[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/0199f3b8-6773-7370-a203-6edaee1c80e2.webp[/img][/center]
[indent][indent][hr][center][h1][color=#a89ccf]Present Day[/color][/h1][/center][hr]
[color=#808080]The Crimson Halo was an incongruous choice for a woman like Evelyn, though its very incongruity may have been the point. Sometimes, overwhelming noise was simpler to endure than the vulnerabilities of the quiet; it was easier than thinking. Still, she’d chosen to take up a secluded table in a corner of the bar, a position that afforded her a sightline to one of the televisions mounted near the ceiling. A news segment had just concluded, and its message lingered in her mind like a stubborn stain, even after the bartender switched the feed to a raucous sports match.[/color]

[color=#808080][i]All prisoners accounted for. [/i][/color]

[color=#808080]The phrase cycled in her thoughts, its assured tone bordering on the absurd. It was fascinating how a lie, delivered with enough authority over a backdrop of static, could sound so pristine. The anchor was gone, replaced by the roaring approval of a virtual stadium, but the declaration had already etched itself into her consciousness. [/color][color=#808080][i]All prisoners accounted for.[/i][/color][color=#808080] That was the narrative the world desperately clung to: the idea that the institution remained intact, that a fragile order had been preserved even as their old world slowly crumbled before them. [/color]

[color=#808080]Evelyn sat with her hands folded around a full glass of tonic water. The ice had long since dissolved into the languid fizz, a gradual dissolution she observed with detached focus. She had chosen water out of ingrained habit. Alcohol induced a minute tremor in her fingers, a lapse in control she could not permit in her occupation. Her previous occupation. Furthermore, she had witnessed what that desperate search for oblivion did to individuals who once wore uniforms with pride: how they used intoxication as a crude, psychological tourniquet. So, Evelyn did not drink. She did not seek numbness. She remained awake, alert, and relentlessly present.[/color]

[color=#808080]She maintained a neutral expression, her gaze fixed on the reflection in the polished table rather than on the patrons around her. In the warped glass of her drink, she watched their faces animate with the unburdened confidence of people who had likely never witnessed angels up close. They had never heard the thunderous impact of wings against concrete nor felt the searing heat of a light that scarred rather than sanctified. For them, heaven’s host could still be a romantic abstraction, a thrilling anecdote to be cheered between rounds.[/color]

[color=#808080]A passing figure jostled her table, and the liquid in her glass shuddered, its surface trembling with concentric rings that slowly faded to stillness. In that same moment, the ambient noise of the club seemed to hollow out. Not vanishing entirely, but becoming dense and muffled as if the beat of the music had synced with the sudden hammering of her heart. It occurred occasionally now, these minor lapses in her authority over the ability. The atmosphere would grow heavy, the light would dim, and she would feel the latent pressure of her own power vibrating deep within her marrow.[/color]

[color=#808080]The initial period following [/color][color=#808080][i]the incident [/i][/color][color=#808080]had been the most severe. This faculty, this power, would activate autonomously, seizing the space around her with the erratic cadence of a failing heart. It was a visceral, instinctive reaction as her body and subconscious struggled to process the trauma of that day. In those early days, she feared even the most casual contact, terrified that a single lapse might extinguish the vital rhythm of another living being.[/color]

[color=#808080]But now… her control was significantly more refined.[/color]

[color=#808080]Eve exhaled slowly now, grounding herself the way she’d learned to: a single breath drawn low into her lungs, held for three counts before release. Her focus remained on the glass before her, watching the remaining ice fragments drift in languid, orbital patterns. She counted backward from ten, synchronizing her breathing with the subdued thrum of bass resonating through the floorboards. It was a minor ritual, born from sheer necessity.[/color]

[color=#808080]As her heart rate steadied, the spatial distortion receded. The faint, shimmering haze that had blurred the air around her solidified back into normality. Sound returned, tentative at first, then flooding back in a sudden, overwhelming cascade. A patron near the bar shouted an order. A woman’s sharp laugh pierced the din. The club was once again a vibrant entity, completely unaware of the minute rupture that had just been sutured shut in the space of a few heartbeats.[/color]

