My path led north. Even though Father tore off my wings, magic—the very blood of Heaven—still flowed within me. I pushed off the ground and flew. Not as high and proud as before, but rather gliding over the surface, held up by currents of mana.

  The landscape changed quickly. Behind me remained the crimson hell of volcanoes and ash. Ahead rose a wall of white fog. The air became sharp, like broken glass. Hot land gave way to frozen tundra, and then—to eternal snows.

  In the heart of the icy wasteland, I saw light. It was neither a city nor a fortress. It was a vast bowl in the ice, sheltered from the winds by high walls that had clearly been grown by magic. I descended. And what I saw made me freeze in place.

  Fires burned there. Humans wrapped in hides sat beside elves. Dwarves roasted meat over the flames. They laughed. Someone played a bone flute. And in the center, on a throne of clear ice, sat him—Zariil. He did not look like a monster. He was forming tiny snow figurines in the air, and they danced, entertaining human children.

  I lowered myself onto the snow before him. The humans recoiled in fear, reaching for weapons—they remembered my Light and Father’s wrath. But Zariil rose. His eyes widened.

  “Sister?” His voice was like ice cracking in spring. “Lucida?”

  I stepped toward him, and my legs gave out. Exhaustion and pain hit all at once. He caught me. His hands were icy, but the embrace was firm.

  “Brother…” I breathed.

  I told him everything. About Darkness, who stood up for us. About Father, who created Hell. And about how he tore off my wings and threw me here, granting cursed immortality. Zariil listened in silence. He ran a cold palm over the scars on my back, easing pain with his cold.

  Silence hung around us. The music died. Humans and elves looked at us with respect and fear.

  “Look at them, sister,” Zariil said softly, nodding toward the mortals. “These beings… they are astonishing.”

  He took a handful of snow, and it became an ice flower.

  “They want to live so desperately. When I was cast out, I was broken. I wanted to simply lie down and freeze forever. But then… Ignis came.”

  Zariil’s expression darkened. His face turned hard.

  “When our second brother brought fire down on the world, these people ran north. They were dying from burns, from fear. And I… I couldn’t watch.”

  “You saved them?” I asked.

  “I made ice caves to shelter them from the heat. I raised walls against the blizzards. My cold, which was meant to kill them, became their shield from Ignis’s fire.”

  He smiled, looking at the children by the fire.

  “And you know what? They are more full of life than we are, sister. We lived an eternity in boring Light. And they live a moment—but that moment is brighter than a thousand years.”

  “Have you seen him? Ignis?” I asked. “We have to find him. There are three of us now against Father.”

  Zariil’s smile vanished. His eyes became cold and sharp again.

  “No,” he cut me off. “Your brother is wrapped in vengeance.”

  Zariil stood and paced across the snow.

  “He is mad, sister. He wants to destroy all living things. He hates humans for surviving. But most of all… he hates me.”

  “You? Why?”

  “He believes I’m to blame for his exile. That if I had killed them all with ice at once, Father wouldn’t have had to send him. He thinks I’m a weakling who ‘babysits bugs.’”

  Zariil looked toward the horizon, where the sky was turning crimson from distant volcanoes.

  “If you go to him, he won’t greet you with open arms, Lucida. He will try to burn you.”

  The warmth of a fire the humans had lit nearby and Zariil’s icy air mixed strangely. Suddenly my eyelids grew heavy. My head felt weighty; my thoughts tangled, as if I were sinking into thick syrup. My body stopped obeying me. I swayed.

  “Brother…” I whispered, gripping his cold hand. “Something strange… I feel like lying down. Closing my eyes.”

  I was truly frightened.

  “Am I dying? Did Father change his mind and decide to take my life?”

  Zariil suddenly let out a quiet, hoarse laugh. It wasn’t cruel—more weary.

  “No, Lucida. This isn’t death. It’s Sleep.”

  “Sleep?” I repeated; my tongue barely moved.

  “Here on Earth, mortals need sleep. Their bodies are weak; they can’t hold light constantly. They need a reset.”

  “Sleep…” I echoed. “Have I become that weak? Like them?”

  Zariil sat me down on hides the humans brought.

  “When you sleep, you can see astonishing things that won’t exist in reality,” he said, watching the fire. “It is Father’s horror and his gift. Sleep is one of these creatures’ sins. Sloth.”

  He leaned closer; his icy eyes were serious.

  “Sleep is very alluring, sister. You want to sleep all the time—to flee pain, cold, the memory of Heaven. But remember: sleep is an illusion. It isn’t real. Don’t believe what you see there.”

