"So what," Sunny repeated out loud, his voice a hollow, high-pitched wheeze. "You... you can't just say so what to that, Cielle! Do you know how many people have Divine Aspects?!"
Cielle looked up, genuinely considering the question. "Statistically? Probably very few. Since I haven't heard of anyone else for now I guess…"
"I can count them on one hand!" Sunny yelled, his Flaw bypassing his usual secrecy in his sheer panic. "And one of them is me!"
Cielle paused. She looked at him, her green eyes widening just a fraction. For the first time since he had met her, she actually looked surprised. She tilted her head, her gaze sweeping over him—from his dark armor to his pacing shadow on the ground.
"You?" she asked softly. "You have a Divine Aspect?"
"Yes!" Sunny hissed, aggressively gesturing to himself. "I am a walking nightmare of potential! And I hide it! Because if the Great Clans find out, they will either enslave me or kill me! You cannot just tell anyone!"
"I didn't tell anyone," Cielle pointed out reasonably. "I told you, well you told me. Because you looked. And because you're you."
That stopped him.
Sunny froze in mid-pace. He looked at her. She wasn't looking at him with awe, or fear, or even any damn expression! She just looked at him like he was Sunny.
"You're you?," Sunny repeated, the panic slowly deflating out of his chest, replaced by a strange, heavy warmth.
"Yes. You are my….. host" she said, carefully putting her ration bar away. "I trust your judgment. If you say we need to hide it, I will hide it. But I don't see why it changes anything between us. We still have to cross the gap to the Iron Hand."
Sunny stared at her for a long, silent moment. She was absolutely, insane. Her worldview was completely broken. But as he looked at her sitting on the edge of the abyss, waiting for his response, he realized something profound.
He didn't have to hide from her. She didn't care about much. She wouldn't care about his divine lineage. To her, power wasn't a tool or a religious calling. It was just a utility.
"You're right," Sunny finally sighed, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. He felt exhausted, but lighter than he had in months. "It doesn't change anything. Just... Please, never say that out loud in front of anyone else. Ever."
"Understood," Cielle nodded. She stood up, brushing the dust off her trousers, and stretched her massive white wings. The feathers caught the dim light, glowing with an ethereal, divine radiance that suddenly made a lot more sense to Sunny. "Are you ready? My essence is back to seventy percent. We can make the next jump."
Sunny nodded, summoning his shadows back to him. He stepped into the dark void cast by her wings. "Let's go. Next stop, the Iron Hand."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Iron Hand was, despite the name, technically still an island. The Chained Isles played fast and loose with definitions.
It had once been a hand, part of some gargantuan iron colossus that had fallen into the tear in reality and lodged there halfway down. The fingers curled inward, huge iron phalanges forming a shallow basin. Wind screamed past above and below, but inside the cupped palm it was only a constant, low howl. Compared to the rest of the gap, it counted as shelter.
Which was why it was a known resting point for the stupid and the desperate. Also known as Awakened.
Cielle's wings beat against the updraft boiling off the Sky Below. Sunny felt the buffet through the thin skin of shadow around him. She banked toward the Iron Hand, cutting across the turbulent air in a long glide, and flared just above the palm. Dust and orange flakes of rust whirled up as she landed lightly on the vast, pitted surface.
Her shadow finally reached the ground and Sunny stepped out of it a moment later, solidifying with a faint whisper of darkness.
They were not alone.
Near the base of the thumb, a ridged spur of metal the height of a house, three Awakened had made camp. A smokeless essence-fire guttered in a shallow hollow they'd chipped into the rust. Bedrolls. Packs. They all looked tired, slouching without a care in the world just seconds ago.
All three were on their feet the instant Cielle touched down.
Sunny stepped naturally in front of her, every line of his body loose but angled just wrong enough to be threatening. He didn't summon the midnight shard, but his stance clearly communicated that if they drew steel, he would end them.
The Awakened took one look at Sunny's pale, unsmiling face, the puppeteer's shroud, and the ominous shadow stretching out from his feet. Then they looked at the literal angel standing behind him, her pristine white wings folded regally against her back.
From behind him, Cielle said nothing. Her wings folded in, feathers rustling, her presence bright and steady against his back.
The tension broke. The leader of the group, a burly man with a scarred cheek, slowly raised his hands and let go of his mace.
"Easy, friend," the man rasped, his voice rough from the wind. "We're just resting. Not looking for trouble."
Sunny held his stare for three seconds to establish dominance, then gave a single, curt nod. "Same. We're just passing through."
He gestured for Cielle to follow him. They moved to the opposite side of the iron palm, far enough away to maintain distance, but close enough to share the relative warmth of the sheltered basin.
