The sky darkened and a red hue overtook the horizon, as it always did when demons were near. The heavens cried tears of blood when such evil descended upon the rare, innocent souls that drifted on angelic winds.

Altera imagined there should have been screams or cries, but the aftermath came upon her in its crushing silence. Only her heart thundered in her ears, her blood rushing with fear that this time, the demons would not be satisfied with what they’d found in the clouds. There’d been a time when they’d hungered for more. She’d tried so hard to block out the memories. But the sour fear that tinged on her tongue promised that all her terror could be relived. She clutched at her husband’s hand as hard as she could and reminded herself that they were both here, alive, and they’d make it through this.

A golden orb dotted the sky, proof that this wasn’t an event of her imagination. Her grip impossibly tightened on her husband who stood rigid as they stared together at the descending piece of heaven. Uruk hadn’t known true terror. He’d only seen the result of it in her eyes, a void of loss that would always be a part of her soul.

But this child that drifted through the sky had survived what her sisters had not. Its mystical warmth still radiated, somehow having surpassed so many demons whispering across the horizon.

Altera didn’t dare look beyond the orb. Bat-like wings still cast shadows over ruby clouds and her tongue locked to the roof of her mouth as she dried up a scream in her throat.

“They’re leaving,” Uruk said, his voice a broken sound across the still sea of silence between them.

She caught her breath enough to speak. “She’s still alive,” Altera whispered, knowing that this would be a daughter of the sky, a Windborn child of beauty and grace that would be an undeserved blessing for them all, should the babe survive their cruel world.

Her husband’s grip on her tightened. “She won’t be for long.”

She couldn’t imagine going through this again. She’d stood here so many times and done nothing when a piece of the gods fell, needing only her hands to guide that child to safety. The golden orb, now descending through a ruby sky, was just about to meet the jagged rocks below.

Altera scanned the desolate land of sharp obsidian that was the result of their sin. Demons thrived, their mark left behind as the glistening shards of evil that punctured the ground and speared fingers into the air. It was hopeless to imagine that there was anything she could do for the piece of heaven that was about to meet this dark embrace. And thus the child would be left to starve, dying alone in a desolate land with no one to hold her and keep her safe.

Still, Altera looked up to the orb again, her heart racing for this life that was a speck of hope in a world gone merciless and cruel.

“She’s still alive,” she said again, louder this time.

Her husband gripped her wrist so hard that her bones grated painfully together. “You will not go near it,” he commanded.

She swirled to face him, his eyes hard and dead, but she knew why. They’d lost their own child, added her tiny corpse to this littered graveyard that should have only belonged to remnants of the sky.

“Our lost star,” she breathed, the word a replacement for her daughter’s name that she couldn’t ever dare utter again. Her world blurred as the stinging tears came back to stream down her face. “It’s our fault.”

She’d known it from the moment her daughter had taken her last breath. The illness had been so sudden, so unusual. The Divine were punishing them for watching so many children survive the creatures in the sky, only to die alone in the cold embrace of the jagged forest. They’d done nothing. They’d allowed their fear and an ancient stigma to overrule their hearts.

She’d never ignore her heart again.

“No,” he snapped when she saw her flash of determination, and shook her.

With her wrist feeling as if it were about to snap, she clawed at his brutish strength. “Yes!” she screamed in his face. “We’ve let them die. We’ve stood here and watched every single time. No more!” She tore her nails through his fingers until he finally let her go, his features twisting from their typical dead-statue stare that had been his only retreat from the pain. He blinked at her, surprise fresh on his face, bringing a glimmer of color to his cheeks. “Altera,” he said, her name a hushed plea.

But she was already gone. The forest splintered under her feet, shredding into the protective leathers at her heels as she ran towards the golden orb that was just about to touch down. Its descent was too fast, threatening to crush the Windborn child cocooned in its sphere in a horrific moment of impact.

She held out her hands, jumping even as the forest retaliated against her spring, sending stabs of pain up her legs, but it was enough to catch the orb before it fell.

She dove, taking the brunt of the force against her back and shielding the orb as best she could. She gasped as her air knocked from her lungs, a sharp pain sending a jolt through her shoulder as something tore through it.

“Altera!” Her husband’s voice, a panicked scream.

But she was smiling, because in her hands, a rainbow-hued shell encased the most beautiful child she’d ever seen.

A girl with vibrant, green eyes.

“There, dear,” Altera wheezed. “I’ve got you, my fallen star.”

* * *

In spite of Uruk’s grumbles and growls, the daughter of the heavens soon became their own. Altera didn’t have to force her husband to understand. She watched as the child broke the thin barrier to his heart just as quickly as her tiny fist had broken through the mystical shell from which she’d been born and she’d sucked in a miraculous breath. Besides the fantastic moment of her birth, she was like any other child, learning to walk until she danced in the small cottage and brought joy and light into their lives once again.

Even Uruk had a heart that could fill to the brim, and Altera knew that even though he’d thought the dam closed, somewhere between a secreted smile or laugh, he’d filled his heart with love for their fallen star.

Altera held her daughter close, a girl of the skies she’d taken in as her own and named Valeria, after her mother’s line.

But now all smiles were gone, all laughter silenced. Valeria had succumbed to the sickness that inevitably came for children of the sky. She’d barely hit her sixth cycle of seasons when the bright green of her eyes began to fade into a sickly silver, and her skin went pale and dark.

“What do we do?” Uruk asked, his tone breaking with fresh love and pain on the desperate question. He’d known that Valeria would die, but he hadn’t wanted to be right. Even if the Windborn children were supposed to die young, he’d hoped for a miracle.

Their little girl shivered with a deep, unnatural cold from within, her lips blue and her once vivid green eyes turning dull. Altera rubbed her daughter’s arms, hoping to banish the icy shadow that bit under her fingernails. She hunched over the child, and not just because her stomach wound into knots with dread. That night she’d snatched Valeria from the skies she’d suffered a grave injury. Her shoulder still stung with the unforgiving blade of a Dark shard that had sunk deep into her muscles, connecting with bone and fusing itself to her body.

Its stabbing cold was a small echo of what she knew her daughter now felt. No matter how hard she rubbed, Valeria’s skin wouldn’t warm. Her small child looked up to Altera with her thin, midnight brows creased in pain. “Why, Mama?” she asked. It was a question of a child, no subject or expectation for details. Her little fist clenched. “I’m cold, Mama.”

Altera’s heart clenched and she squeezed her daughter impossibly closer to her bosom.

Uruk’s bushy brows scrunched together and he jerked to his feet. He made his way purposefully to the dusty hearth, beginning to fill it with logs and twigs he’d painstakingly salvaged from the obsidian land. His hands blistered with red and dots of black of the Dark, the malice that had spread from the demons’ world into their own. Even though the flame couldn’t warm his adopted child, Altera didn’t say a word as he tried.

Altera urged her daughter closer to the flames when Uruk had stoked them to life. But Valeria screeched, her pain a living thing inside her that begged for the warmth of the heavens, not the blaze of a human world that only knew how to turn good wood into ash.

She’d clutched her daughter close, but the little girl was as light as a feather. She slithered out of her mother’s grasp and bolted for the door, Altera crying out for her to come back.