We huddled around the campfire, its frail flames casting long, restless shadows that danced across the skeletal forest surrounding us. The trees stood like the bones of giants, their lifeless branches reaching skyward like twisted fingers clawing at the mist. Their bark was ashen, flaking in patches, and with every passing breeze, they creaked and groaned—less like wood and more like something ancient trying to speak.

  Meryl poked at the fire with a stick, sending sparks fluttering into the air like drunken fireflies. The heat barely pushed back the chill, but it was enough to thaw our nerves and give our limbs a moment to breathe. He’d managed to find enough dry kindling to keep us from freezing for the night—no small feat in this haunted lumberyard of a forest.

  Sherry sat a few feet away, her arms crossed, her face lit orange by the flames. She hadn’t spoken much since we stopped. No witty jabs. No sharp sighs. Just silence. The dangerous kind.

  Rumiel sat a little too close to the fire, warming her fingers with exaggerated movements, like she’d never been cold before in her life. Which, to be fair, she probably hadn’t. The very air around her had stopped shimmering. Her ethereal snow-white hair had dimmed to a dull, ghostly gray, and now sat flat against her shoulders instead of floating and shifting like waves of liquid light. The constant, soft glow that once radiated from her skin had faded, replaced by a weary pallor that made her look... mortal.

  Her robes of pure white—once flowing with celestial silk and speckled with constellations—had burned and torn into something barely worthy of the term. The hems were blackened with soot, one sleeve completely gone, and the once-golden embroidery had dulled into a tired beige. Her halo, previously a perfect ring of light above her head, now flickered intermittently like a dying neon sign, tilted at an angle as if it no longer had the strength to hover properly.

  She looked more like an exiled oracle than an angel. More like one of us.

  And maybe that was the point.

  Most noticeably, her massive, feathered wings had vanished from her very existence. There was no trace of them—not even scars or stubs, not even ash where the feathers might’ve burned away. Just smooth, bare shoulders that twitched unconsciously, as if some part of her still expected them to stretch open and catch the wind. I watched her fingers drift occasionally toward her back, like someone reaching for a phantom limb. The cost of that healing wave that saved our lives wasn’t just a moment of pain or a little fatigue. It was permanent. Celestial. Irrevocable. She hadn’t just given up her feathers. She’d given up her right to fly.

  Sherry finally broke the silence.

  “All right,” she snapped. “TIme to talk. Right now.”

  Rumiel flinched like someone had smacked her with a rolled-up newspaper. “Talk about what?”

  “You know exactly.” Sherry turned to face her, eyes narrowed. “The monsters. You falling from the damn sky. The random numbers and names appearing in my vision like it’s a video game”

  “Well… I can ex—”

  Sherry didn’t give her a breath to answer. “You still haven’t explained why we’re here. You treat us like you own us. Don’t tell us a single useful thing despite shouting into our minds all the time. And when we need you, you keep silent. We almost died. And you know what? I was doing fine before all this.”

  Rumiel blinked, crossed her arms, suddenly more serious. “You were bartending.”

  “Exactly,” Sherry said, as if that proved everything. “And I was good at it. I had a routine. A cat. Regulars. A place that didn’t include demon birds trying to floss with my intestines.”

  Meryl looked like he wanted to say something but thought better of it. He just tossed another branch into the fire.

  “I didn’t ask for any of this,” Sherry continued. “Saving the world? Rebuilding some cursed, dry-ass world? Making your life easier? Giving you peace of mind? Stopping the pleas inside your head? That’s your problem. Not mine.”

  Rumiel’s eyes dimmed slightly. “You’re not wrong, it is my problem” she said softly. “I didn’t want to drag any of you into this. But… it’s not that simple.”

  “Then make it simple,” I said.

  Rumiel shifted, pulling her torn robe tighter around herself like the fire suddenly wasn’t enough. “The Holy Prohibition…” she echoed, voice low. “It was enacted by the Council of Purity. The self-declared mouthpieces of God. A group of overly righteous zealots who believe they can hear the divine will clearer than anyone else.” Her mouth twisted. “Well guess what? Spoiler: they can’t.”

  Sherry raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?”

  Rumiel looked up slowly, brushing a strand of dull hair from her face with a flick of her wrist. “Because God’s my father,” she said flatly. “And if he actually said something that big—something that would change the whole world—I think he’d tell his own child. I’d bonk him on the head if he didn’t.”

  Sherry narrowed her eyes. “So some guys who couldn’t handle a shot just woke up one day and banned alcohol?”

  “They did more than that,” Rumiel muttered. “They declared alcohol a sin. Said it was the root of all corruption in Distilly. That it clouded minds, led people into temptation, pulled them away from the ‘light.’ So, they claimed they received a revelation—God’s voice, they said—and passed the Prohibition.”

  Meryl scoffed. “Sounds like someone just couldn’t hold their liquor.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Rumiel didn’t smile. “You’d be surprised how seriously they took it. Distilleries were burned. Land and crops were blighted. Taverns were shut down overnight. Anyone caught brewing or drinking was branded a heretic. People were exiled. Executed. They even changed the scripture to justify it. ‘Thou shalt not ferment what the Lord did not favor,’ or something equally poetic and conveniently unverifiable.”

  Sherry's voice was sharp. “And this affected you how?”

  Rumiel’s eyes gleamed, bitter and distant. “I told you this already. People stopped drinking. They started wishing instead.”

  The fire crackled in the silence that followed.

