It was the evening, and the sun had not for the longest of times been up; the cold was relentless. A delicate layer of snow covered the streets—some parts lay smooth and untouched, like a blanket of cotton, while others were disturbed by footprints larger than his or marred by unsightly traces. Around the corner, there must have been a bar. He began his walk through the night. He knew where he was, but not where exactly. Although the world around him seemed familiar, there were many details he didn’t recognize so well. It was a part of town he didn’t remember. If this were a memory, then it had to be one that he had locked deep within his mind, never to be remembered clearly; it was a memory upon which much of him had been built. Pain ran through his body; each step he took was a form of torment. His legs shook, his whole small, fragile body shook, and hunger gripped him from within at times, reminding him of how much he needed to eat in a sharp form of pain that stabbed his stomach. Yet somehow, he knew that this wasn’t the worst form of hunger he had experienced.

  What if he were to just lay down? Huddle himself against the soft snow as his bedding. An open grave as his bed; he could stare at the stars and let warmth conquer him from within. Perhaps there would be tears that would run down his cheeks. The stars… aren’t they just so beautiful? Death, it would be. Tears frozen to his cheeks as streaks.

  What is the point of living if you have to try so hard just to have dinner?

  The houses got larger, the doors more grand. There were no people here—none to inhabit the cold streets. They were more familiar. This was a place he had been to. Many times, even. He came to a halt. A vision of a door sparked a memory of old.

  Made out of dark oak. It and the building were so imposing compared to his small, malnourished frame. With the last of his strength, he tried knocking on the door. A gentle knock, almost nothing more than a silenced thump, could be heard as he collapsed against it. He wanted to drift away. To be lulled by the darkness. If he were to close his eyes, would it still be so cold? Would warmth then take over his body? Could peace exist for a nameless child?

  Against the door, he waited. The cold encroached as the wind came from the sea and pushed against him; it pushed against the door, and it whistled as it passed him; the buildings, through the city, it went; it brought with it the cold and nothing else. It remained the only sound on this street.

  None came to open the door for him. None came to save him.

  “Mother?” A frail whisper parted his lips.

  “Mother?” He called for a savior.

  “Mother!” He roared with what felt like the remainder of his strength.

  The door remained shut, the streets cold, and the only sound that followed was the wind that whistled through the city once more.

  Kanrel breathed out; a long cloud of vapor followed. He locked his eyes on the door and tried forming a code. If the door would not open for him, then he would open it himself. If the door would stand in his way, then he would simply destroy it, tearing it from its hinges and tearing its wood into sawdust. If no one was there to save him, he would just save himself. But what he most wanted was to feel warm again. Fire. He wished to burn this damned door with the warmest fire that he could muster. It would practically melt before his eyes.

  He envisioned the code and released it.

  Nothing happened.

  He scoffed as disappointment placed itself into his mind. Even then, he tried again. He envisioned the very process of the fire forming before him; he imagined how it would burn brightly, how it would eat away the dark oak, how it would release heat; everything; he imagined everything that he could. This code, too, he released. But nothing happened.

  Tears found their way into his eyes. Why can’t the world do what he wanted it to do—just this once? He wanted to wail; he felt the urge to scream and blame the very existence of the world for all the troubles that he had had to deal with thus far… He wanted to huddle himself on a bed of snow and cry himself to sleep, from which he would never awake.

  But he didn’t. He only gritted his teeth; he bit his tongue and ignored the tears that wanted to freeze on his cheeks; he ignored the screams and the anger that wanted to burst from his chest and his throat; that wanted to part his lips and replace the sound of the wind as the only sound that traversed the streets of this cold city.

  Instead of everything else that he could do. With the help of the door, he began lifting himself up. He reached for the handle of the door, barely reaching it; he pulled down, hoping that just this one time, the world wouldn’t be against him. Let it not be locked, he prayed, and pulled down.

  A click was heard. It echoed in the street. Kanrel swallowed. He pulled the door toward himself; the door opened with a creak that followed the click, and through the opened door, warmth enticed him, calling him to enter. But his legs gave way; the door almost closed on itself, but Kanrel pushed through the doorway, he pushed into the house, and he crawled onto the wooden floor as the warmth at last embraced him from all around. At least there was such a thing to welcome him, even if the cold still gnawed him from the inside…

  The door slammed shut behind him as if it had an existence of its own. But it must have been just the wind… just the wind.

