Gabriel sat in the Hollow Sky, where no angels dared linger.
It was a place between realms—too high for the Host, too low for Heaven. Here, light hung like dust and time didn't move. It was the only place that didn't sing.
He needed the silence now.
Not the silence of Yahweh's halls. Not the sacred stillness of law.
The silence of absence.
He curled his wings tightly around himself, trying to remember how to breathe, even though angels didn't need to.
He remembered watching him fall.
Remembered the exact moment the light tore from Samael's wings.
The gasp that echoed across Heaven like a dying star.
Samael hadn't screamed.
That's what haunted Gabriel the most.
He had accepted it.
As if the fall was a choice he'd already made long before Heaven passed judgment.
Gabriel buried his face in his hands.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to break something.
He wanted to go back in time and pull his brother from the edge before he even took the first step.
But he couldn't.
Because in the end, he had let it happen.
He tried once more to pray—not to Yahweh, not anymore—but to the one who had fallen.
"Samael," he whispered. "If you can hear me… if anything of you still remains…"
No answer.
Only silence.
And that, somehow, hurt more than all the fire in creation.
Far below, in the folds beneath the known stars, Samael awoke.
He floated in the void like a flame caught in ice—his Grace shattered, his body flickering with fractured divinity. The light that had once made him untouchable now cracked against the emptiness.
There were no stars here. No thrones. No brothers.
Just him.
He rose slowly, bare-footed in a realm without ground, and touched his chest.
It no longer pulsed with Yahweh's rhythm.
It beat with something else now.
Something forged in pain, not peace.
He looked at his reflection in the dark—wings scorched, eyes glowing with resentment and clarity—and whispered:
"Gabriel tried."
The words surprised him.
Soft. Honest.
Then they vanished.
He stood straighter.
"No matter," he said aloud.
"Gabriel will see in time. They all will. The plan was flawed. I was never meant to kneel."
He lifted his hand and summoned a flicker of light—not Yahweh's, not Heaven's.
His.
It curled at his fingertips like a serpent made of flame and purpose.
"I am not Samael," he said.
"I am what Heaven feared."
The void trembled.
"I am Lucifer."
And with that name, the realm around him shifted.
Not in rebellion.
In acceptance.
He had become what they declared him to be.
Not fallen.
Redefined.
Far above, Gabriel opened his eyes suddenly, clutching his chest.
For the first time since the fall, he felt a pulse—not of pain, but of presence.
Not Samael.
Not anymore.
He whispered the name like a curse. Like a prayer.
"Lucifer…"
And from somewhere deep beneath the veil of stars…
Something whispered back.