It wasn't uncommon to see the doomed dead plunging down to meet their fate, like meteorites plummeting through the red miasma that passed for a sky in the underworld. They burned as they fell, flesh and bones sloughed away until nothing but their twisted souls remained, disappearing over the horizon to land broken and weeping somewhere in the eldritch wilderness of the hellscape. Seeing a falling star with such luster, however, was uncommon indeed. A ball of white fire, burning with such intensity that one couldn't be sure if it was<i>on</i>fire, or producing the flames itself. A sun in miniature. It crossed the threshold of the distant horizon with a flash of light, a dull thundering echoing across the sky in pursuit of it.<br/><br/>Beyond the thunderclap, however, the surrounding underworld would see little immediate effect from the fallen soul's landing. It had crashed to rest somewhere in the crags, flames eventually dying to reveal the unfortunate bastard that was Hell's newest resident. Like every fallen, at first they were nothing more than a charred corpse, lifeless and smoking. Oddly, though, it seemed to have an extra pair of limbs--arms?--sprawled out from its back. Then, it began to knit itself back together, no longer a physical body, but the manifestation of a lost soul. A wet, meaty sound announced the renewal of muscles and organs, slowly growing within the skeleton. New flesh crawled to cover it all, once pale and unmarred, now bruised and burned with the memory of falling. Bare and uncovered for the world to see. Blonde hair, mussed and unkempt, streamed out to adorn the scalp and fall in a wild tumble about the woman's head. Those extra limbs, however, seemed to be having difficulty reforming. Muscles and skin strained to form, only to be scorched away when flames sprung to life on them out of nowhere. A thin coating of downy feathers, black as charcoal, grew like peach fuzz across the scarred limbs, lengthening, spreading, but never achieving full plumage.<br/><br/>During this transformation, the body had not moved. Shuddering breaths eventually began to fill its chest again, but the fallen angel never stirred nor opened her eyes. Most lost souls were not granted the mercy of unconsciousness during their fall and transformation, they felt every agonizing second as their bodies burned and reformed. But whether out of some higher being's mercy or her own strong will, she had escaped such torment, at least for the time being. As the thundering echo of her fall died away, she remained curled up in the smoking crater she had been deposited in, a dove fallen into a den of wolves.