She had waited a thousand years for this moment — the precise instant when the weight of every sorrow she had ever carried finally released its grip and she rose, arms flung wide, into the endless blue. No one had told her that freedom would feel like this — not like escaping something, but like becoming something, like the final note of a song that had been building since before she was born. The world below grew quiet and small as she climbed, the vertical rain of blue light washing through her wings and carrying away everything that no longer belonged to her. She reached one hand toward heaven and stretched the other toward the earth, not choosing between them but holding both, understanding at last that she was the living bridge between the two. And in that suspended, luminous moment between the world she had known and the one she was ascending toward, she laughed — a sound so pure and unguarded that every sleeping thing below stirred briefly, smiled without knowing why, and turned toward the light.