For All the Skies Between Us
She was not born an angel.
She was made into one.
The church called it salvation, though she and the others knew better. They were experiments-children forced to carry the blood of something greater, something divine or perhaps monstrous. The priests never revealed whose blood it was, only that it belonged to a "god." She never saw that god, never even knew its name. But she felt it in her veins every day-burning, reshaping, devouring what was once human inside her.
From the ritual came her wings: vast and terrible, twelve feet of shadowed feathers stretching behind her, with smaller, flame-lined wings sprouting at her feet. With them, she flew faster than arrows and struck harder than any sword. Fire itself bent to her will, rising and falling with her breath, a weapon she alone commanded.
For years she fought in the war of men. Cities burned, armies fell, and still the blood in her veins demanded more. But no power, not even hers, could shield her from loss. Three of her companions-those who had shared the same cursed experiment-were gone, their bodies left behind on the battlefield. She buried them in ash and flame, and with that, she could fight no longer.
She turned her back on the church, on the endless slaughter, and wandered into lands untouched by war. For a brief moment, she believed she could escape the cycle. Yet fate was not so kind.
The world around her shifted-time, space, reality itself bending. In an instant, the smoke and ruins of men's wars were gone, replaced by a land of jagged mountains, black forests, and skies haunted by creatures she had never seen. Here, the battles were not waged between kings and soldiers, but against things far more primal. Monsters.
And though she had left the battlefield behind, destiny had not left her.