  But now he lay on the floor, in complete silence, only hearing his own breath, as it had taken so much from him to achieve even this. He tried to get up, but his legs would not do as he wanted them to do. All he had now were his hands, so he began crawling with just the help of his cold hands.

  It took a gargantuan effort to reach just the halfway point of the first corridor of his childhood home. Past the stairway that would lead to the second floor and his own room. But he would never be able to get up those stairs, so there was only one place where there could ever be anyone to help him. He crawled toward a doorway, one that had no door, that would take him to a dining room, where he imagined that there would be a large table with multiple chairs; he imagined that on top of that table, there would be so many things that he would be able to eat; perhaps there he would see his mother, or Dal, or even Jan—anyone at all.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  But as he pushed past the doorway, another view unveiled itself before him…

  A dark, bleak vision that filled him with such incredible dread. He could barely breathe as he saw what there was at the end of this room, nay, at the end of this place most holy.

  At the end of this massive cathedral, there was an altar near which the highest-ranking priest would hold their sermon; from their lips, parting words of the ancient lies of the Angels. On the wall that was at the end, there was a painting. It depicted the first Herald kneeling before an angel that had granted her wisdom and the very first words of the Book of the Heralds.

  You could not see her face. Just the clothes she wore. But the angel and its grotesque face, its magnificence, could be seen by all. The angel wore a gilded, scaly armor, and its wings were spread to their fullest. The Angel, their god, looked down upon him. Past the Herald, who knelt before it, at the child that had crawled at its doorway. In its eyes, Kanrel was nothing, yet, even then, it had given humanity everything… or so it was claimed.

  Kanrel shivered as he looked around at the familiar sight that transpired around him. The columns that held the high ceiling up were made to look like angels, their faces grotesque, each one holding a different weapon against their chest. They were horrible monsters that had obtained godhood through the sacrifice of so many of their own kind. They all looked down at him as he began crawling forth.

  Above him, there was a grand arched ceiling, which was adorned with elaborate paintings of the angels, all of them more horrid than the others. Around him, there were no chairs, no benches, and below him there was no carpet to soften the floor—it was plain and cold. It was empty. Only the painting mattered.

  He crawled forth as if in a trance. As if it made sense to do so. As if it had been his destination since the very beginning of his journey. Within the painting, he would find his true home.

  Each meter crawled felt like an eternity as the Angels looked down at him in great amusement, mocking the pitiful creature that could not find the strength to even stand up. But even then, Kanrel was determined. He wanted to reach the painting. He wanted to rip it from its place; he wanted there to be justice; he wanted to remove those who had claimed their place there through means most unjust.

  The angel depicted in the painting shouldn’t be allowed to be their god. He was a fool who wished that he could kill god.

  But when he went past the altar, when he reached the painting, he couldn’t do anything. The painting remained where it was. The angel still looked down on him. It still thought of him as nothing. The demon they revered as a god held a smile on its face, a maw of sharp teeth, which meant nothing more than an invitation to defy it. To defy them. For it knew that the puny creatures known as humans would not be here without it or them; the Darshi would’ve perished long ago if it weren’t for the Angels.

  And this puny human at its feet could not muster the strength or the magic to pull that angel down. He could not deface this angel that had already been desecrated in his mind.

  Sudden steps stopped his thoughts; they echoed from behind him. Someone else had taken entrance; someone else had found their way here. He turned around with a glimmer of hope set in his mind, only for it to perish as a masked figure walked to him.

  The figure was robed in the darkness that flowed around it in irregular motions. The mask that hid their face was white and smooth; it had the normal shapes of a human face, but no holes for the eyes, the nose, or even the mouth. The figure stopped right next to him, but they looked not at him but at the angel that looked down on them both.

  Kanrel wanted to say something, anything, but he found no words; he couldn’t speak. He felt like he had no mouth to scream with.

