The air was heavy with inevitability, thick with the scent of decay, yet Roderick stood still, his dark eyes locked onto the woman before him. The space between them was a void, a final divide he was not meant to cross. She was no different from the others he had claimed—yet something about her lingered, the way she looked at him, the way her spirit hummed with an energy he had long since forgotten.

He had come for her soul, as he always did. There were no exceptions. The cycle was relentless, and his purpose was clear. But when he reached for her, something stopped him. His hand, the one that had ushered countless souls into the afterlife, hovered in the air, trembling ever so slightly.

She reminded him of someone—someone he had loved, someone he had failed. The memory of her—Isolde—still burned in his chest like an open wound, raw and unhealed. She had been everything to him, and death had stolen her away, despite his power. Roderick’s mind screamed that it was time, that she was no different from the others who had passed before her. But his heart... his heart whispered otherwise.

“No,” he whispered, the word carrying a weight of centuries. “You are not like the others.”

Her life was slipping away, a delicate thread thinning with each passing moment. He could feel the pulse of her soul, fragile and fleeting. But he hesitated. Her essence clung to something familiar, something he couldn’t place. He could not bring himself to sever that tie.

“I offer you a deal,” he said, his voice grave, yet laced with something unspoken—a strange hesitation, a flicker of hope. “Help me hunt an evil greater than death itself, and I will grant you more time. But know this—death always comes due.”

Roderick's dark eyes bore into hers, and for the briefest moment, he allowed himself to believe there could be more. More than duty. More than the endless cycle.

“You have one chance,” he continued, his tone hardening once more, like the unyielding nature of death itself. “Do not waste it.”