The_Sensei

1,000 years ago, the sky fell and with it came gods made of stars, who reshaped Earth into fractured kingdoms suspended in the sky, connected by bridges of light. Humanity survived… but only those chosen to live above. The rest were left in the Ashlands, below the clouds, forgotten.

Now, the sky is falling again.

And Azrael, a nobody from the Ashlands just woke up in the body of a man who killed a sky god.

He has his name. His power. His memories. And his enemies.

Problem is:

Azrael doesnt remember killing the god. Not even remember dying.
All he knows is that the sky god’s armor is fusing to his bones, and the bridges of light are starting to collapse.

THE SKY FELL TWICE

Ash still clung to the sky it drifted like snow above the ruins of Aetherhold, catching moonlight that hadn't shifted in centuries. Beneath it, the girl called Cinder crouched over a broken slab of celestial marble, her finger etching lines into the soot with the deliberation of a priest.

Each symbol burned faint gold. Not visibly. Not enough for any mortal eye. But the ground knew. The wind, too. The very bones of the world whispered and twisted with each stroke.

She was being watched and not just by the gods. Far above, in the sanctuary of duskstone and mirrors, Ysera staggered back from the pool of ice.

The Thirteenth had vanished but not from her memory. The girl's image still clung to the frozen surface. Her movements, her runes, her fire.

Ysera gripped the edge of the scrying basin, blood still dripping from her cut palms, and turned to the apprentice standing behind her. "We must alter the timeline," she said. "The echoes are converging too quickly. Azrael was meant to wake slowly. Not like this."

The apprentice looked stricken. "The timelines are converging?"

Ysera nodded. "And the girl… she is the breach."

"She's a living cipher. The Thirteenth's influence might already be inside her."

The circle blazed for an instant, then vanished, absorbed into the ash.Her breath caught. Something had changed. The Spine,the massive fossilized serpent wrapped around the old cathedralshivered.

One scale moved,just slightly. But it moved.

A whisper curled in the wind. Not words. Not yet. But it spoke to something deep in her bones. Something older than speech.

Her hand drifted toward her satchel, inside, a shard of skyglass pulsed.

She had found it near the mouth of the Broken Horizon two winters ago, embedded in the ribcage of a dead Reaper. The others in her ragged camp said it was cursed, that it hummed when the moon bled. They were right.Tonight, it screamed whe touched it visions exploded.

A man, face obscured by light, weeping as he fell from a fractured sky. A twin drowned in starlight.

A sword that whispered names it should not know and a boy.

Wings of obsidian. A heart split between lives.He looked at her and whispered her true name.Then the vision shattered. Cinder gasped and fell back, coughing ash.

The Spine groaned again. A scale blinked. No mistake this time.

Kai awoke screaming.Not from a dream but from a memory that wasn't his.

He stumbled from the bed, breathing hard, wings flickering in and out of existence, half-formed and thrumming with heat.

The floor of the attic room glowed faintly beneath him runes he hadn't drawn, etched by some unseen force. They pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.His name ,Azrael ! hung in the air like smoke. He touched the nearest rune. The world blinked.

He saw her. A girl in ash. A circle of fire. A whisper with bones.

But the connection had been made.He could feel her. Cinder. Somehow, impossibly… he knew she was real.

In the temple, Ysera collapsed. The ice in the pool melted instantly. Her apprentice rushed to her side. "Mistress!"

"The tether," Ysera gasped. "He found her. Too soon. Far too soon."

"What happens now?"Ysera looked to the sky. And for the first time in six centuries… the moon moved.

And far below, where shadows slept beneath broken time, the Revenant stirred.

CHAPTER 7: CINDERS& SIGNS