Fall
When I opened my eyes, the first sensation was the absence of smell. No charring, no blood, no foul reek of roasting flesh. Instead, ambiguously warm air—like right after switching off the stove from boiling water—mingled with a faint floral scent.
"You're awake."
A soft voice. My eyes focused on a white ceiling. Neat golden lines stretched across it, pristine and unsinged. I tried to sit up reflexively, only then realizing: it didn't hurt. Not my wrists where the ropes had bitten in, nor my ankles stripped of flesh. Not my legs and waist lapped by flames, nor my chest where breath had scorched away. Nothing throbbed anywhere.
"You can move."
The voice's owner stood beside me. Dressed in pure white. Hair a pale gold bordering on silver. Her eyes were clear sky-blue, curving gently with her smile.
"Where... is this?"
My voice came out strangely clear, unfamiliar.
"Heaven," she said. "Saint Jeanne."
"You ended the war and died."
"God brought you here."
I was speechless for a moment.
"Then... is this paradise?"
Habit made the formal words tumble out.
She smiled faintly. "We just call it the heavens."
"This is where suffering ends."
"You can rest now."
The heavens. I looked up at the ceiling again. No images of the god of victory, no scenes of judgment, no flames devouring witches. Nothing. So clean it felt empty instead.
"What about... my mother?" I asked cautiously. "She died with me."
Her eyes flickered ever so slightly.
"As for her..." She chose her words carefully. "Each has their own path."
"You've paid your share of suffering, so you receive peace here."
An answer that wasn't really an answer. I couldn't press further.
Each has their own path. I'd heard it countless times since the war began. Those who went to the battlefield, those who stayed home, those burned alive, those who died in prayer. Each had their path. Another wall built with those words.
I glanced at my wrists. Faint rope marks lingered. Where flesh had torn, where blood had soaked the cords. Like pale scars.
It didn't hurt. That made it feel even worse.
"Now, God guards your time."
The man said. "The war is over. Your prayers brought a great conclusion."
"So lay down your guilt."
I looked up.
"Then what about them?"
The man blinked. "Who do you mean?"
The words spilled out one by one.
"People swept away by the river."
"Those buried in collapsing earth in the valley."
"Those whose breath gave out in hospital beds overnight."
"Those burned in supply convoys."
"......And Henri too."
The man answered after a pause. "All have been sent to their destined places."
"You don't need to carry that burden here anymore."
"Now, rest—"
"They died because of me."
My words cut him off.
"Because of me. Because of my prayers."
His expression hardened slightly.
"That was God's permitted outcome."
"It's not for you to bear alone."
"But..." I drew a breath. "No one else remembers."
The river's flow. The valley's angle. Where the light beams struck.
"Then who tells God?"
"What went wrong, and where."
The man exhaled softly.
"Nothing went wrong."
"All prayers are used within the plan."
"Yours too."
"What if the plan feels wrong?" I asked.
"If it feels like the plan killed too many—what then?"
He couldn't answer right away. In that silence, an old voice echoed in my mind again.
Keep going.
Pray.
Just call out.
I closed my eyes. It no longer sounded like God.
I deemed it evil.
A day passed. Another day. Time's flow here was unclear. No sunrises or sunsets, no true nights. Always a soft, pervasive light. No pain, no screams, no negative emotions.
The angels showed me the heavens. Courts of white stone. Light gliding over water. Endless hymns echoing from somewhere.
"Those are prayers rising from the earth," one angel explained one day.
From an unseen height above, thin beams of light ascended. Prayers from the world below, like white threads, crossing the heavenly expanse.
I held my breath. Those beams felt familiar. Flowing opposite to what I'd seen from earth.
A bit lower, some beams veered. Some back to earth, some to an unseen depth below. A very deep somewhere. Toward a pit where red auras twisted together.
"Prayers gather here and flow to their places," the angel said. "Some become healing, some judgment."
He paused, then added, "Some... bring war's end."
I searched among those beams for my prayer's color. Where it split and fell, where it collapsed.
"Yours is there too," the angel said. "God is pleased."