He unfolded a small, ugly thing from his pack and tossed it on the ground. It uncurled into the neat geometry of a small structure, fabric and darkness knitting themselves into a low, dark tent. Good for sleeping. Bad for cooking.
The stove, unfortunately, had to exist in the world. So out of necessity, they had to sit outside to cook their physical rations over a small portable stove.
The three Awakened kept casting furtive, curious glances their way. Sunny ignored them, focusing on heating up a tin of terrible synthesized meat. But the burly leader, clearly driven by a mix of boredom and the sheer novelty of Cielle's appearance, finally walked over.
"Name's Kael," the man said, offering a polite nod. "We've been stuck on this rusted hand for two days waiting for the harpies to clear out. Don't see many flyers out here." He looked at Cielle's wings with blatant awe. "That's a hell of an Aspect, miss. Or is it a memory?"
Sunny tense. He hated small talk. He hated other people asking questions about them.
"It's an Echo," Cielle answered, her tone perfectly polite but utterly devoid of intrest
Kael whistled under his breath. "An Echo," he repeated. "Nice pull."
Then his eyes went back to Sunny. "And you? Didn't see you riding any wind. The gap's nasty today. How'd you manage crossing without getting peeled off and dumped into the Below?"
Sunny opened his mouth, prepared to produce something vague about "shadow step" and "short-range travel"
"My Aspect-" he started.
"Oh, it's very simple," Cielle said.
He closed his mouth. Very slowly.
Kael turned to her, interested. "Yeah?"
"I just spread my wings," she said, as if describing the steps to boiling water. "Then He steps into my shadow. He can stay inside me for hours until my essence runs out. Then we land."
Silence dropped like a stone.
The wind still howled around the edges of the Iron Hand, but inside the cupped palm it felt like someone had hit mute on the world.
Kael's brain visibly blue-screened. He looked at Cielle. At Sunny. At the patch of shadow currently very pointedly pretending to be normal at Sunny's feet.
Across the camp, one of Kael's companions, mid-swig from a canteen, chose that exact moment to inhale. Water went straight down the wrong pipe, leaving the man doubling over, coughing and spraying, almost dropping the container.
Sunny experienced full-body system failure.
Heat slammed into his face so fast he half-expected to see his own essence drop. His tongue tripped over six different sentences and produced none of them. Somewhere nearby, Gloomy walked away, sat down by a giant rusted bolt, and put both spectral hands over its nonexistent face.
Kael cleared his throat. Twice. "Right," he said hoarsely. "That's… that's very… close teamwork."
"It is a spatial Aspect " Sunny blurted, his voice breaking. The Flaw, delighted, took over. "I step into the shadow cast by her physical body. It's strictly dimensional transfer. No— no other— interaction."
"Uh-huh," Kael said, with the politeness of a man trying very hard not to picture anything. "Spatial. Sure."
"It is," Sunny insisted.
"Absolutely," Kael said. He patted the air between them in a universal sign for please stop talking. "Hey, man, I respect it. Whatever gets you across the gap, right? Good stamina workout. For both of you."
He was backing away as he said it. By the end of the sentence he was practically facing the other direction.
"I hate this place," Sunny muttered to nobody.
Kael made it back to his camp in record time. The three of them bent together, heads close, whispering frantically. One of them risked a glance over. He was caught by Sunny's glare. He Looked away so fast he nearly sprained his neck.
Cielle watched them go, frowning slightly. "Why did he leave," she asked. "Was the explanation unclear."
Sunny turned his head very slowly to look at her.
"You," he said, voice shaking with the effort of keeping it contained, "have a Divine Aspect of Social Destruction."
She blinked. "Is that a thing?"
"It is now."
"I described it exactly," she said. "You step into the shadows, then you remain there, partially disassembled, until-"
"Stop," he said. "Stop helping."
She thought about it. "Is 'inside me' not specific enough," she asked.
He made a strangled noise. "Do not say that on any island ever again."
"Even if they ask?"
"If they ask," he said, "you say 'spatial movement' and then stop speaking."
She nodded, filing it next to toaster and don't put oil in boiling water. "Spatial movement," she repeated. "Okay."
The tin on the stove hissed ominously. A bit of meat popped and scorched.
"It's burning," she observed.
"Let it," Sunny said weakly. "If anything should burn in this world, it's my reputation."
She watched him for a moment longer with that intent, an unblinking stare. Then, very deliberately, she reached over, took the little metal fork, and stirred the meat so it wouldn't char.
"I like it," she said.
"The meat?" he asked, still dazed.
"The way you climb into my shadow," she said, simply. "It feels… less alone."
His heart missed a step, then another.
He looked away fast, back at the smoking tin, ears flaming. "Eat your ration," he muttered. "Before it becomes another crime."
"Yes, host," she said mildly.
Across the palm, three Awakened tried very hard not to listen to any of it and failed completely.