Fallen wings

Belial hid behind the gnarled trunk of a dying tree, its bark slick with moss and decay. His chest heaved, not from exhaustion but something far deeper—something primal. His whole body shuddered as though the marrow in his bones had turned to water. He clenched his jaw, willing himself to stay still, to not make a sound. Yet the tremble in his limbs betrayed him.

He had never felt this before.

It wasn't fear in the traditional sense. It was terror. The kind that strips you down to instinct. The kind prey must feel when they know the predator has already found them, when the air itself begins to taste like blood and despair.

Belial pressed his back against the coarse tree bark, each breath a struggle to silence. Was this it? Was this what it meant to be prey? His wings twitched slightly, low and limp, dragging like broken banners in the underbrush.

He forced a deep breath into his lungs, letting it out slowly. He needed clarity. A plan. A way to outmaneuver that freak of nature. The witness was blind, but its senses were inhuman. He could use that. Maybe he could throw a rock, make a sound, lead it off in the wrong direction. Maybe—

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

Something was behind him.

No. Not something.

Wings.

His wings.

They hadn't vanished. He'd forgotten. He'd been careless. In his panic, in his rush to hide, he'd left them manifested. He cursed himself silently as his heart pounded against his ribs like a war drum. He focused, trying to dissolve them into ether—but it was too late.

He didn't even hear it approach.

Hands, cold and slick like the flesh of the dead, gripped the bony bases of his wings. Long, slender fingers coiled with impossible strength, digging into the leathered sinew where wing met flesh. Before Belial could scream, before he could twist or lash out with his sword, he was yanked backwards. The full weight of his body slammed into the tree, bark biting into his spine. The wings, pinned and stretched behind him like an insect crucified, became the fulcrum.

The creature stood there in silence, its breath a wet rasp just beside his ear. Though blind, it had found him. The Blind Witness. It needed no eyes.

Belial struggled, panic overwhelming every thought. His feet kicked at the ground, trying to brace. He could feel its talon-like fingers tightening, feel each joint in his wing-bones groaning under pressure. The tree creaked behind him as the creature leaned in, pressing him tighter, using the solid trunk as leverage.

Then came the pain.

Not sharp like a blade.

Not fast like a gunshot.

But slow.

Deliberate.

Tendons stretched to their limit. Ligaments peeled from bone. It was as if the monster was savoring it. The sound alone made his stomach churn—a wet, sickening rip, followed by the crunch of cartilage grinding against bark. His jaw dropped open but no scream came, just a dry, cracked gasp as agony exploded through his spine.

The left wing tore first.

The flesh around the socket gave with a wet pop, followed by a stringy slurp as the muscles detached. Blood gushed in pulses, spraying in arcs across the tree, onto the creature, onto Belial's own chest. His vision swam with black dots. The smell was metallic, sharp, a coppery fog that coated the back of his throat.

Before he could fall, before he could even begin to register the loss, the second wing was wrenched upward—twisted cruelly like a branch snapped off a tree.

A scream tore from his lips at last, ragged and raw, echoing through the woods like an animal being slaughtered. The wing detached with more resistance, and the creature growled in frustration, its fingers digging deeper until they pierced clean through muscle. With one final tug, it wrenched it free, a mass of torn leather, exposed bone, and twitching nerves.

Belial collapsed, blood cascading down his back in steaming rivulets, pooling around his knees. The stumps where his wings once were throbbed with white-hot agony, muscles spasming uncontrollably. Every nerve in his body was screaming.

He looked up, dazed, through the shadows of the forest.

The Blind Witness held both wings in its hands like trophies. It cocked its head slightly, listening to the sound of Belial choking on his own breath.

It didn't gloat. It didn't roar.

It simply turned its face toward him, its eyeless sockets moist and cavernous, as if relishing the vibrations of his pain it licked his blood as if savoring the taste...

And then it dropped the wings.

With a sickening splat, they hit the dirt, lifeless and ruined.

Belial reached for his sword...but his hand didn't obey.

The forest around him darkened.

The last thing he felt before slipping into unconsciousness was the hot breath of the creature close to his ear again.

A wet, slithering sound filled his ears. Belial barely registered movement before he was hoisted into the air, the talons of the monster clamped around his throat like an iron vice. His body hung limp, blood still cascading down his back from the savaged stumps where his wings had once been. His feet dangled inches from the ground, twitching.

The Blind Witness tilted its malformed head, its body towering and inhuman. From beneath its flayed face, a long tongue slithered out—black, forked, and glistening. It traced up Belial's cheek, slow and deliberate, tasting the sweat and blood, the fear. The slick muscle left a trail that burned, as if venom danced on his flesh.

That was when his eyes snapped open.

A flash of fury lit up his gaze.

He didn't hesitate.

With one explosive motion, Belial planted his boot against the monster's chest, gritting his teeth through the agony that exploded up his spine. Using the creature's own towering frame as a springboard, he pushed off with everything he had. His body twisted midair, performing a backflip, the motion clean but tainted by the fresh scream of torn nerves in his back.

He landed hard on his knees and rolled to his side, his breath catching, the pain thunderous. The stumps where his wings once were pulsed with hot, searing torment, but he willed the ether within him to slow the bleeding. Not heal. Just enough to keep him conscious.

The pain would be his tether.

His anchor.

My wings… he thought bitterly, blood still leaking down his ribs, soaking into his waist. The same wings father taught me to fly with. To glide over valleys, to strike from the skies…

He bit down, hard, as if he could crush the memory between his teeth.

There was no time for grief.

The monster turned.

So did Belial.

They charged.

It howled, a gurgled, inhuman bellow that rattled the trees and shook the leaves from their branches. Its massive limbs moved in jagged, spider-like strides, faster than anything that size had a right to be. The wind howled between them as they closed the gap.

Belial slid low, narrowly avoiding a scything arm that tore bark from trees like paper. His hand grasped the familiar hilt of his blade as he skidded past—cold steel, humming faintly with residual ether.

The second swing came, wide and deadly.

Belial dropped under it, feeling the wind sheer over his scalp.

Then he moved.

In an instant, he surged into a different stance, one hand steadying the blade's spine, his feet positioned just so, weight distributed with pinpoint precision. It was a technique buried in silence…

Until now.

The world seemed to hush around him. The distant monsters fell silent. The wind died. The forest seemed to darken.

Then he vanished.

A shroud of black mist, thin as smoke, curled around his body and consumed it whole.

The creature paused, confused. It sniffed the air. Heard no footfall. Felt no vibration. It opened its jaws, letting loose a screech that echoed like the scraping of iron against bone. It swung its limbs in wide arcs, claws slicing through the fog.

Nothing.

Then a single whisper of air. Behind it.

The blade was already halfway through its chest.

Belial reappeared not with a roar but with stillness, his sword emerging from the other side of the creature's abdomen, cutting skin with ghostly ease. The motion was one of grace, not strength. A dancer's motion.

Fluid.

Inevitable.

He moved through the creature, not around it. Step by step. Strike by strike. He passed through its massive body like a ghost slipping through walls, his sword singing softly with each pass. A dozen cuts. No noise.

No flash.

Only the black mist of death curling behind him.

The creature turned slowly. It had no idea it was already dead.

Belial emerged from the fog five steps behind it, sword at his side, dripping black ichor.

The monster raised its arms, prepared to lunge again—but its limbs failed. One by one, its joints buckled. Cuts bloomed like flowers across its body. Its legs gave out, then its back split open. Chunks of flesh sloughed off its body in wet sheets.

Belial whispered the name of the technique as if he was a ghost himself.

Death Dance: Silent Passing.