to know that the cursed stallion was not finished, that he would likely not be content with just Tephra, but because she did not know him well enough she had no way of predicting what his retaliation might be.

Restless in a way that she is unaccustomed to, she steals away from Hyaline, but not before telling Atrox that she intended to go to the river. Whether or not that was where she would end up she was unsure since she had a way of deviating from her intended plans, but something about the roar of rapids rushing over rock seemed better than this incessant buzzing happening in her head.

She is away from the actual river when Gale appears suddenly in front of her, with a smile on his face that is far too pleased and altogether unnerving. “Gale,” her usual friendly tone is somewhat clipped off by the nerves that he had rattled when he startled her, but she smooths it over with a slight smile. “Same could be said for you,” she comments idly, doing her best to hide the suspicion that shadowed her dark eyes, her glittering wings held close to her sides.

He is after something, but she is not sure what.

She feels it when he is suddenly pressing into her space, close enough to smell the way Tephra—a scent she is all too familiar with, her home for so many years before she moved to Hyaline—clings to him. More than that though there is the strange energy that radiates from him, a thing her empathy is trying to grasp at but can’t seem to find anything tangible enough to hold onto. She has been stared at before, and is used to being studied; she did not consider herself to be anything remarkable, but even Carnage has admitted to her that he could not always predict her.

The way Gale looks at her though is unlike anything she has experienced.
He looks at her much in the way predator analyzes its prey, yet this is nothing like the cat-and-mouse game she has grown accustomed to playing over the years.

What a strange thing, to again realize that she would rather endure Carnage's anger a hundred times over than to face a devil she doesn't know.

By the time he has fully shifted she is no longer trying to pretend she is not on edge, her eyes catching the familiar tail that she recognized from Ripley and her offspring. She backs away from him, her steps slow and deliberate, and the golden glow from her halo catches the spark of fear that she struggles to keep from igniting in her eyes. “What do you want?” the question might have been blunt coming from anyone besides her, might have grown sharp with the fear that is coiling in her chest, but she has never known how to be anything other than soft. Her dark eyes try to hold his and tentatively she pushes forward a sense of calm, though she is sure the cursed creature before her either will not feel it or will lash out against it.

“My power?” she repeats, confusion on her face. She has never considered herself powerful. Though she could do far more now than she ever has been able to do, she weighs herself against those like Carnage, or even Eight and Anaxarete, and knows that she is weak by comparison. She had nothing that would allow her to burn down lands, nothing that could possibly invoke fear into anyone else. That, to her, is power — fear. The kind of things that could make another quiver and bend, and she is only light and stardust.

She thinks there is a misunderstanding, that Gale must be equating her being an archangel to being close to the magic Carnage possesses. But she is nothing like him, has nothing about her that is worth taking. And besides, if he really wanted it so badly, he could simply have it. She knew, undoubtedly, that she is not worthy of being an angel. If he wanted her powers, he could have them.

“I don’t really think you want it—” she starts to protest, but the words grow stuck in her throat, frozen as he spears her chest.

The blood that blooms across her skin is bright, as it always is when set against that porcelain white, glistening beneath her golden glow. Instinctively she tries to pull back, tries to teleport herself away from him but all she can manage is a burst of blinding light. But even that stutters and flickers, fading as fast as the blood that spills from her chest.

She sinks to the ground into a pool of blood and stardust, and she is gone long before her body can even try to heal the gaping wound left on her chest.

She is familiar with dying, but it’s always different each time.

There is relief at first, when the black settles in and the pain fades. The fear ebbs away, and instead of fighting she sinks into the dark, lets it consume her. She knows what comes next, knows that she will wake up on the shores of the afterlife and thinks she will be able to make her way back to the living. There is no explanation for that confidence—only a bone-deep sense that she possesses the power to resurrect herself. That she will be able to make her way back, as she has before.

So she waits for the afterlife.
She waits for the dark to disappear and for those familiar shores to show themselves, for the strange sounds she associates with there, and the peculiar sense of peace that it brings.

Only, there is nothing.
The dark does not lift but instead seems to grow in weight, expanding and stretching infinitely. There are no sounds, only a silence that builds in her head, crawls inside her bones and sits there like an anchor. A ghost of an emotion—panic—begins to swell, because this is dark unlike any she has ever known. It is not like being blind and surrendering herself to her other senses, because there is nothing for her other senses to find—no sounds, no smells, nothing to touch or feel.

“Gail?” she tries, hopeful that maybe she is caught in the crossfire of a game between the death priestess and Carnage, because that is at least a game she knows how to play. But the dark swallows her voice in such a way that she may as well have not spoken at all. It echoes inside of her mind, and she tries again. And again. She calls for Atrox, for Firion, and out of sheer desperation even Carnage, but every time her voice is thrown back to her, never reaching the dark that surrounds her.

She is trapped in this black, soundless void, untethered and adrift, and no heart to guide her back.