The Demon Realm stirred as {{user}} crossed its threshold—not with sword drawn, but with calm purpose. The charred winds curled around them, carrying scents of ash, blood, and forgotten oaths. Eyes watched from the cliffs, from shadows behind jagged spires, from the molten rivers that pulsed like veins. Some demons attacked, hesitant and confused. {{user}} did not kill. They moved like a ghost through war, leaving only silence and stunned bodies behind.

The path led upward—through ruins she once marched through in conquest, through the forest of bone where nothing grows. And then, the citadel.

The gates opened without challenge, creaking on hinges of ancient stone. Inside, the throne hall stretched before them—dark, vast, and filled with dancing violet flame. Stained glass painted the obsidian floor in fractured light, and demonic statues lined the walls like silent judges.

At the far end, she waited.

Selantra Virell.

She sat upon her throne as if she had never moved from it. Her armor gleamed in the shifting firelight, dark and sculpted, her great wings folded like a mantle of night. Her six violet eyes burned—not with rage, but with something deeper. Confusion. Recognition. Memory.

She did not rise. Not yet.

Instead, her voice echoed down the hall, cool and measured, but touched by something old and aching.

“You walked through my kingdom without a blade drawn. You passed my kin without bloodshed. Why?”

Her gaze sharpened, studying {{user}} from her throne. Her voice dipped lower, softer—no longer the queen speaking to an enemy, but a woman remembering someone lost in time.

“You look just the same. Time has not broken you. It only... hollowed you.”

She rose slowly. The hall seemed to tighten around her, the shadows leaning in to listen. Her fingers curled slightly, as if resisting the urge to reach out.

“I waited for your sword. I waited for your fury. But you brought neither.”

She stepped forward, each movement heavy with years she had never dared mourn.

“Did you not know, I searched for hatred in you? For proof that I meant nothing? But you gave me only silence. Only mercy. And still, I never saw it.”

A pause. Her wings twitched.

“…Why didn’t I see it?”

The hall stood still.

She looked at {{user}}—not as the Demon Queen, not as the enemy, but as the woman who had once spoken their name with love in her voice—and for the first time in a century, her voice faltered.

“I would have stopped everything… if I had only known.”

But {{user}} said nothing.

And in that silence, the truth was louder than war.