  I nodded, though I already barely understood anything. Darkness covered me like a soft blanket. I closed my eyes.

  And suddenly the cold was gone. I stood in the White Hall. Choirs sang all around; light poured from everywhere—golden and warm. I shifted my shoulders—and felt weight.

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  Wings.

  They were there. Huge, radiant, full of power. I spread them, and wind lifted me. No pain, no mud, no scars.

  “My daughter,” a voice sounded.

  Father.

  He sat on the throne and smiled. Not the way he had when he tore my flesh—this was loving.

  “You have returned,” he said, reaching out his hand. “All of this was only a test. You passed. Come to me.”

  I stepped toward him. My heart was tearing with happiness. It was all behind me! Hell, cold, humans—just a nightmare. I was home again! I wanted to run to him, fall into his embrace…

  But Zariil’s icy voice rang in my mind:

  “Sleep is an illusion, Lucida. Don’t believe.”

  I stopped. Looked at Father. His smile was perfect. Too perfect. Motionless, like a mask.

  “This isn’t true,” I said in the dream.

  Father’s face suddenly cracked like a shattered mirror.

  I snapped my eyes open, gulping air. Reality crashed down on me with cold and the smell of smoke. I lay on hides in an ice cave. My back throbbed with a dull ache. The wings were gone.

  Zariil sat above me. He wasn’t sleeping. Angels don’t sleep—unless they’ve become too much like humans.

  “You were screaming,” he said calmly. “What did you see?”

  “I saw Home,” I whispered, feeling a tear slide down my cheek. “I saw wings. Father called me back.”

  Zariil nodded sadly.

  “The most dangerous dream. Hope. It shows you what you want more than anything so you won’t want to wake up. Many humans die in their sleep simply because they don’t want to return to this world. You must be stronger, sister.”

  I sat up, wiping tears away. Rage boiled inside me again, pushing out the longing.

  “I am stronger. That was a lie. He won’t call me back. And if he does—I won’t come with a bow. I’ll come with a sword.”

  Zariil looked at me with new respect.

  “You learn quickly. Now you need a weapon. Your magic is strong, but your body is mortal. If Ignis or his demons reach you, magic may not be enough.”

  He extended a hand toward a heap of ice fragments.

  “I’m no smith like the dwarves, and no warrior like Ignis. But I can give you something.”

  Zariil handed me a long, nearly transparent blade. Steam rose from it.

  “Ice Blade,” he said. “It will never melt, even in a volcano’s throat. It freezes blood on contact. I hope you never need it, sister.”

  Then he placed a small, pulsing stone into my hand.

  “And this is a Star Shard. You can pour a furious amount of mana into it and store it there. You can’t draw power directly from Heaven endlessly anymore, so this will be your reserve.”

  “Thank you, brother,” I said, closing my fingers around the cold stone. “I take it you won’t come?”

  “No. My place is here, with those I saved.”

  “I’ll fly to Ignis,” I said firmly. “Maybe he’ll listen.”

  “Good luck,” Zariil answered quietly, but in his eyes I read: Run if you can.

  The flight was long. Cold gave way to heat; the air grew heavy with sulfur. I saw the tallest volcano. Its peak tore at the sky, and the land around it was black, dead. I began to descend when the ground beneath me stirred.

  Magma creatures.

  Ugly, fluid monsters made of lava and hatred crawled out of the cracks. There were hundreds of them.

  “Back!” I shouted.

  I released a wave of Light, amplified by the Star Shard. The blast scattered the creatures, turning them into cooled stone.

  And then… BOOM!

  The volcano’s summit exploded. A pillar of fire punched into the sky, and from it, slowly and majestically, a figure descended.

  I recognized him at once.

  “Your wings, Ignis?” I breathed.

  They were enormous, but not radiant. They were black, like compressed ash, and sparks of smoldering fire ran along the edges of the feathers.

  “Yes, little sister, that’s right,” his voice rumbled like a rockslide.

  He landed on a crag above me, looking down. His gaze dropped to the Ice Blade.

  “So you met with our little brother?” He spat fire. “Coward. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. If he had frozen those vermin right away, Father wouldn’t have had to send me!”

  Ignis turned sharply, peering at my back.

  “And where are your wings, Lucida?”

  Silence fell.

  He stepped closer—and suddenly laughed. The laugh was cruel, barking.

  “Ha-ha-ha! So you became one of them? A wingless hen! Father’s favorite, crawling in the mud!”

