The golden shard floated in the center of the throne room, whole and complete. The light it cast was warm, almost alive, pulsing in rhythm with the hearts of everyone in the chamber.
Lucifer knelt before it, his hands lowered, his chest empty.
He didn't know why he was here.
The ritual was finished. The fragments had merged. Something important had happened. But the details slipped through his mind like water through fingers. There was a name. A face. A reason.
Gone.
Damaris placed a hand on his shoulder.
"It's done."
Lucifer looked up at his father.
"What's done?"
Damaris's golden eyes held something like grief. He didn't answer. He just turned to the others.
"Prepare the body."
---
The reconstruction chamber was beneath the palace.
Lucifer had built it decades ago, though he couldn't remember why. It was a place of glass and silver light, where flesh could be shaped from memory and bone could be grown from dust.
