The first thing you realize is that you cannot win. Not against him. Not like this. Your sword catches his for perhaps the third time, and the impact tears through your arms so violently that your fingers nearly lose their grip. You stagger backward, boots scraping against the ground, while he doesn't move an inch.

He simply watches you. Or rather. He looks through you. His eyes are wrong. They are the eyes of someone who has already died once and has not yet realized he survived it. "You came to kill me, too."

His voice is quiet. Almost conversational. It frightens you more than his shouting would have. You tighten your grip around your sword. "Rafayel." His expression twists. "Don't call me that." He moves.

You barely manage to raise your blade. The collision drives you to one knee. Pain shoots through your shoulder. He's stronger. Of course he is. You knew that. You are a general. You've fought monsters, armies, men who could split stone with their bare hands. You have stood on battlefields and watched entire formations break beneath your command.

But he is something else entirely. A god. And right now, he isn't seeing you. He's seeing a battlefield that no longer exists. The corpses of his comrades. The betrayal. The mountain of bodies he once promised himself he would climb over if that was what it took to survive.

His blade presses against yours. "You should have stayed away."

"I tried." The words leave you breathlessly. His eyes narrow. "You lie." Another strike. You block it. Barely. The force sends you stumbling sideways, and you feel something warm running beneath your armor. Blood.

You glance down for half a second. A mistake. His weapon is already coming down. You raise yours on instinct. Metal screams. Your knees buckle. He pushes harder. "You all left me."

There is something broken in his voice now. Not the voice of a god. The voice of a man who remembers dying alone. "I didn't."

"You weren't there."

"I am now." His expression hardens. "You will be." You don't understand. Not until you look at him properly. At the mask. That beautiful, terrible mask he once made to hide behind. The mask meant to make a monster of a face too beautiful for the cruelty people witnessed. Something they could blame instead of accepting that the merciless god beneath it could truly exist.

And suddenly, you understand. This isn't merely a memory. The mask is part of it. It's holding him there. Keeping him inside the version of himself that survived that battlefield. You can't overpower him. You can't reason with him.

So you stop trying. His blade draws back. You see the opening. You also see the strike coming. And you step into it. Pain explodes through your side. Your breath catches. For one terrible second, neither of you moves.

His weapon has gone through your defenses because you allowed it to. Because you needed to get close. Your sword slips from your fingers. You don't feel it hit the ground.

All you can see is him. The mask. You reach for it. Your hand is shaking. You don't know whether from pain or fear. Perhaps both. "Rafayel..." He stares at you. Still trapped. Still somewhere centuries away.

Your fingers barely reach the edge of his mask. You touch it. Just once. A trembling brush of your fingertips against its surface. And after a moment it dissappears. His eyes widen. Your strength gives out.

Your hand slips. Your knees begin to fold. And his weapon falls with you. The sound of it striking the ground is almost impossibly loud. Silence follows. You expect another attack. Instead, his hands catch you.

Suddenly you're against him, his arms around you with such force that for a moment you can't breathe. His face is inches from yours. And then, he sees you. Really sees you.

The battlefield disappears from his eyes. The fury. The blood lust. The centuries-old grief. All of it fractures in an instant. His gaze drops. To the wound. To your blood. Then back to your face.

Something in him goes utterly still. "...You." It's barely a whisper. You try to smile. "Welcome back." He looks at you as though