[color=#808080]Eve reached for her glass, the cool condensation slick against her fingertips, and lifted it to her lips to take a measured sip. [/color]

[hr][center][h1][color=#a89ccf]6 months ago[/color][/h1][/center][hr]
[color=#808080]When consciousness returned, it was to the cold, hard press of the infirmary floor against her cheek. Acrid smoke snaked from the ruins of light fixtures, and the reassuring beep of the cardiac monitor had been replaced by a single continuous tone. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth, a metallic sting mingling with the dust and the scent of scorched wiring. Her patient—a guard, his face still soft with youth—was clinging to life as she pushed herself upright. His chest hitched in shallow, irregular spasms, a dark crimson stain rapidly expanding beneath him where her careful sutures had torn open. The vibrant red was a brutal shock against the sterile white of the tiles, now littered with debris and glittering shards of glass.[/color]

[color=#808080]Instinct commandeered her body before coherent thought could form. The surgeon’s imperative to clamp, to compress, to stabilize, was a reflex etched deeper than memory. [/color][color=#a89ccf]“Stay with me,” [/color][color=#808080]she commanded, her voice possessing the same authority she had used in operating rooms and field tents across a dozen war zones. But this was not a controlled environment. Her instruments were scattered, buried under rubble and the contents of overturned trays. The air was a foul cocktail of smoke, spilled antiseptic, and the pervasive, iron-rich odour of fresh blood.[/color]

[color=#808080]Evelyn was not supposed to be here. She was never meant to lay hands on another living soul again. The tribunal’s sentence had been unequivocal: life imprisonment with solitary confinement recommended. Her placement in this infirmary was a grim irony, a concession to the reputation that preceded her fall. Dr. Evelyn Kaine: decorated combat surgeon, senator’s daughter, and the state’s most notorious traitor. When the chief medical officer had succumbed to the relentless pressure of his post, the warden had made a pragmatic decision. Keep her occupied. Let her mend the injured guards and the inmates deemed too volatile to transfer. It was not an act of clemency. It was a calculation of utility.[/color]

[color=#808080]Every day since, she had worn the bright orange jumpsuit beneath her white coat, a constant, visible reminder that she was a convict first and a physician second. A prisoner performing a twisted form of penance with a scalpel. The duality likely made the administration sleep easier; she was both a resource and a contained threat.[/color]

[color=#808080]Now, however, the structures of that control had vanished. The corridor beyond the broken doorway was a maelstrom of shouted orders, sporadic weapon fire, and the heavy clang of boots on metal grating. Another detonation rumbled deep within the facility, shaking a fresh rain of dust and plaster from the ceiling. Evelyn leaned her weight into her hands, the gloves now saturated, the pressure becoming uneven. Beneath her palms, the young man’s heartbeat was a frantic but faltering flutter.[/color]

[color=#808080]Then came the sound. [/color]

[color=#808080]It started as a distant resonance, like a gale forced through a constricted duct, and swelled until it dominated the space. Dozens of them. The unmistakable concussion of air being divided by immense, powerful forms. It was not the soft rustle of bird feathers but a deep, rolling thunder that vibrated in the chest and set the teeth on edge.[/color]

[color=#808080]Evelyn went rigid, her hand still pressed to the guard's sternum. Her eyes lifted to the ceiling, where dust and smoke swirled in the emergency lighting. A vast shadow eclipsed the dim glow, and the remaining fluorescent bulbs flickered erratically before dying completely.[/color]

[color=#808080]A weak, wet cough came from the young man, his lips forming silent words. Her mind, operating on a detached, analytical level, cataloged the grim prognosis: probable pulmonary puncture, critical hemorrhaging, cerebral hypoxia. Each clinical observation pointed to the same inevitable conclusion. She could maintain the pressure, could cling to the ritual of procedure, but the final result was already determined.[/color]

[color=#808080]And yet, she persisted. Because this action was her fundamental nature. It was what she had always done, even when the world had punished her for it.[/color]

[color=#808080]From outside, the screams of men were cut short by a deafening shriek of tearing steel. The illumination that now bled through the cracks around the door was not the orange glow of fire. It was a white, searingly pure, and terrifyingly beautiful radiance.[/color]

