The drums stopped.
That was how the elder knew something was wrong—not the thud of the body, not the gasp that never came, but the sudden silence where rhythm had lived for thirty-seven years.
The boy had been playing since he could hold the sticks. Now the boy was a man of forty-two, and the elder was ancient, and the drums had stopped.
The elder found him on the stone floor of the training chamber. Face down. Arms at his sides. The kind of stillness that doesn't belong to sleep.
"Angel," the elder said. The name they gave him as a child, for the way he stepped between danger and the defenseless. "Angel."
Nothing.
The elder knelt—bones protesting, knees that had carried him through more wars than he could count—and pressed two fingers to the man's neck.
No pulse.
He'd been gone for at least three minutes. Maybe five. Long enough that the protocols of his people said to begin the death rites. Long enough that hope was a mathematical impossibility.
The elder began anyway.
There is a technique passed down through their lineage—not science, not magic, something between. The elder had used it twice before in his long life. Once it worked. Once it didn't.
He placed his hands over Angel's chest and began.
The Other Side
Angel didn't remember falling.
One moment he was playing the drums—the rhythm he used to enter the flow state, the beat that had carried him through a thousand training sessions—and then he was somewhere else.
Somewhere dark. Somewhere vast. Somewhere that felt like the pause between heartbeats stretched into eternity.
So this is it, he thought. Or didn't think. The distinction had ceased to matter.
He wasn't afraid. Fear requires a future to protect. He had no future anymore. He simply was—a point of awareness in an infinite space, waiting for whatever came next.
What came next was a question.
Not words. Not sound. Something that bypassed the senses entirely and arrived directly in the place where understanding lives.
What did you protect?
He tried to answer. He thought of the child he'd stepped in front of when he was barely old enough to stand. The training he'd undergone. The pilgrimages. The techniques mastered. The enemies defeated.
What did you protect?
The question came again. The same question. As if his answer hadn't reached whatever was asking. As if accomplishments and victories weren't the currency accepted here.
He thought harder. His father's teachings. His mother's faith. The lineage of warriors stretching back generations. The sacred duty passed down through blood and discipline.
What did you protect?
Three times. The question wouldn't change. His answers were irrelevant.
In the space between the third asking and what he finally understood, Angel stopped trying to prove anything. He stopped listing accomplishments. He stopped counting victories. He simply looked at what he'd actually done with his forty-two years.
And he saw.
He saw the child he'd saved, who grew into a healer.
He saw the elder he'd carried from a burning building, who lived another twenty years and trained the next generation.
He saw the students he'd taught patience when they wanted power, discipline when they wanted rage, mercy when they wanted vengeance.
He saw the small things. The meals shared with the lonely. The nights spent watching over the sick. The hands held when there was nothing else to give.
What did you protect?
And finally, he had an answer that fit the question.
"The space where they could become what they were meant to be."
The elder had been praying for four minutes.
His arms shook. His breath came ragged. The technique demanded everything—you didn't pull someone back from death without offering something of yourself in exchange. Energy. Time. Life. The calculus was never clear, but it was always expensive.
He thought of the boy he'd found beaten in an alley, standing over someone weaker, refusing to move. The boy who'd looked up at him with blood on his face and asked, "Did I do it right?"
Yes, the elder had told him. You have the thing skill cannot teach.
Forty years of training that thing into a weapon. Forty years of watching the boy become a man become a master.
He prayed harder.
In the space between, Angel felt something.
A pull. Not a command. A question of a different kind.
Are you done?
He considered. The peace here was real. The clarity was perfect. No more struggle. No more doubt. No more weight of preparation for battles that might never come.
But he saw the threads again. The connections to lives that were still being lived. The students who weren't finished. The work that wasn't complete.
His father's face appeared—not as a vision, but as a memory. The last time they'd spoken. The pendant pressed into his palm. The words that became his operating code:
"Do what you must and bring forth justice to save what is good for mankind."
He hadn't done it yet. The work wasn't finished.
Are you done?
"No."
The Return
The elder felt the heart start.
One beat. Weak, irregular, uncertain. Then another. Then a rhythm.
Angel's eyes opened.
Not slowly, like waking from sleep. All at once, like someone who'd been somewhere else and needed to verify where they'd returned to.
"The drums stopped," Angel said. His voice was a ruin, but his eyes were clear.
The elder couldn't speak. His hands were still pressed to Angel's chest, shaking too hard to lift. He'd given more than he knew he had.
"I heard them stop," Angel continued. "From... there."
"Where?" the elder managed.
Angel sat up. Slowly. Every muscle protested the return to function. He looked around the training chamber—the stone walls, the gravity generators, the mats and dummies, the drums waiting in their corner.
"I was asked a question. I had to answer it three times before I understood what was being asked."
That evening, Angel stood at the edge of the mountain and watched the sun descend.
Behind him, the elder emerged from the training chamber. Old. Tired. Diminished by what he'd given to bring his student back.
"You'll outlive me now," the elder said. Not complaint. Observation.
"I'll carry what you taught me."
"Will you teach it?"
Angel thought of the threads. The connections. The students not yet found, the lives not yet touched, the space not yet protected.
"Yes."
"Good." The elder walked to stand beside him. "The drums were silent for seven minutes. I counted every second."
"It felt longer where I was."
"Did it hurt? The return?"
Angel considered the question. The answer wasn't simple.
"Coming back was harder than dying. Dying was just... letting go. Coming back was choosing to pick everything up again. The weight. The doubt. The preparation for battles that might never come."
"Why did you choose it?"
"Because the question isn't answered yet. 'What did you protect?' I have more protecting to do before I can give a full answer."
Years Later
In a place that exists outside normal space, Angel watches his students train.
GG moves through the high-gravity zone—all fury and potential, all rage waiting to be channeled. She's new. She's dangerous. She's exactly the kind of fighter who needs to learn that power without purpose is just destruction.
He remembers the child he used to be, standing between danger and the defenseless. No skill. No power. No chance. Just the thing skill cannot teach.
He remembers dying. He remembers the question. He remembers choosing to come back for work that wasn't finished.
"Again," he calls out to GG.
She growls something he doesn't hear. She's frustrated. She wants to skip ahead to the techniques that kill rather than the discipline that saves.
"Again."
She complies. Not happy about it. She'll understand later.
They all understand later.
On a certain day each year, Angel rises before dawn and finds a place where the sun breaks through. In the Sprawl, these places are rare—Sunrise Lane in the Dregs, a gap in the towering structures that lets light touch the lowest levels for a few minutes each morning.
He sits there. He watches the light come.
If asked, he says only: "Today I remember that death isn't the end. It's just a door some of us get to close."
The light reaches his face.
He thinks of his father's last words. He thinks of the elder who died three years after pulling him back from the other side—"I told you I'd outlive you," Angel said at the funeral, though no one understood why he laughed through his tears.
He thinks of the threads. The connections. The space he's created for others to become what they were meant to be.
The answer to the question is longer now. It has more names in it. More faces. More stories.
One day, he'll face the question again. Death will stop asking and start insisting. When that happens, he wants to have an answer so complete that the silence after is satisfied.
Until then, he plays the drums. He trains the students. He creates the space.
And once a year, he sits in the light and remembers the door he closed.
"I've seen what waits on the other side. It's not punishment. It's not reward. It's a question: What did you protect? I'll spend the rest of my life earning my answer."
— Angel of the Abyss