Luka ran.

  He didn’t know where else to go.

  The walkways blurred as he sprinted, bare feet slipping against slick cloudstone, silk heavy and dragging against his legs. Rain poured harder now, no longer curious or gentle but relentless, pounding against his skin, flattening his curls, blinding him with silver streaks of cold.

  “Please—sorry—excuse me—” he gasped as he passed startled angels who barely moved out of his way.

  Some stepped back.

  Some stared.

  Some didn’t look at him at all.

  That hurt worse.

  The Filing Department.

  The office.

  The thought latched onto him like a lifeline.

  That was where he belonged. Where things made sense. Where the desks hummed softly and the papers behaved and no one raised their voice. Where he was useful. Where he was good.

  “If I just—if I can just get inside—” Luka whispered, breath tearing in and out of him.

  The familiar doors came into view at the end of the corridor, tall and luminous even beneath the darkened sky. Light glowed behind them, warm and steady and achingly safe.

  Luka sobbed in relief and stumbled forward.

  He reached for the handle.

  His hand hit something solid.

  Invisible. Cold.

  Luka blinked, confused, and pressed his palm forward again. The force-field shimmered faintly, repelling him with a gentle—but absolute—push.

  “No,” he breathed. “No, no, no—”

  He tried again, harder this time. The barrier did not yield.

  “I work here,” Luka said desperately, voice cracking. “I’m allowed. I— I always come in. I always do it right.”

  The doors did not open.

  The Filing Department hummed on the other side, distant and indifferent.

  Luka slid his hand down the invisible wall, fingers trembling as though he could find a seam, a mistake, anything he could fix. Gold bracelets clinked weakly against nothing.

  “Please,” he whispered. “I didn’t do anything.”

  The barrier remained.

  Something in Luka’s chest gave way.

  He staggered back, breath hitching, eyes wide and wet as the rain soaked him through. His heel caught on the slick stone and he stumbled, barely catching himself before falling.

  The office—his office—stood before him, sealed and unreachable.

  It didn’t want him.

  The realisation hit harder than any accusation.

  The ground shuddered.

  Luka froze.

  At first, he thought it was his knees giving out, the tremor nothing more than shock working its way through him. Then the floor lurched again, violent and unmistakable, sending cracks of light skittering across the cloudstone.

  “What—?” Luka whispered.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The rain intensified.

  It came down in sheets now, heavy and loud, drenching everything, pounding against the ground with furious insistence. Water pooled at Luka’s feet, soaking his ankles, swallowing the soft chime of his gold.

  The tremor deepened into a roar.

  Luka cried out as the ground bucked beneath him, dropping to his knees instinctively, hands splayed against the shaking surface. The world felt unstable—like a file shoved into the wrong drawer, like reality itself had been misaligned.

  “I’m sorry!” he sobbed, tears lost to the rain. “I’ll go away— I’ll leave— I won’t ask questions anymore—”

  Another violent shake threw him forward, palms scraping painfully against stone that had never hurt him before.

  The sky split with thunder, so loud it felt like it tore straight through him.

  Luka curled in on himself, arms wrapped around his head, body shaking harder than the ground beneath him.

  “I don’t understand,” he cried, small and broken and utterly lost beneath a Heaven that no longer knew how to hold him, once its most perfect angel.

  The ground shook again.

  Not a warning tremor this time—not a polite shiver that could be reasoned away. This was violent, sudden, like Heaven itself had stumbled.

  Luka cried out as the floor lurched beneath him, the force knocking the breath straight from his lungs. He clawed at the slick stone, fingers slipping uselessly as cracks of blinding white light ripped through the surface like fractures in glass.

  Angels screamed.

  Not gasps. Not murmurs. Screams—raw and terrified, echoing down the corridors as walkways buckled and rails splintered under the strain. Wings flared instinctively, feathers shedding sparks of light as angels struggled to stay airborne.

  Luka looked up from where he had collapsed, rain plastering him to the floor, vision blurred. Angels were everywhere now—running, shouting, grabbing at one another as the orderly paths of Heaven twisted and warped beneath their feet.

  A nearby tower groaned, marble shrieking as it tilted, pieces breaking free and dissolving into light before they could fall.

  The ground bucked again.

  Luka was thrown sideways, body skidding across the stone until his shoulder struck a pillar. Pain bloomed sharp and bright, and he whimpered, curling instinctively inward as another shockwave tore through the clouds.

  “I’m sorry—!” he cried, voice lost beneath thunder and chaos. “I didn’t mean to—please—!”

  No one was listening.

  Angels were shouting orders that went unanswered, hands raised in futile gestures as sigils flared and failed. Light magic flickered, unstable, sputtering like candles in a storm.

  “This isn’t possible!”

  “Heaven doesn’t move like this!”

  “Where are the stabilisers—where is Records—?”

  Another violent tremor ripped through the ground, splitting a wide fissure only metres from Luka’s feet. Blinding light poured from the crack, roaring upward like a wound torn open.

  Luka scrambled back on hands and knees, sobbing now, chest tight with terror he didn’t know how to name.

  “Stop, please stop,” he begged the shaking floor, the sky, anyone who might hear. “I’ll go—I’ll leave—I don’t belong here anymore—”

  The rain slammed down harder, sheets of it blurring everything into silver chaos. Angels stumbled and fell, wings dragging uselessly through the water. Some pointed—at the cracks, at the sky—

  At Luka.

  “He did this!”

  Luka squeezed his eyes shut as the ground heaved once more, knocking him flat. His fingers dug into the stone, nails scraping painfully as he tried to hold on to something, anything solid in a Heaven that was tearing itself apart beneath him.

  “I just wanted to go home,” he sobbed, voice small and shaking. “I just wanted my desk.”

  The ground roared in answer.

  The fissures didn’t stop.

  They moved.

  Luka felt it first—a wrongness under his palms, the stone shifting not with chaos, but with intent. The cracks that had split the ground began to slide, crawling like living things, their jagged edges grinding against one another with a sound like breaking glass and screaming metal.

  “No—” Luka whispered, breath hitching.

  The light pouring from them intensified, blinding gold and white, so bright it burned behind his eyelids. The fractures curved, bending unnaturally, pulling inward.

  Angels noticed. Of course they did, stopping and staring like they were trained to do instead of springing into action.

  “Wait—look—!”

  “That’s not possible—cracks don’t do that—”

  The ground beneath Luka jerked.

  He cried out as the fissures snapped together with violent force, racing toward him from all directions. Stone peeled back like skin, light roaring upward as the cracks fused into one enormous, jagged circle—perfect and terrible and unmistakably centred on him.

  Directly beneath his knees.

  “MOVE!” someone screamed.

  Luka tried.

  He pushed himself up, slipping on rain-slick stone, heart hammering so hard it hurt. He took one step—

  The ground vanished.

  Luka screamed as the floor dropped out from under him, the golden circle yawning wide like an open mouth. He flailed, fingers grasping at empty air, at nothing, at a Heaven that no longer existed beneath his feet.

  “No—no—NO—!”

  He fell.

  Wind tore past him, ripping the sound from his throat as light swallowed him whole. The rain vanished instantly, replaced by roaring darkness streaked with violent gold. His anklets rang wildly, frantic chimes swallowed by the void.

  Above him, angels surged forward too late.

  The edge of the circle snapped shut just as hands reached for him, sealing with a thunderous crack that sent shockwaves rippling through the clouds.

  Silence.

  The rain cut off as if someone had turned it off.

  The ground stilled.

  Where Luka had been kneeling moments before, there was nothing—no crack, no light, no sign that Heaven had ever broken at all.

  Just smooth, perfect stone.