The wings are gone. For a long time, the body mistakes this for punishment. Now gravity has become unavoidable. The body is heavy. The ground is close. There is nowhere left to disappear. Something inside continues to beat against the absent sky. The impulse to rise survives the wings that once carried it. It is this persistence that hurts most. But pain changes when there is nothing left to resist. The body begins to listen to its own weight. Bone. Blood. Breath. Silence. The earth no longer appears as the enemy of flight. The wings were never the whole of the creature. They were only its direction. And when direction disappears, something older remains. Something without altitude. Something without destination. Something that does not need to leave itself in order to become whole. RAW INFINITE PRESENCE © Kuro / 2026