The sky over the village was black. Smoke curled upward like grasping fingers, blotting out the stars.
Beneath the floorboards of a half-collapsed hut, a baby cried.
Michael.
Frigga's last act before the world crumbled had been to hide him there, wrapped in warm cloth and tucked beneath the earth like a seed. Now the world above was dead — still, silent, smoldering.
But he was alive.
The flames had never touched him.
As the wind howled through the ruins, the crying drew attention. Not from man. Not from orc. But from something older — something watching. High in the mountains, cloaked in snow and starlight, a being stirred. She had not walked among mortals for years beyond count.
She was a Maia of Yavanna, a spirit of the forests and wind. Her name was Aelinel, and though she rarely interfered, the cry reached her heart like a dagger.
She descended.
When she found the child, her breath caught in her throat. The hair — gold as the dawn. The faint shimmer of folded wings. The light in his small chest.
"…Oh," she whispered. "So this is what the whispers meant."
She gathered him in her arms. He stopped crying. For a long while she just held him, swaying in the ruin of the world, and then vanished into the snow.
Years Passed.
Michael grew quickly — not unnaturally so, but with purpose. Aelinel raised him in secret, far from mortal lands, in a hidden glade where ancient trees still whispered songs from the time before the Sun.
He was different.
At five, he could call birds from the trees with a single note. By seven, he could glow faintly in the dark, and the animals feared him even as they obeyed.
But he was kind. Curious. Gentle.
He asked, constantly, about his parents. Aelinel did not lie — she told him of Frigga, the woman who gave him life and love, and of Lucifer… the flameborn.
"Your father was made from darkness," she told him once, kneeling by a stream, "but loved in light. That is no small thing."
"Where is he?" Michael asked.
Aelinel looked to the east.
"Lost," she said. "But not gone."
The Dream Came at Age Ten.
He stood in fire.
Mountains crumbled around him. A golden figure knelt in chains, screaming his name. Above them loomed a throne of iron, and a shadow that swallowed the world.
And then… wings. Not gold. Black. Broken. Burning.
Michael woke screaming.
He ran into the forest, barefoot, tears streaking down his cheeks. Aelinel found him there, shaking.
"I saw him," he whispered. "My father. He's in pain."
Aelinel wrapped her arms around him, and said nothing.
But she knew.
The time was coming. The world would call for Michael — not as a boy, but as something more. A being born of light and shadow. A child of love… and war.