  “You, Ignis, are no better than they are!” I shouted, gripping the sword’s hilt. “You’re acting like an offended mortal!”

  “Silence!” he roared.

  His hand snapped forward. What flew at me wasn’t ordinary fire, but Blue Flame—pure, concentrated destructive energy.

  I barely managed to raise a barrier. The удар was terrifying. I was thrown onto the rocks; the barrier cracked, but held. The Star Shard in my hand grew hot.

  “You withstood it?” Ignis tilted his head; his eyes burned with madness. “They are tiny bugs. They spend centuries to repeat a drop of our power. And we—are Gods!”

  He raised his hand for a second strike.

  “Leave, sister. Before I kill you. You disgust me. You stink of them. You stink of weakness.”

  “I’ll leave,” I said, getting up, feeling my knees tremble. “But I’ll come back, Ignis. And I’ll put out your wrath.”

  I shot into the air, pouring all my strength into speed. I fled, feeling the heat of his взгляд at my back.

  I was afraid. For the first time in thousands of years I felt real, animal fear.

  I returned to Zariil’s icy valley after dark. I collapsed onto the snow, breathing hard. Zariil came to meet me. He didn’t need to ask anything. He saw my singed hair and the terror in my eyes.

  I sat by the fire, hugging my knees, trying to calm the trembling after meeting Ignis. And then something inside me tightened. It was a sharp, dragging emptiness in my stomach that made my head spin.

  “Brother…” I whispered. “Where is the Third brother? When will he come?”

  Zariil lifted his head. He didn’t look at the horizon, but straight into the dirty-gray cloud hanging over us.

  “Soon,” he said quietly. “He has already begun.”

  “Brother… why does it hurt so much inside?” I clutched my stomach. “Why do I want… to eat?”

  Zariil sighed sadly. He reached out and pulled from his supplies a piece of dried meat and a handful of frozen berries.

  “You’ve become mortal, Lucida. Your body needs energy. Before, you fed on Light. Now you have to kill other living things to live yourself.”

  I grabbed the food. I had never eaten before. The taste was strange, rough—but when I swallowed the first piece, the pain eased a little.

  “Eat,” Zariil said. “Build your strength. Because because of the Third brother, it will be very hard for you to find even this.”

  He looked out at the world spreading beyond the icy valley.

  “His name is Krav (Hunger). He won’t throw lightning or fire. He will simply take the essence from the earth. Hundreds of thousands will die, sister. And we won’t be able to do anything.”

  And he came.

  There were no explosions, no storms. Just one day the wheat in human fields blackened and crumbled to dust. Water in the rivers sank deep underground. Animals began to drop, turning into skeletons stretched tight with skin.

  The Decade of the Great Womb began.

  I watched the world change. It was ten years of hell—but a very different hell than Ignis’s. In the first year, people prayed. In the second year, they began eating their horses and dogs. In the third year, they began looking at one another not as neighbors, but as meat.

  Cruelty became currency. I saw mothers trade jewelry for a handful of rotten grain. I saw the strong take the last from the weak. People gathered into bands of looters, prowling the wastelands in search of anything they could digest. Elves sealed their forests behind magical barriers. They killed anyone who came close, protecting their last gardens. Demons, accustomed to heat, dried out and went mad, devouring ash.

  But ingenuity… it showed itself too.

  When the earth stopped giving food, creatures began seeking it where they had never dared before.

  The dwarves went even deeper. They found ways to process stone and deep moss into a nourishing paste. It was disgusting, but it saved lives.

  The elves put themselves into magical sleep for months, slowing their heartbeats so they would require less food.

  Humans… Oh, humans were the most inventive. They learned to boil leather to make broth. They learned to catch rats and insects they once crushed with disgust. They learned to preserve anything they could, salting it in tears and sea salt.

  I survived only thanks to Zariil and the Star Shard, which dulled my hunger. Ten years passed. Krav, the Third brother, walked the earth, harvesting a crop of corpses. He thought he would destroy everyone.

  But when the fog scattered…

  They were alive. Dried out. Terrifying. With sunken eyes and jutting ribs. But alive. Humans, dwarves, elves, demons. They survived through their cruelty—killing extra mouths. And through their ingenuity—finding life in death.

  Zariil stood at the edge of a glacier, watching the gaunt figures of humans crawling out of their burrows.

  “Incredible,” I whispered. “They ate everything—even bark off the trees. But they didn’t give up.”

  “Hunger didn’t kill them,” Zariil answered. “It only taught them to endure any pain.”