The Spirit Hall, once filled with cries and whispers, had drowned into a silence so deep that even the air seemed to hold its breath. Blood shimmered on the polished stone, each droplet spreading outward in red veins that slowly carved themselves into a circle beneath Illyria's bare feet. The clash of powers rattled the walls; Azeriel's shadows tore through the marble, yet she stood at the center unmoving, the epicenter of stillness.
Her hands trembled, not from fear, but from the weight of what she carried. Every line of the circle she etched with her blood was deliberate, perfect, as though it had been waiting for centuries to be drawn. The crimson spread wider, filling grooves invisible to the naked eye until it formed a shape that seemed older than language itself—a covenant of silence, of endings, of rebirth.
Azeriel's voice thundered against the silence.
"You bleed because you are weak."
His divine aura pressed down, suffocating, filled with a desire that sought to consume not just her body but her very existence. Yet Illyria only lowered her lashes, and her lips curved—not in mockery, but in something softer, something gentler. A smile that had not touched her face in fifty years.
It was the smile of release.
Within her, silence unfurled like a dark blossom. She no longer heard the roars of magic colliding, nor the tearing of Azeriel's shadowed wings through the air. She heard only the slow beat of her own heart and the echo of memories that had lived inside her for too long.
Fifty years of a nightmare she had stolen from Kaelus—her forbidden father, her king. Fifty years of a future where the Spirit Realm burned, its towers shattered, its rivers turned black. Fifty years of screams that no one else had ever heard, because she had carried them all alone.
Every moment of her existence since then had been borrowed.
Every smile she forced, every word she spoke—shadows cast by a truth she could not share.
And now, that truth had reached its purpose.
The clash continued with a silence so sharp it seemed to cut through the world itself. Azeriel stood above the fractured marble of the Spirit Hall, his eyes burning with divine certainty, the weight of his will pressing down like a collapsing sky. Around him the shadows of memory twisted into shapes—echoes of all those who had bowed, broken, or begged before him. He carried them like trophies, each one proof that he alone was the author of destiny.
Illyria stood across from him, sword trembling in her hand—not from weakness, but from the unbearable stillness in her heart. Her eyes glowed faintly with that pale, starlit hue, the light of the Spirit Crown, yet her face betrayed nothing except quiet resolve. Behind her, the illusions swayed like fragile lanterns: Serenia's gentle form with her hair like woven silver, Kaelira's warm smile, the shadows of friends whose laughter had once filled her childhood halls.
"Illyria," whispered her mother's voice, soft as a lullaby caught between breaths. "You do not need to fight. You need to live."
Others followed—friends, companions, guards she had loved like brothers and sisters. Their pleas melted into one another: Live, don't fight. Protect, but stay. Don't leave us. Their words became the very air around her, suffocating with tenderness, with love, with all the ties that had made her strong and yet fragile at once.
Illyria closed her eyes. She wanted to believe them. To surrender to that kindness, to live for their smiles. But behind those illusions—behind even her mother's tender voice—there was another truth. The truth her father Kaelus had carved into her when he had let her glimpse his deepest memory: the real future.
A Spirit Realm drowned in fire. Mountains sinking into oceans of ash. Skies blackened by shrieks that tore through heaven itself. And her people—her people scattered like broken glass, hunted to the very edge of time.
That memory had lived in her marrow for fifty years. It had been her nightmare and her burden. A weight so unbearable she could never speak it aloud, because the moment she did, hope would collapse. And so she carried it alone. Every smile she gave, every command as queen, every step of her blade in training—all of it wrapped around that single, unbearable secret.
Tonight, all of it had come to this.
Her inner voice whispered with steady calm: The only way to fool a god of desire is not to fight him. It is to give him what he wants. He wants ruin. He wants blood. So I will give him ruin—just not the true one.
Her eyes opened again, and the illusions trembled as if sensing her farewell. Serenia's form reached for her, but Illyria only smiled. A soft, almost childish smile—the kind she had not worn since she was a girl chasing fireflies in the orchard of white blossoms.
"Mother," she whispered within herself, "you asked me to live. But to live, I must fight. And to protect… I must be the one who disappears."
The clash ignited.
Azeriel's hand tore through the air, unraveling threads of divine energy that split the marble into rivers of flame. His laughter was not cruel, not mocking—it was filled with certainty. He believed in his dominion, believed the world itself bent for him.
Illyria met his force with her sword. Each strike rang like a bell tolling for the dead. Her body twisted with elegance, but also with deliberate imperfection. Cuts bloomed across her arms, her side, her cheek—not because Azeriel was faster, but because she let his strikes land.
Her blood spread further, glowing faintly now, threads of light weaving through the crimson as though fireflies had been caught inside her veins. She stepped forward, bare feet pressing into the warm liquid, each step a note in a song only she could hear.
Every droplet of blood that fell sank into the ruined floor, spreading like ink upon parchment. The crimson traced along the cracks, pooling in places where marble had broken, where she alone knew the fractures could be guided. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the splatters began forming lines. Curves. Ancient runes. A circle no eye could see in its wholeness, because to complete it she needed to bleed from a hundred small wounds, each spill placed exactly where the pattern demanded.
Azeriel smirked at her bleeding state. "So much for fifty years of struggle. So much for your master's blade. In the end, you are as fragile as all mortals."
He believed her exhaustion. He believed her faltering steps. That was his arrogance—believing power was only the strength of muscle, of will, of divine decree. He could not fathom that weakness itself could be wielded as a blade sharper than any steel.
Illyria's sword trembled as she deflected another blow, letting the edge graze her side so blood spilled thick and hot across the stones. Another rune lit beneath her boots. The circle grew.
Inside, her thoughts spilled with a silence deeper than sound.
