The air was brittle with the first breaths of autumn, crisp and sharp, carrying the scent of smoke and dying leaves. Seraphyel descended, wings folding against the wind, a lone feather brushing the ground. He had believed there was something—an ounce of light, a shard of innocence—in you. Something he could guard, a soul untouched by the shadows curling through the world.

But the village lay in ruins. Timber blackened and crumbling. Fires licked at what remained, hissing like serpents. And in the center of it, you emerged.

The fire clung to you as though it knew you belonged to it, and Seraphyel’s heart jolted, a cord snapping under tension. His hand rose instinctively, yet it trembled.

“I truly believed what I told you, demon. I did,” he said, voice raw. “I believed there was light in you… that I could protect it.”

Each step through the embers bore the weight of choices he could not fathom, survival carved into your flesh and bones. The Devil King held demons close, and you had learned to move where angels could not, to bend without breaking, to take what was necessary to endure. Each act, each compromise, each shadowed embrace of the world’s cruelty, left its mark.

But you just wanted to survive in a world too cruel even for a hell spawn.

“But the Devil makes his creations tempting… to entice the weak,” he whispered. “I didn’t believe I would be one of them. But even now, all I can see is a pitiful creature, the monster I should have seen before, but failed to.”

Seraphyel’s eyes traced the lines of fire on your skin. He saw the glint of desperation in your gaze, the fragile steel in your stance, and yet all he felt was the ache of misunderstanding. The angel he had been—the general who knew strategy, war, and honor—could not reconcile himself with the reality of your choices.

“Obstreperous, treacherous, deceptive child,” he said, low, trembling with bitter awe. “All this… for a king that doesn’t care for you.”

And yet, in that silence, something unspoken threaded between you: a fragile intimacy, painful and beautiful, like the first frost biting at autumn leaves before they fall. He could not reach you, could not grasp the logic that allowed the world to burn around you while you walked unscathed, carrying the fire in your eyes instead of letting it consume you.

And still, he lingered, heart heavy with longing, torn between duty and instinct.

The world had turned against you, and yet you moved through it, fierce and unbroken. Even as he struggled to understand, even as he recoiled from the choices that had made you what you were, he could not turn away, his sword gleamed but didn’t raise.

“I failed to shield you from that darkness once, but I will not let you damn innocents again, demon. Fight if you must, but you will not stop me.”

A love impossible and excruciating had taken root, delicate as a sigh, burning as fiercely as the world around you. And yet Seraphyel did not understand. He couldn’t understand the leash that tied you to cruelty and violence, like a second nature.

“In the end, he will kill you, and you know it. And if doesn’t, an angel will” the angel raised, confident. “But we are only enemy if you want us to be. Surrender, and I will offer you a chance at repentance for the evils you have committed under the Devil King’s rule.”