[color=#808080]When it touched the floor, the tiles began to crack.[/color]

[color=#808080]Evelyn felt the last tremor of the guard’s pulse still beneath her hand. The very atmosphere seemed to grow still with him. Then a voice manifested—low, immeasurably old, and resonating not through the air but directly within the marrow of her bones and the fabric of her consciousness.[/color]

[color=#ff0000]“Heed my words, mortal…you cannot heal what Heaven has condemned.”[/color]

[color=#808080]A profound cold swept through the room. The feeling fled from her hands. The world seemed to lose its focus, dimming at the edges.[/color]

[color=#808080]And for the first time, the silence that followed didn’t come from outside. It came from [/color][i][color=#808080]within[/color][/i][color=#808080] her.[/color]

[color=#808080]The first thing to return was the noise. The Field Null dissolved around her, its grip failing like a spent muscle, and the world crashed back in with a sensory avalanche of sound, heat, and movement. Klaxons wailed, the stomp of boots on steel grating echoed, and beneath it all, the relentless thunder of wings continued its percussive beat. It was bedlam compounded. Evelyn pushed herself to her feet, her breathing ragged, her gaze locked on the young guard she had been unable to protect. His unblinking eyes stared at the ruined ceiling, and she almost reached to close them before remembering her gloves were still stained with his blood.[/color]

[color=#808080]A second, more violent tremor shook the complex. The far wall of the infirmary disintegrated in a concussive blast, hurling concrete fragments and jagged shrapnel across the room. A sharp piece caught her arm, and another grazed her cheek. She threw herself behind an overturned medical gurney, her hand flying to the stinging heat on her neck. Through the swirling dust and the erratic strobe of failing lights, she witnessed their descent. Angels. Their vast wings blotted out the view, moving with a stormfront's inevitability, and the weapons they carried shone with that same otherworldly radiance that had first scorched the sky years before.[/color]

[color=#808080]A survivalist impulse commanded her to run. She ripped away the tattered remains of her white coat, the bright orange of her prison jumpsuit glaring beneath it like a warning. A lance of incandescent energy slammed into the spot she had just vacated, exploding the floor tiles into a cloud of razor-sharp fragments. She stumbled out into the main corridor, bracing herself against the wall for support. The passageway was a charnel house. The bodies of guards and inmates were intermingled, some still twitching, the majority still and silent.[/color]

[color=#808080]Driven by a purpose she didn't fully understand, Evelyn moved toward the source of the concentrated gunfire: the upper levels. Somewhere above, the celestial forces were advancing with methodical brutality, systematically dismantling the last pockets of human resistance. Then the central cell block opened before her, a vision of infernal transformation. Steel gangways were twisted and sagging, groaning under the weight of collapsed debris. Fires bloomed unchecked on the lower tiers, the building’s sprinkler systems emitting a pathetic, sputtering hiss against the flames. And there, at the heart of the devastation, two other figures in orange jumpsuits were making a stand against the divine assault. But before she could process their presence, a new threat descended.[/color]

[color=#808080]An angel plunged from the upper levels, its spear aimed with lethal intent, its armour blazing with unearthly fire. Time seemed to fracture, stretching the moment into an eternity. Instinct, sharper than reason, took command. Her hand shot out, fingers extended, and for the second time that day, she imposed her will upon reality. The very atmosphere congealed into a visible barrier, a sudden, transparent solidity. The beating of the angel's wings slowed to a crawl, its feathers arrested mid-air. The being itself stiffened, its luminous eyes widening in shock, the holy fire around it guttering as if starved of air.[/color]

[color=#808080]Evelyn stepped forward, closing the distance. She pressed her bloodied palm directly against the center of the angel’s breastplate, her voice a razor-edged command forced through clenched teeth:[/color]

[color=#a89ccf]“Fall quiet.”[/color]

[color=#808080]The suspended moment imploded. The angel fell, its body striking the ground with the deafening finality of stone hitting marble. A web of fractures raced across its ornate armour, and the brilliant light that had burned within was snuffed out into nothing.[/color]
[/indent][/indent]