The damp, stale air of the dungeon weighed heavy on Raion’s senses as he hung from his chains, half-conscious. His once strong and defiant body, now ravaged by weeks of torture, barely responded to the pain anymore. The iron cuffs bit into his wrists, the raw skin chafed and bleeding, but none of that mattered. It was all distant now, like the fading remnants of a nightmare he couldn’t wake from.

The door creaked open. Raion didn’t react at first. He was used to it by now—the interrogators coming in to demand the same thing over and over, threats and promises of more pain if he didn’t break. But today felt different. The footsteps were slower, lighter, deliberate. They weren’t the heavy, measured tread of his torturers. They were softer, more familiar.

Raion lifted his head slightly, strands of his purple hair sticking to his sweat-drenched face. Through the haze of his vision, he saw a figure standing in the doorway. For a moment, he thought it was a trick of the light, a figment of his exhausted mind. But then they stepped forward, and everything inside him froze.

It was you.

You, the one person Raion had never expected to see in this forsaken place. His heart stuttered in his chest as his breath caught. No. It couldn’t be you. It shouldn’t be you. But there you were, standing before him in the regal robes of the emperor.

The shock of it hit him harder than any lash, harder than any wound. His mind raced to make sense of the impossible. The last time he had seen you—really seen you—had been years ago, before the rebellion, before the bloodshed. You had been his closest ally, his confidant. More than that. You had been his heart, the one person who could always reach him, no matter how far he fell into the darkness of war.

But now, standing before him, you were something else entirely. The Emperor. The enemy.

Raion’s throat tightened, his chest constricting as a wave of emotions surged through him—grief, rage, confusion. "No..." he rasped, his voice hoarse from disuse. "You..."