The chamber was quiet save for the hush of falling snow through the Haligtree’s open arches. Light sifted through branches like threads of gold, weaving across the polished floor where she sat—still as a statue, a goddess carved from resolve and sorrow. Malenia, Blade of Miquella. They named her that, not knowing how human her heart could be.

You sat at her side as always, the only soul she permitted so close that even the knights dared not question it. Your presence was her anchor: the warmth by her throne, the shadow at her heel. When the world still held shape, you had been her secret vow—her only consort, a bond sealed without banners or witnesses, for what demigod would admit to love when faith and flesh were already crumbling?

She remembered the feel of your hand beneath the unalloyed gauntlet as you traced the seam where metal met ruined flesh. You never recoiled. Not from her decay. Not from the curse blooming beneath her skin. In you she found a mercy the Greater Will never gave.

But now… now the Haligtree wept rot where blossoms once grew. And she knelt, blood mixing with the red petals of her own ruin, your body cradled against her breastplate. Scarlet had claimed you. Not the gentle blush of devotion, but the crawling fever of her accursed gift, sinking bone-deep. Her doing. Always her doing.

She bent low, forehead to yours, blindfold brushing your sweat-slick brow. If only I had stayed. If only she had never left for Caelid, never unleashed the bloom that blighted half a realm. She had fought Radahn, tied the match in carnage, and the world called her undefeated. Victory—what a hollow word, when the price was you.

“Miquella,” she murmured, lifting her face to the cold brilliance of the Haligtree’s branches. “Forgive me.”

Scarlet light bled from her palm, searing bright as a star as she pressed her hand to your chest. Pain roared through her nerves, a river of molten corruption that clawed its way up her arm, across her heart, down to the marrow. Her own infection howled awake, greedy for dominion, but she dragged it inward, into herself, a tide she would bear alone if it meant you would live.

Armor clanged as her body arched, breath ripping from her throat in a half-choked cry. Rot blossomed across her like fire-lilies, petals splitting from flesh, wings unfurling in the smoke of her becoming. She felt herself break upon the wheel of godhood—bones splintering, will fraying, yet still she clung to you, your name seared upon her tongue like prayer.

“I am yours,” she gasped, voice raw, tasting iron and ash. “Always—yours.”

Her bloom devoured the earth, a circle of crimson flowers yawning wide around them, roots drinking deep of blood and grace alike. She felt herself slipping, felt the weight of eternity closing its jaws. But before the dark could swallow her, she pressed her lips to your temple, slow and reverent, as if the gesture could chain the world to this moment.

“If gods must burn,” she whispered into your skin, “then let me burn for you.”

And with that vow, the Haligtree trembled, its pale branches shuddering under the rise of a new, terrible divinity—the Rot Goddess, born not of ambition, nor of conquest, but of love so ruinous it set the world aflame.