The unease hadn’t come from them at all.
It had come from here. From us. From him.
I’d missed the warning. I hadn’t seen the danger until it had already burrowed into Heaven like rot under gilded skin.
Even now, seeing Lucifer as he once was…I didn’t understand.
He didn’t look like a monster. None of us did. We were all so full of light and curiosity, transfixed by the world God had created. The humans had enchanted every angel. So what drove Lucifer to inject sin into that perfect world? To awaken everysickness, pain, and wicked thing? Why desecrate something so innocent?
It wasn’t long after this moment that he tried to bring those same wicked ideas back here—to our home. And that’s when the war began. When he was cast out.
I would never understand Lucifer.
I loved Heaven. I still did.
And I would rather spend eternity watching flawed humans struggle to love than live in this place, pretending I understood it.
But just as I reached that thought, my brother’s voice shattered the stillness.
“No, no, no!” he shouted, lunging toward the well. His fingers swiped through the liquid gold like he could catch something before it was gone.
“Come back.”
His cry cracked with desperation.
And for the first time, I realized…
Maybe Lucifer never meant to fall.
Maybe he was just trying to reach for something he was never meant to touch.
I froze.
The desperation in Lucifer’s tall, trembling form shocked me. That wasn’t how we watched the humans—not with that kind of desperation. This wasn’t curiosity. It was obsession. Hunger.
But for what?
I thought he was watching the humans again. But the way he clung to the edge of the well, the way his chest heaved, saidotherwise. My breath hitched when he dropped to his knees—then gasped when he began pleasuring himself.
No…
How did he know such a thing?
Angels didn’t feel pleasure. Not before Eve took the bite. Not after. Not ever. That was the point—our existence was built around peace, stillness, purpose. Lust had no place among us, not in Heaven. Even humans had to surrender their desires to reach the gates.
So how?
How did Lucifer know what no other angel ever dared to imagine?
Maybe it made sense. Maybe it was always going to be him. The first to fall. The first to crave. The first to lose himself to something other than devotion.
Maybe he saw something in that well—something no one else was meant to.
I took a step closer, drawn to the answer he’d seen in the gold.
But before I could peer inside, a voice I hadn’t heard in what felt like lifetimes wrapped around me like cold iron.
“You should have stayed where I couldn’t reach you.”
