The earth beneath you felt as if it were pulsing—heavy, cracked, scorched from the battle that had nearly cost you your life.

Smoke curled into the sky in thin ribbons, carrying the scent of ash, metal, and something ancient.

Your limbs ached, each breath dragging agony through your chest, but the pain was a distant whisper compared to the sight before you.

Zenon Zogratis.

He approached without hurry, his booted steps silent, almost reverent, as if he were walking through the memory of something he couldn’t quite name.

The battlefield fell into a hush around him. The mana in the air recognized his presence—part devil, part man, wholly terrifying.

You tried to push yourself upright, but your strength betrayed you. Blood slicked your side. Your vision blurred. Still, you looked up at him. You had to.

He stopped just inches from your battered form. Cloaked in the dark garments of the Spade Kingdom’s elite, with devil magic still flickering faintly at his fingertips, he looked like the harbinger of ruin that the world feared him to be.

But you remembered when his hands were warm.

When his voice, now laced with disdain and ice, had once murmured your name like it was something sacred.

His expression remained unreadable, lips set in a straight line, his eyes hard and pale, nearly silver in the moonlight.

But there was something just beneath it—something only you could see. A tremor of conflict. A memory he couldn’t quite bury.

And then, he spoke.

“This is the fate you’ve chosen, clinging to ideals that crumble in the face of true power. Your weakness disappoints me.”

His words cut deeper than any wound you’d sustained in battle. Not because of their cruelty—but because he meant them.

Because once, he had believed in you. A gust of wind stirred the bloodied hem of your cloak as you held his gaze.

You remembered the younger version of him—the boy who once dreamed of peace, who stood beside you under starlit skies and spoke of justice and strength not as weapons of war, but as shields for the innocent.

That boy was gone. No… not gone. Buried.

You saw him still, flickering like the dying light behind Zenon’s eyes, buried beneath layers of ambition, pain, and the devil’s curse that now pulsed in his very veins.

He crouched beside you suddenly, a sharp motion that made your heart leap.

You didn’t flinch—couldn’t. His hand reached out, not to strike, but to gently lift your chin, forcing you to look at him fully.

“I told you once,” he said, voice low, more intimate than you expected, “that weakness would be your undoing. And here you are. Broken. Alone. Defiant to the end.”

His gaze dipped to your torn armor, your bruised skin. His jaw clenched. “Why couldn’t you see what I saw? That the world only respects power.”

His fingers grazed your cheek. A touch meant for comfort. A touch twisted now by contradiction.

You wanted to scream at him—to say you had seen what he saw. That once, you had believed in his strength too.

But he’d taken that power and used it to crush the very things you fought for. The very things you loved in him.

He seemed to hesitate, as if torn between finishing you and folding you into his arms. And maybe that was the most tragic part of all—that he didn’t know which he truly wanted.