  The figure paid no attention to the puny human at their feet; instead, they lifted their left hand, veiled by the shadows, and pointed it at the painting. Nothing seemed to happen. The shadows just danced in senseless motions. Then the movement stopped. The shadows stilled. All motions refused to exist for just a moment. Then it surged. It quickened. The shadows danced and danced; they boiled and smoldered, a chorus of torment, of wails, filled the cathedral, and they echoed in a grand cascade until reaching a climax as the shadows gathered together and torrented against the painting, splashing against it as if it were water, but it uncontrollably shivered as it did so, as if it were sand sieved in search of gold. The darkness covered the painting's surface; it shivered and twisted; it ripped apart—not the whole painting but parts of it. The picture of the angel, its grin was removed; it was destroyed by the shadows. Only the Herald remained; only she was left untouched by their hatred; only she was intact. But even that, the shadows covered; only she was veiled without harm done to her. And from her, a black surface emerged. From her, stairs formed to allow entrance within the painting. To allow entrance for what Kanrel claimed for a moment to be his true home.

  The masked figure stood still; the shadows had left them. Now one could see their withered body, how it stood tall and somehow beautiful for a moment, before it began to crumble. In dust, it flowed down as if it were stuck in an hourglass. At last, the figure looked at Kanrel, the mask falling from its face, and for a moment, he could see her face.

  It was her. She was the prostitute who had helped Ignar with patricide. The woman who told Ignar Kalla’s room number. The woman, who had held him as he had cried for the deed that he had committed. The woman, who had become his lover… He had loved her. Kanrel—no—Ignar had loved her.

  And now, she was just dust on a cold floor.

  Kanrel crawled to what was left of her as tears burned in his eyes. He grasped at the pile of dust, hoping for a moment that she might still exist. But the dust ran through his fingers. She was just dust, now.

  It flared within him. He found something or someone to blame for it. He mustered his anger and found the reason for her demise, yet no memory to confirm it… He had seen so many nightmares of something like this: of ash, of death, of causes for the very existence of the Veil… It could only be because of Kalma… and it could only be because of the fools, the Nine Magi, who had thought that they could kill a god…

  Kanrel gritted his teeth; he let these angry tears roll down his cheeks. They would not freeze there because of the cold, for it did not exist in this place and time, but they would remain there, frozen in memories that would outlast most things. This dust was all that they would become in the end; yet, this ash, this pile of ash, felt so wrong to witness in this state, for it had formed and become what it was only because of the crimes that they had committed against her. Oh, how he had loved her.

  His gaze then, at last, witnessed the dark entrance that had unveiled itself. The painting was no more; the angel was no longer there to taunt him or to look down on him. Instead, before him opened the very thing that he had hated and regretted the most through these many years of constant suffering that he had been forced to live through. The oblivion before him, this, this inexistence, was the reason why he had missed so much. It was the reason why he felt so hollow. It was the reason why everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. And even when it had claimed to be nothing, the very existence of nothing, it still was something, and what that something was had now formed itself in his mind as a feeling that he and most priests felt toward that experience that they had suffered through during the Ritual and after it. The Fall was not a moment of enlightenment; it was a moment of torture that had refused to end since they had stepped past that threshold.

  For if there is a fall, isn’t there supposed to be a rise? And if one were to climb a mountain and fall, they would not remain in an endless fall; they would die or arise again to try to reach its summit, for they know not of anything else than just this. In a claimed-to-be endless river, where one has no clue where and if there is an end, a man will swim toward this unknown destination, trying his best to not drown, to not let the stream push him under the surface; of course, he would try on and on; he would try until the very end. But if he were to be pushed beneath the waves, he would not drown forever and thus suffer for all eternity. He would just drown and embrace inexistence. Not another form of suffering that life is. Death is the end, after all. And Kanrel now believed—no—he hoped and prayed to the universe and even the gods that had fallen from his grace that there might not be anything at all when he would pass; for even if existence was what he desired most, he didn’t wish to exist in a world where one could never appreciate the very things that make life worth living.

  So, of course, he didn’t want to enter this so-called true home of his. He didn’t want to find himself on those damned stairs again. He didn’t wish to jump down into the awaiting abyss… He wouldn't be able to bear it if the fall continued.

  But what else was there?

  He scoffed, mocking his own existence. His own thoughts; his own doubts. Indeed, what else was there? Where else would he go? None of this was real, even when it seemed to be. Even when it felt so real. Even when he had clearly gone insane. Either way, that portal called for him. Either way, he crawled toward it. Either way, he pulled himself into this mirror. Into this reflection of his own mistakes; into his own torment.

  He pulled himself past the threshold…