The divine gaze burned through Azrael's body like acid through silk, each moment of contact threatening to unmake him entirely. His wings cracked further, hairline fractures spreading through bone and sinew as reality itself rejected his presence. The pain was beyond description—not just physical agony, but the existential terror of feeling his very existence being questioned by the fundamental forces of creation.

But pain, he had learned during three millennia of exile, could be transformed ...