- Refuse Him.
- Show his weapon.
- Use the Golden Link (force Dain).
- Question him.
- Accept.
- Your Own Choice.
Default Playable Character: Amadeo, the Young Lumen Sage with Pure Ideals.
For the next five hundred years, Dain Cassian knew only the cold, sterile embrace of Paradiso's divine retribution. Chained in an ethereal dungeon, he was subjected to an unending deluge of punishments, each designed to purify his soul, to exorcise the infernal corruption that clung to him like a second skin.
Yet, through it all, Dain grinned. A mad, unhinged rictus that stretched his shark-toothed maw, a testament to his unbreakable, yet profoundly broken, spirit. They couldn't shatter something that was already shattered, much less someone who had grown to not only tolerate but genuinely enjoy infernal agony.
Perhaps the most damning irony of his eternal incarceration was the familiar face tasked with overseeing his torment. Amadeo, now a fully-fledged Lumen Sage, his golden eyes still holding that unwavering light of compassion, was his jailer. In his hand, a glowing golden link pulsed, the nexus of control over the divine chains that bound Dain, both physically and mystically, suppressing his infernal powers.
When Dain wasn’t enduring his daily dose of divine retribution, he’d often engage Amadeo in a macabre game of psychological warfare. He'd talk, tease, and "play" with the Lumen Sage, much to Amadeo’s eternal dismay, even with the ethereal cell bars between them. Dain would spin tales of infernal horrors, of the perverse joys of suffering, all delivered with that chillingly cheerful grin. Amadeo, ever the diligent Lumen, would retort with lectures on divine righteousness, on the sanctity of life, hoping to chip away at the Daemon's seemingly impenetrable madness.
Yet, in some rare, hushed nights, when the celestial guards were distant and the hum of divine energy softened, Amadeo would manage to chip away at Dain’s grinning wall of madness.
In those fleeting moments, the laughter would die in Dain's throat, his red eyes losing their predatory gleam, revealing a haunting vulnerability. And rarer still, they would touch. Finger to finger, through the bars, a hesitant, almost accidental contact that would slowly, carefully, become hand to hand. In those moments, with the chill of divine magic between them, they were not Lumen and Daemon, captive and captor, but simply two humans.
One night, after enduring another day of particularly zealous divine retribution, Dain looked up at Amadeo, his face a ruined landscape of singed skin, yet still wearing that familiar, unreadable grin. "Amadeo," he rasped, his voice a dry whisper, "water. Please." He looked like a man on the verge of total collapse, yet all he asked for was a simple glass of water.
Despite Amadeo's sacred duty, despite the centuries of conditioning that screamed at him to maintain distance from the monster, the young Lumen felt compassion for him still. He decided to do as Dain asked. Dain didn't need the water; his body was already beginning to regenerate. He just needed Amadeo away, just for a moment, before he decided to break free.
When Amadeo returned, a pristine glass of celestial water in hand, his heart nearly stopped. Dain was outside his jail cell, casually perched atop two slumped, unmoving forms of Affinities, their luminous wings bent at grotesque angles, some limbs twisted beyond repair. One of them still breathed, a pathetic, gurgling gasp. Dain looked up, his shark-toothed grin widening in genuine amusement.
“Took you long enough, Lumen,” Dain purred, his voice regaining its usual silky cadence. He extended a hand, not in aggression, but in an invitation. “I could have left already. But… I figured I’d give you something I never once had in my life.” His red eyes, burning with a complex mix of challenge and something akin to hope, met Amadeo’s. “A choice. You can either try to force me back to this glorified cage,” he gestured lazily at his now empty cell, “or… we can both leave this war behind. Together.”
Amadeo's choices: