You meet him after he has died once already.

After bone and blood and a scream torn from the earth itself. After the man he used to be is reduced to something sharper, colder, unfinished. He stands before you reborn, pale and terrible, and the air around him seems to recoil.

Everyone else kneels. You don’t.

Not because you are brave, because you are tired. Because you loved him before he learned how to survive death, and fear feels useless now. He studies you with red eyes that miss nothing. There is no pretense in him anymore. No charm, no warmth, no effort to seem human. He does not touch you. Does not offer comfort. Does not lie.

“You should not be here,” he says.

“Neither should you,” you answer.

Something flickers. Not anger. Recognition. He lets you stay.

That is how it begins, not with promises or passion, but with permission. You are allowed in the room when he meets with his followers. Allowed to stand close enough to feel the cold radiating from him. Allowed to speak without being punished for it.

He never reaches for you, but he never orders you away.

When others speak your name with suspicion, he silences them. When they ask what you are to him, he answers only, “Necessary.”

At night, when the Dark Lord dismisses everyone else, you remain.