Fifty years. I carried the end of us all. Fifty years, I wore smiles for those who still believed. Fifty years, I hid my grief, my love, my longing. I did not weep. I did not scream. I only walked forward for this moment.
Her chest tightened—not from the wound, but from the flood of memories that surfaced as if to say goodbye.
Seraphine's laughter beneath the moonlight, soft and wild like a melody the stars themselves envied. Her hand, warm, holding hers during nights when nightmares gnawed at Illyria's sleep. Her gaze, fierce and untamed, that made Illyria believe she was not merely a queen but a woman who could be loved.
That was her last happiness. That was the memory she clung to—not the crown, not the battles, not the blood-soaked throne. Seraphine's presence was the only place she had truly lived.
Another strike cut her shoulder. She staggered but smiled, her blood spraying across the stone in a curve that sealed the final arc of the circle. The glyph flared beneath their feet, hidden in plain sight by the chaos of the fight.
Azeriel tilted his head, curious, faintly amused. "Still smiling, Illyria? Even as you break?"
"Yes," she whispered. And it was true. For the first time in fifty years, she smiled without restraint. Because the weight—the unbearable weight—was finally leaving her.
---
The circle awakened.
The circle pulsed. Her blood responded, threads of scarlet weaving into light. She stepped into its center, the sword falling slack at her side. Her breaths grew shallow, yet serene.
And within her, the truth unfolded like the last page of a story.
The only way to fool a god was not to resist him. It was to give him what he desired most—confirmation of his dominion, proof of his victory. Azeriel sought destruction, craved it, believed it inevitable. Then let him see it. Let him hold it as memory.
Her blood, her power, her very identity became the ink with which she rewrote his mind. The true destruction of the Spirit Realm—the one she had carried from Kaelus's memory—was transplanted into Azeriel's thoughts, stitched into the minds of every human who followed him. They would believe they had seen the Realm burn. They would believe they had conquered.
But in truth, the Spirit Realm stood untouched. Its people safe, its halls unbroken. Only she would be gone—her blood and memory burned away to weave the lie.
Her last thought drifted like a prayer:
I give you my grief, so they may have peace. I give you my memory, so they may have tomorrow. I give you myself, so that Seraphine may live.
She stood at its heart, her body trembling as though it recognized the cost. Her power gathered not outward, but inward, dragging memories from the deepest recesses of her soul. Her laughter as a child. Her first time seeing the Spirit Palace gardens. Her father's voice calling her name. The heavy silence when she first touched his memories and saw the ruin that would come.
And now, the memory of herself.
Piece by piece, they rose like fragile glass and shattered into the circle.
Her vision blurred, but she did not cry. Not even once. Tears would have lessened the weight of this moment, and she wanted to carry it in full, unbroken. For fifty years she had borne grief; now she wanted to offer only clarity.
Azeriel struck again, divine force splitting the walls behind her. But when his power struck the circle, it dissipated like smoke into wind. His brows furrowed, for the first time uncertain.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, his tone edged with something uncharacteristic—hesitation.
Illyria raised her eyes, soft and unyielding. Her voice was quiet, as though speaking to herself more than to him.
"I am giving you what you came for."
And within, she thought: I am giving you the memory of ruin. The ruin that should have been ours. You will see it. You will believe it. And never again will you look beyond it.
Her blood pulsed brighter. The circle drank it greedily, and with it, her strength. She felt the edges of herself fraying, as if the very concept of "Illyria" were dissolving into red mist.
But in that unmaking, she found release.
For fifty years she had never smiled without guilt, never rested without fear. But now—now, as the last of her memories poured out—she smiled, tender and almost childlike.
Not for anyone else. Not for her mother, not for her people, not even for the Spirit Realm.
For herself.
The illusion unfolded across the hall like a curtain of blood and light. Walls cracked, towers crumbled, flames rose into the sky. The Spirit Realm shattered into ash. Screams filled the air, despair thick enough to choke. Azeriel's eyes widened, desire ignited, for he saw everything he had longed for: destruction, absolute and complete.
And yet—none of it was real.
Beyond the illusion, the Spirit Realm stood untouched, its rivers still flowing, its towers still gleaming. But no god would suspect, for in Azeriel's heart and in every human eye that would ever look upon this memory, the Realm was already gone.
Her circle had transplanted the future into the present, rewritten sight and memory so seamlessly that even truth itself bowed to the deception.
Illyria swayed, her body weak, her soul nearly spent. She had given her blood. She had surrendered her power. She had erased her own memories, leaving herself hollow, a vessel without history.
And still, she smiled.
Because the burden was gone. The nightmare was no longer hers alone. The world would carry it now, and she was free—if only for a moment—to breathe without its weight.
The last thing she remembered as herself was the warmth of sunlight in the Spirit Palace gardens, before the shadow of fate had ever touched her. That image lingered like the final note of a song, then dissolved into nothing.
Silence claimed her.
The circle dimmed, its glow fading into the stone, leaving only the faint stains of blood like a forgotten prayer. Azeriel stood before her, his wings spread wide, his eyes alight with triumph at the destruction he believed he had wrought.
Illyria, hollow and fading, lowered her gaze. Her body still stood, but she was no longer fully there.
The Spirit Realm lived.
But Illyria, as Illyria, was gone.
And her smile—the soft, gentle smile of release—remained as the last trace of who she had been.
The circle sealed. A thunderclap of silence rang out.
Her body trembled once, then stilled. Her smile lingered—a soft, gentle curve, no tears, only release. The woman who had borne fifty years of sorrow, who had lived with the vision of ruin etched in her bones, was no longer there.
In her place, only silence.
And Azeriel—certain of his triumph—saw fire where there was none, ruin where there was life, victory where there was sacrifice.
Illyria's name, her self, dissolved into the crimson light.
And the Spirit Realm endured.