I could barely stand.
The fall from Heaven had broken nearly every part of me, and the forces inside my body had only managed to hold me together by tearing at each other.
Every breath felt like swallowing glass.
My ribs throbbed.
My limbs trembled.
Blood ran warm beneath my clothes.
There was no chance I could beat them in a direct fight.
I was seven years old, exhausted, and half-dead.
Against three monsters like these, strength would only get me killed.
So I relied on the one thing I still had.
My mind.
I closed my eyes for half a heartbeat and reached into the shallow pool of magic left in my core.
Divine Light and Demonic Energy immediately pushed against each other, refusing to mix.
I forced them together anyway, shaping the conflicting powers through sheer concentration.
Using Internal Language, I formed two overlapping magic circles beneath my feet.
Ancient glyphs—the language of the Gods—flared briefly across the stone.
“Veil of Disappearance.” The air around me warped.
Light bent away from my body, and the sound of my breathing vanished beneath the spell.
My outline blurred, thinned, and disappeared.
At that exact moment, the two Orcs brought their weapons down.
BOOM!
The impact split the cavern floor.
Stone fragments flew in every direction, and a wave of dust swallowed the room.
The Orcs roared, blinded by the sudden explosion.
Their crimson eyes searched through the haze, trying to find the child they had been certain was standing in front of them.
They found nothing.
The Demon Wild Boar, already enraged, charged straight through the dust.
It never saw the Orcs until it was too late.
I slipped between the two giants while they were still disoriented.
I could have attacked immediately, but I needed something precise.
Something that would turn their own strength against them.
I gathered the remaining Demonic Energy in my body at the tip of my finger.
It burned as I compressed it, becoming a thin, crimson beam.
Then I fired.
The beam struck the nearest Orc directly in the eye.
SIZZLE!
The creature screamed.
The magic melted through its eye and sank into the nerves behind it.
The sound was awful—wet, raw, and far too loud in the enclosed cavern.
The Orc lost all control.
Blinded and mad with pain, it swung its warhammer in wide, desperate arcs.
It struck at the air, the walls, anything that moved.
One of those swings found the charging boar.
CRACK!
The hammer crushed the beast’s skull.
Black blood sprayed across the stone as its enormous body slid across the cavern floor and came to a stop.
The second Orc saw the impact and misunderstood it.
It must have thought its companion had attacked the boar—or that the pain had driven it insane.
Either way, it did not hesitate.
With a furious roar, it raised its axe and brought it down onto the blinded Orc’s shoulder.
The blow tore through the creature’s chest.
The wounded Orc staggered, screamed, and collapsed into the blood pooling beneath it.
A few seconds later, it stopped moving.
The cavern fell silent.
Only one Orc remained.
It stood over the bodies, breathing hard.
Its chest rose and fell with each heavy breath.
The killing blow had taken nearly everything it had.
Its guard was down.
I dismissed the concealment spell.
The Orc turned at the sound of my reappearance, but I was already moving.
I pushed off the ground with the last of my Divine Light and landed on its shoulders.
Before it could throw me off, I drove my hand into the back of its throat.
My fingers broke through the flesh.
The Orc froze.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Its eyes widened as it finally understood what had happened.
Then it reached behind itself, clawing desperately at my arm.
I poured Demonic Energy into the wound.
The magic spread through its throat, burning through the windpipe from the inside.
The Orc made a strangled, gurgling sound and dropped to its knees.
I leapt away as its massive body toppled forward.
It struck the cavern floor with a heavy thud.
The fight was over.
My legs gave out.
I sank onto one knee in the pool of dark blood, barely aware of the cold stone beneath me.
My lungs felt as though they were on fire.
Every injury I had ignored during the battle returned at once, screaming for attention.
Then I heard it.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Slow, deliberate applause echoed from the darkest part of the cavern.
A figure drifted out of the shadows.
Mammon’s curved horns caught the faint light from the entrance.
His hollow eyes gleamed with amusement—and something else.
Interest.
“To use invisibility as bait,” he said, his voice rough and low, “then let your enemies destroy one another…” He looked down at me.
“A child cast from Heaven.
Half-dead, bleeding, and barely able to stand.
Yet you still found a way to make stronger enemies kill each other for you.” His smile was almost impossible to see in the darkness.
“How fascinating.” I said nothing.
I was too tired to speak.
Mammon hovered above me, his shadow stretching across the blood-soaked floor.
“You told me that in seven years, no one had ever given you a proper name,” he continued.
“Your mother called you an abomination.
The angels called you a mistake.” His voice hardened.
“Those names belong to them.
They have no power over you.” Mammon raised one hand.
“From this day forward, I give you a name.” Darkness gathered around his fingers.
“Fallen.” The word settled over me.
Fallen.
It was heavy, but not painful.
Unlike the names I had been given before, it did not feel like an accusation.
It did not tell me what I was supposed to be.
It was mine.
I lowered my eyes and repeated it silently.
Fallen.
Mammon watched my reaction before continuing.
“Of course, survival in the Mortal Realm requires more than cleverness.
A nameless child cannot buy food, forge weapons, or build a life with empty hands.” He flicked his wrist.
A stream of black light left his fingers and struck me in the forehead.
I gasped.
Knowledge poured into my mind.
Geometric formulas.
Chemical structures.
Transmutation patterns.
Magical matrices.
I saw them all at once, too much to understand and yet somehow impossible to forget.
Mammon’s voice reached me through the flood.
“I grant you Elemental Restructuring.” The information continued to settle into place.
“With the proper materials—mineral-rich earth, raw ore, and mana-infused debris—you will be able to alter the structure of matter itself.” He paused.
“Even worthless dirt may be turned into pure gold.” I stared at my hands.
Gold.
It was more than wealth.
It was food when I was hungry.
Shelter when I was hunted.
Weapons when I needed protection.
A way to exist among humans without depending on anyone who might betray me.
For the first time since I had fallen from Heaven, I could see a path forward.
Not an easy one.
Not a safe one.
But mine.
I looked up at Mammon, clutching my aching chest as the new knowledge took root inside me.
My old life had ended in the sky.
The child who had been called an abomination was gone.
The nameless mistake cast out by Heaven was gone with him.
Deep beneath the earth, in a cavern at the border between Hell and the Mortal Realm, I began again.
Not as Heaven’s discarded child.
Not as someone’s mistake.
As Fallen.