God. Even pleased with prayers that killed? Some might have lived for that joy, but others died for it.
As long as that truth remained, this place wasn't for me.
Eventually, the angels tried leading me higher.
"You were a saint."
"Just as you led prayers on earth, you can here too."
Again. Prayers.
"Your prayers were special."
"They touched both earth and heaven."
"Continue here, and you can avert wars, quell disasters, guide souls to their places."
I asked quietly, "If I pray again, will someone else die?"
The angel's smile faded. "That someone dies anyway."
"Death isn't the end."
Words too familiar to escape.
"But your prayers give that death meaning."
"Order within God's will."
Order. A word that let you erase something while pretending to build structure.
I smiled faintly. "Death isn't meaningless."
My voice came low.
"Nor does it die for lack of meaning."
"You just slap meaning on later and call it 'for that purpose.'"
The angel's eyes wavered slightly.
Then, a voice from somewhere—the one I'd heard with every prayer on earth.
You did well.
Your prayers moved much.
Do it once more.
This time, pray to right the world.
I closed my eyes. I didn't want to pray. I hated God, hated prayer, hated the anxious eyes begging me to pray.
Yet it was always me who prayed. Even under flames, my lips that whispered "end it" to the last.
The resentment always circled back to me.
It's your fault.
You prayed.
I opened my eyes. The sky was too clear. A sky no one burned.
It felt profoundly unfair.
I stood on a heavenly balustrade. Looking down, far beyond the void, faint blue clouds and brown earth appeared tiny. Not like a map, but the living breath of the world below.
Lower still, a red rift writhed somewhere. Between earth and heaven. Where the unclaimed fell.
"This is dangerous," an angel said from behind. "Below isn't for your eyes."
I turned. "Down there..." My throat dried. "Is that hell?"
The angel hesitated briefly. "Below is..."
As he chose words, another voice spoke in my mind.
If you wish, it will take you.
Many unfinished prayers like yours are there.
I exhaled—a laugh or sigh, unclear.
"If I stay here," I said, "I'll pray again."
The angel couldn't reply.
"Someone else will die."
"People will call that death 'meaningful,' say it was for that."
"And those caught in between..."
Mother's face surfaced. Henri's too. Faces collapsing in valleys, riverbanks, hospital beds, before hearths.
"......will just scream to the end."
I peered below the balustrade. The red rift yawned slowly. Blood-hued. A pit swallowing lost prayers from earth.
The angel stepped closer. "Jeanne."
"It's safe here."
"You've suffered enough."
"Rest here."
I smiled softly. "I don't think I can rest here."
"You'll keep telling me to pray."
"To keep believing in the will."
The angel extended a hand. "Prayer isn't evil."
"God isn't evil."
I stared at the hand, recalling beams across the heavens. Prayers rising from earth. Lines splitting downward from heaven. Saving some, slaying others.
And one person standing amid them, lips parting.
"I know," I said. "Prayer is just prayer."
"Neither good nor evil."
"Just who you hand it to."
I looked below. The red rift gazed quietly up, as if awaiting my fall.
"Here, it's not me..." I glanced around the heavens. Ceilings adorned with golden lines, pristine courts. Floors free of blood or ash. "...but above, holding me."
"The war's end doesn't feel like an end."
The angel stepped closer, hand trembling slightly. "Jeanne, please."
"That's not where you fall."
"You are—"
Saint. Blessed one. Miracle's tool. Words rose to lips, then withered like scorched tongue.
I met his gaze. "I won't pray for you anymore."
"Not on earth, not in heaven."
Something cracked in the angel's face.
Keep going.
The voice whispered in my mind.
You are the prayer-bearer.
If you close your mouth, others open theirs. Curses, not prayers.
You know which is worse.
I placed one foot on the balustrade. Cold stone pressed the sole.
"So," I said, gazing neither earth nor heaven, "this time, I'll fall without a word."
No prayer.
No plan.
No name attached.
Just... down.
The angel reached out. "Jeanne—!"
I stepped off before his hand touched.
I was falling.
No flames, no bells, no prayers.
Just down.
Into an endless pit, like a dream—until my body suddenly stopped.