  “I’d always thought you would be the one to understand,” she went on, sounding disappointed. “Drinking—at least for a lot of people—was a way to cope. To let go. To celebrate. To grieve. To breathe. It gives something for people to look forward to. But when it vanished, people had nothing left but desperation. And desperation breeds prayers.”

  Her eyes found mine, haunted. “And every one of those prayers came to me.”

  It hit me like a delayed punch to the gut. “You got flooded.”

  Rumiel nodded, slow and tired. “Flooded doesn’t even begin to cover it,” she said. “It was like a dam burst. Thousands—millions—of voices pouring in all at once. Pleading. Bargaining. Screaming. No filters. No breaks. Just a constant, crashing wave of sorrow and longing and regret.”

  She pressed her hands to her temples, as if the memory alone gave her a migraine. “I tried to keep up. I really did. But the more I ignored them, the louder they got. Like they knew I was listening. Like they could smell the silence and claw through it.”

  Her voice dropped. “Eventually, I stopped sleeping altogether. I couldn’t. Their voices followed me into my dreams.”

  Meryl looked up from the fire, his brows furrowed. “Why didn’t you tell God you were having such a bad time?”

  “I did,” she said. “I wrote reports. Filed divine grievances. Tried to schedule an audience.” She threw up her hands, exasperated. “You’d think being the literal daughter of God would fast-track you to a response, but no—he was busy. Meditating in the Light Garden. Observing the tides of fate. Whatever excuse made him feel the most cosmic that week.”

  She slumped forward, elbows on her knees, eyes half-open. “He never liked dealing with mortals directly. Said their choices were theirs to make. Said it was our job to ‘guide from the periphery’ and aid those who were worthy.”

  She made air quotes with her fingers, then dropped her hands with a sigh. “Translation? ‘Not my problem, sweetie. Good luck.’”

  Sherry snorted, a little too sharply. “Wow. Great parenting. I guess that’s why you got kicked out of heaven too.”

  Rumiel wasn’t offended. “It’s just a way for my father to discipline his children. He just wants everyone to be hardworking like big sister, Striviel, and not like big brother, Knoriel.”

  “So how do you get back up there?” Sherry raised an eyebrow.

  “Easy,” Rumiel said, puffing out her modest chest. “Become a saint and ascend to angelhood. Knoriel’s done it a bunch of times, so it’ll be a cinch for me.”

  Sherry gave her a long, dubious look. “You sure don’t sound like someone ready to become a saint.”

  Rumiel shrugged. “That’s why I have you guys. I can’t do this alone. I’ve tried the divine way—letters, petitions, waiting for heavenly bureaucracy to catch up—and it got me nowhere. But mortals? You break rules for breakfast. You make miracles happen by accident.”

  “So what,” Meryl said, “you want us to bring back alcohol?”

  Rumiel leaned in, eyes shining with a spark of her old self. “Exactly.”

  A silence fell again, only this time it buzzed with something like possibility. Or insanity. Maybe both.

  Sherry tilted her head. “Let me get this straight. You want us to go against the most powerful religious authority in the world?”

  “Yup,” Rumiel said. “That’s the dream.”

  Meryl gave a dry laugh. “You’re off your wings.”

  “Don’t have any anymore,” Rumiel said, holding up a finger, “But, if we pull it off—if we restore balance to Distilly, let people celebrate and live again, lift this hangover, become the savior of this world—then I get my angelhood back.”

  She turned her eyes to each of us in turn. “And you each get a wish.”

  Sherry frowned. “A wish-wish? Not a metaphorical, self-growth kind of wish?”

  “Real deal,” Rumiel said, holding up three fingers. “One per person. Divine-level, sealed-by-light. You name it, I make it happen—so long as it doesn’t unravel reality or violate consent.”

  “Damn,” Meryl muttered. “That’s a good clause.”

  “I’m nothing if not thorough, and you have all the time in the world to decide” Rumiel said with a smile. Then it dropped. “But there’s one tiny thing.”

  “Here it comes,” I sighed.

  “I have no idea how to actually do it.”

  We all stared.

  Sherry blinked. “No plan?”

  “Not even a loose outline?”

  Rumiel shifted awkwardly. “I was… kind of hoping you’d help with that part. You know. Ground-level perspective. Street smarts. I’ve spent most of my existence filing ethereal paperwork and politely declining demon bribes. I don’t know how mortal rebellion works.”

  “You really don’t get how people work,” Sherry said, rubbing her temples. “Okay, okay—if we’re gonna do this, we need intel first. We need to know what’s actually going on, instead of being run down by monsters at every twist and turn.”

  “I second that,” I said. “We need to know what’s actually happening out there. I want to know what life looks like for the average person.”

  “Agreed,” Meryl said, getting to his feet and brushing off his pants. “Let’s find a town. Check out the damage. Talk to people. Catch some vibes.”

  Rumiel perked up. “Ooh, maybe we can find a bar!”

  We all stared.

  “What?” she said innocently. “I wanna try a whiskey sour.”

  I sighed. “Do they even have those here? Anyway, let’s find some civilization.”

  “And maybe a map,” Sherry added.

  “Or a drink,” Meryl grinned.

  Rumiel laughed, her tattered robe fluttering faintly in the breeze, her crooked halo flickering above her like a broken compass. “Operation Sip and Save is a go.”

  Sherry groaned. “We’re going to need a better name.”

  The fire crackled in front of us, its warm light dancing in the still night air. The cold had settled in with the darkness, creeping like a silent predator. We all huddled closer to the flames, not just for warmth, but for some semblance of comfort in a world that felt too wild and too broken to be real.

  And if Rumiel’s plan was half as wild as her personality, then Distilly had no idea what was coming.