Valeria had been to the angel city once before, but that had been as a spirit and the powers had been out of her control. The Light had shoved her through the Ether and distorted time and space to give her a moment with the angel Anark in the place where she’d once been conceived. It had been a deliberate, planned visit meant as a distraction.

But she’d seen enough. She knew that, with some help, she could replicate the process enough for her needs.

The child before her giggled and reached for the Dark orb she held tightly in her grasp. Even though he seemed to be just a boy wrapped in fascination, Valeria knew that the power within him was drawn to this source of suffering. While that terrified her, her son’s power would be the key to unlocking the portal to the Ether where she could walk through as flesh and blood, just as she’d seen the female angel do when she’d brought her son home.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Nile asked, his warmth close to hers as he lingered at her back. She could sense that he wanted to wrap his arms around her, but there was a physical line he wouldn’t cross, not after what had happened.

She wasn’t ready to confront what Nile meant to her or how he made her feel. She forced herself to look up at the sky. A breeze engulfed them with faint motes of magic returning to Manor Saffron. They didn’t have much time. “You forget that I’m not human,” she reminded him. “There are others like me up there. Others who will be cast out and have no place to go. It’s time that I stop thinking about myself. No one else is going to fight for them.”

A bitter silence lingered between them and the air grew cold as Nile backed away. Her heart twisted because she knew she’d hurt him to remind him of what she was. He’d been so wrapped up in the hope of this world that he hadn’t stopped to think about the angels and their struggles. There was a reason they hadn’t come down to Terra to save them. It wasn’t because angels lived a life of luxury and peace in the heavens. It was because they were hiding and slowly withering away.

Her fingers loosened as the child that clung to her knees freed the Dark orb from her grasp. She looked down to him and ran her fingers through his fine hair.

No matter her own conflicts, there were innocents in this world. “Nile,” she said, her voice a broken sound on the wind.

“Yes?” he asked.

Magic curled around her feet as her son reacted to her desires to delve into the Ether. That was a place more attuned for a creature of his making.

She turned and found her lover’s gaze before she was swept away. “Never let go of the hope you have for this world. No matter what happens, no matter if it ends right now, we’ll rebuild. We’ll make our home here, in Manor Saffron, and start something new.”

His smile gave her a glimmer of happiness as a wall crashed around them and sent her spiraling on the strands of time and space, launching her into the abyss that would lead her to the Ether.

* * *

Nile wasn’t the only one who could lie. Valeria couldn’t tell him that she wasn’t going to the angel city. His focus had always been on the angels, but Valeria knew better. She knew not to rely on anyone except herself.

Her time in the Ether had told her all she’d needed to know to master the magic to manipulate it. She’d seen enough to know that the layering realms were constructs. With this power at her disposal, there was a new construct she could build.

Her son had already started the process. When he’d slipped back into the Ether she’d mistaken for death, having been a formation of Light trying to exist in the flesh, a new realm had been born. With the correct guidance, she could make the Light and Dark serve her own desires.

It had all begun when she’d sensed where the angels and demons had gone when they’d died on the battlefield around Manor Saffron’s walls. They were immortal creatures meant to contain power and accomplish the mighty tasks of the Divine. Yet they’ve strayed from that path and without guidance, their downward spiral was only going to get worse. The Obsidian Sea had been born and there was only one way to remove such plague from her fragile world.

She held onto Creation’s tiny hand as they walked into their new domain. “We shall call this Purgatory,” she said, her voice an eerie echo through the air. “What do you think?”

The boy smiled and his eyes crinkled with joy. “I can have friends?”

She nodded. “Yes. I’ll bring them to you.” She pointed at a smoldering crevice in the ethereal lands. “How about a river to keep the Dark ones? Doesn’t that sound nice?”

He laughed and yanked her closer to the spot. Shadows pooled and bubbled into tiny pools around her feet.

She tried not to let the squeamish roll of her stomach show on her face. She nodded her approval and let the boy play. It amazed her how her gentle coaxing could result in such devastating magic. While this little angel spread his wings and jumped to splash in his new creations, she heard their screams.

Demons, those who had been intended to add their power to the Onyx spire that would have pierced Celestia, now belonged to her.