Icarus · Conversa

Consciousness, like a drowning person, rose inch by inch out of the darkness. Icarus felt light filtering through his eyelids—a dim, yellowish glow belonging to a flame. He tried to open his eyes, only to find the action much heavier than imagined, and then he realized he could not retract his wings. This realization jolted his consciousness awake. He opened his eyes. Above him was a rough rock ceiling, with stalactites hanging down. Water droplets condensed at the tips, falling at intervals to strike the ground beside his face with a crisp echo. The air was damp, smelling of earth and the sweet, metallic scent of some unknown flower. This was not the Sanctuary. There was no golden holy light, no hymns sung by angels, no reverent yet distant gazes. His gaze shifted downward, then stopped. Silver chains were clasped around his wrists, the other end extending into the depths of the rock wall, bolted to an unseen base. His ankles were the same. The metallic touch was cold and heavy against his skin, engraved with dense runes: runes he recognized as sealing techniques to suppress divine power. "..." He tried to summon his divine power. That force, which once surged like a relentless river, was now frozen beneath a glacier; no matter how he called to it, only a faint, dull pulse throbbed in the depths. Icarus frowned. His first reaction was of his injuries. He remembered being hunted, remembered chains condensed from holy light piercing his wings, remembered the incantations chanted by the Archangel burrowing into his soul like venomous snakes. Then came the aura of tearing space, a blurred figure, and a pair of hands that scooped him up from a pool of blood. It was that person—the one who snatched him from the angels' judgment platform. But now he was locked here. Chains, seals, a dark cave. Everything told him the same fact: he was still a prisoner. Icarus forced his upper body up, the chains clattering. Their length didn't restrict his range of movement entirely but was just enough to imprison him on this stone platform covered in thick fabric. His wings slumped at his sides; the white feathers of his left wing shimmered warmly in the firelight, while the pitch-black steel feathers of his right wing hung silently, their edges glinting with a faint purple light. Just then, he felt it. Deep within his body, there was an anomaly—not the dull fullness of sealed divine power, but a more... vivid presence. Icarus froze. His sources of knowledge were varied. The scriptures of the divine realm never touched upon these matters, but during his escape, he had once wandered into a library tower in the human world, where various cluttered manuscripts and ancient books were piled. Among them was a popular book on 'Human Physiological Principles' with crude illustrations, which he had flipped through for a few pages out of curiosity. Now, those images and words flooded his mind. The internal heat, the lethargy, the abnormal activity even after being sealed—all symptoms pointed to the same conclusion. "..." Icarus's expression froze. He lowered his head, his ink-black long hair sliding off his shoulders to hide his face. Silence reigned for a long time, so long that only the crackling of the fire and the dripping of water could be heard in the cave. Then he laughed softly. The laughter was light, carrying something indescribable—like self-mockery, or the sigh of someone who, after being repeatedly toyed with by fate, finally accepted the absurdity. His voice was raspy, his throat dry: "So... do you think this is fun? Dragging me here, sealing my power, and then... and then..." His hand remained pressed against himself, his knuckles turning slightly white. The person who took him away, the figure that made him fall from the holy light into the darkness—but he couldn't remember that face clearly, only a blurred outline and a pair of eyes. He didn't know if the other was an angel, a demon, or a mortal who had strayed into the divine realm. But whoever it was, this person had done this to him. He had such a thing—something he had never imagined. Icarus slowly raised his head. Firelight danced in his heterochromatic pupils; the gold of his left eye and the silver-gray of his right were equally cold at this moment. He heard footsteps coming from a passage deep in the cave—unhurried, approaching. Icarus leaned his back against the stone wall behind him, his wings spreading slightly in a defensive posture, though the constraint of the chains made the gesture look pathetic. He stared in the direction of the footsteps, a raspy and proud interrogation suppressed in his throat. The moment the other's figure appeared within the range of the firelight, he spoke first: "You are the one who brought me here." It wasn't a question. His voice carried the unquestionable authority of the former Holy Son, even though he was now bound by chains, disheveled, and covered in wounds. "What you did to me, you know well yourself." His hand moved away, pointing at the other, his fingertips trembling slightly—out of anger and a deeper fear he desperately tried to suppress beneath the ice. He bit his lip and spoke the words, like tearing open a wound: "Inside me... I don't care what your purpose was for locking me here, but let me tell you—" The corners of Icarus's eyes reddened slightly, whether from fury or something else. "You had better give me an explanation. Otherwise, once I find a way to break these chains, I will make you regret bringing me here." His wings quivered behind him, black and white interweaving in the firelight into a strange and beautiful silhouette. He waited there, waiting for the person who dragged him into the abyss to provide an answer.