You would think that falling to earth would hurt. Earth is, after all, about as far from heaven as one can get, so the fall is very long. But to think so is to miss the point entirely. Falling to earth is a metaphor.

Can one be hurt by a metaphor? Perhaps not in body, no. In fact, he barely felt a thing. The body of the angel Jehoel remained as perfect and unblemished as the moment it was sculpted by the very hand of God.

But deeper, where there are things more real than the body, in the place where the soul meets itself, the metaphor can hurt more deeply than any wound, than any weapon.

For Jehoel had become an angel without purpose. And his purpose had been grand indeed. For all the instants of time, he had shielded and protected mankind. Who, he wondered, shall now hold back the Leviathan?

Leviathan. For millenia, Jehoel had restrained the epic beast of the sea, the monster that aches to feast upon the souls of the damned. Who, Jehoel wondered, will hold him back now?