My wings twist painfully behind me, and a gasp of pain escapes from my gritted teeth, colours exploding across my clenched eyelids.  My tormentors do not ease off, despite my protests, only wrench them harder, so hard I can feel their delicate bones disconnecting from my back, and with them, I feel my mind disconnect from this excruciating reality, unable to handle any more pain. They drag me along the endless stretches of cold marble floors, leaving behind a gory trail of my blood. I distantly wonder, with a slight sense of guilt, who will be tasked with cleaning it away, wiping the proof of my presence in this place away with a few simple swipes. How easy it is, I see now, to lose it all.   
 
The sharp stone stairs rip open my skin, as unforgiving as those dragging me, their faces remain unflinching in the face of my agony, my blood blooming without hesitation from the deep gouges they have already carved into me. The sight of my blood only angers them more, its colour convicting me further of all my sins, no longer a glorious, holy golden, but the soulless dark hue of ink and shadows. The colour of deception, of cruelty and evil. The colour that doomed me the moment it revealed itself, snaking a damning path from my nose, the sound of it dripping onto the smooth floor echoing like harsh slaps in my ears. The moment it was seen, its mark a clear flaw on the clean, parchment surface of the ground, I was damned. I had committed the worst crime; that of imperfection, and for that, I was unforgivable, unsalvageable, forbidden.   
 
It contrasts now, my black, evil blood, smeared across the pale beauty of this place. Of its people. The perfect sort of beauty that is untouchable, undefinable yet undeniable. Oh, but deny it I do. Their beauty, however perfect and unfaultable, is the kind that can only lead to loss and despair. The kind that offers you a flame in the dark, only to snuff it out. And so, you are left with no other choice than to embrace the darkness, and in turn, the darkness will embrace you.   
 
 
My wings shrivelled like fallen leaves the morning I was cast from heaven, the colour leached from their shedding feathers, my eyes horrifyingly captivated by the elegant twirls of their descent- much unlike my own. My halo warped too, in the face of my banishment, the once majestic sign of my immortality transfigured into further proof of my failures, twisting cruel, rough coils into my skull, my neck hunching towards the dirt at my blistered feet, unable to accustom itself to their punishing weight.  
 
That initial weight, I have never forgotten. The decades it took me to become accustomed to it, to find it comforting even, the decades longer it took me to adjust to the other changes that were cast upon me like curses, banishing me from my previous life in a devastatingly permanent matter. The scrapes and cuts that no longer healed like water parting around a clean blade, the deeper wounds greying and rotting in comparison to how my skin once knitted itself back together within mere minutes, the humiliating sensations of cold and sickness, every wet, tearing cough reaffirming my failure and my punishment. But perhaps worst of all; the vicious hunger, tearing at my insides, weakening my limbs and clouding my mind with its insistent anger.   
 
I tried anything to appease it, the agony ripping through me like a barbed arrow, tearing out any lingering sense from my body, leaving me desperately clawing through the grasses and wildflowers, dirt lodged deep beneath my fingernails and resting heavily in my traitorous stomach. I succumbed to this new master like the tide to the moon, and it crushed me against jagged shores, leaving me huddled in defeat against the cold ground, wishing to sink below its cruel surface to a shallow grave. It remained unmoved by my display of wild misery, and I remained in my torment, cursing this particularly sadistic detail of the wretched life they doomed me to.   
 
I lay, shivering pitifully, half submerged in a pool of newly fallen rain, bitterly cold against my hollow cheek, warily monitoring the nightmarish creature staring me down in its reflection. This creature they created; its papery skin threaded with dark veins, barely pulsing; its starved body, each sin accounted for on a protruding rib; its vacant, empty eyes - never leaving mine, always watching.   
 
I would have laid there, in that insignificant spot, until my body became nothing but an imprint in the dirt, an imperfection amongst the springtime blossoms, washed away by forces more wilful, had I not been discovered by a pair of thoughtless mortals, whose names have long since fallen from my memory, which only recollects a dull, washed-out image of them in my mind, preserving just a few features: one’s impossibly bright eyes, which emitted the fresh breeze of a summer meadow, manifesting the taste of pollen onto my cleaved tongue, the other’s impractical knot of curls, so dense and tangled they eluded such an intense sense of chaos even a creature such as I was repulsed.   
 
These wide-eyed morals, in their naive integrity and misplaced kindness, took me to their humble shelter, settled me in their scavenged nest of bracken and soft skins, coaxed sweet tonics down my throat, remaining bewildered and perplexed when my pitiful state remained unaverred by such prescriptions and remedies. They fretted and fussed as I retched up their meagre rations, my body unable to tolerate such foreign, extrinsic substances, but they should have saved their troubles and worries, for I soon discovered something of theirs eminently more suited to my tastes. Nightmares that ripped cries from her mouth, tossing her through restless dreams; the steady ache of an old but persistent injury in his side, its discomfort tightening the corners of his mouth as sharp movements awakened it; their implacable, unrelenting battles and toils, that demanded their sacrifice and tribulation.   
 
Such fine cuisines, never-ending in their abundance, suited my taste well, and I soon learnt to root them out; blooming in the dark corners of neglect, from the cracks of a beaten path and the bitter mouths of the scornful. I gorged myself on the subtle, tender taste of grief, savoured the sharp, sweet flavour of agony, feasted on the hardy, filling relish of contempt.   
 
This new substance nourished me, built me back up to what I had never before been able to accept, but could no longer deny. It nurtured me, and soon, I learnt to return the favour. Learnt to encourage and embolden its presence amongst feeble mortals, feeding tales of betrayal and treachery into their helpless ears, clouding their eyes with red mist and leading them blindly astray, letting them taste the sweetest concoction of them all: revenge. 
  
All of them fall to my influence, adamantly defending their piety, their devoutness, but unable to hide their truest, deepest desires, just as I cannot conceal my black, sinful blood, their knees bruised from kneeling at the altars of false gods, knuckles bruised from fighting, however unintentionally, for me. My scarred hands, burned from when I clutched at the stars, desperate to claw my way back to those imposters, have built my very own palace from the prison I was confined within, realising, either way, they would be stained the same deep shade of red.   
 
And so, as each misled mortal falls to my sovereignty, I am not surprised. I am not proud either. After all, nobody, despite many valiant efforts, outlasts the devil. No one outlasts me.