The night was heavy with silence. The kind of silence that wasn't simply absence of sound but a presence in itself—thick, pressing, suffocating. Azeriel sat in the half-lit room, his gaze fixed on the girl who slept so peacefully beneath the woven blanket.
Illyria's breath rose and fell in fragile rhythms. Strands of her hair clung to her damp cheek, her lips parted just slightly. She had cried herself to sleep earlier, though she would never admit it aloud. To anyone else, she was a shard of spirit-fire, proud and untouchable. But to him… she was a child. His child.
He had not meant for it to become this way.
At first, her voice had been nothing more than a delicate instrument to toy with. Her pleas had fascinated him, her resistance had amused him. He had desired her like a possession, something to claim, to twist into submission. He could still hear the echoes of her begging in the early days, soft, trembling, breaking in ways that intoxicated him. That was the game, and he had been a god who thrived on games.
But the game had betrayed him.
The more she begged, the more she shattered, the more he realized something inside him was not watching her suffer—it was aching with her. Her tears stopped amusing him. Her voice stopped being an instrument of play and became something far more dangerous. It became a tether. A bond. A truth.
And now, he could not look at her without the weight of it breaking him apart.
He rose. Quietly. Each movement calculated, precise, like the careful ritual of leaving behind a piece of himself. He extended one hand over her forehead, fingers trembling despite the years of iron control.
"Sleep deeper, little one," he whispered. His voice broke somewhere in between words, though no one was there to hear. Power flowed from him in a wave, slipping into her dreams, sealing them with gentle darkness. She would not wake, not for hours. Not until he was gone.
He could not allow her to see. He could not let her call out, not this time.
Turning away was harder than binding gods.
---
The Divine Realm did not welcome him with glory.
It waited.
The moment his feet touched its threshold, he felt it—the tremor in the very bones of eternity. Chains erupted out of the void, not forged of metal, not even of magic, but of law itself. They wound around his limbs, his chest, his throat. They were cold, yet they burned. They whispered, yet they screamed.
Azeriel staggered, his hands clawing at the unseen bonds as they dragged him backward. The world of light vanished. A void unfolded—a space without space, where eternity was not a measure but a prison.
"No!" His voice tore out, raw, violent. His wings spread wide, tearing through shadow, but the chains coiled tighter, sinking deep.
He resisted. Of course he resisted. His body convulsed against the pull, his divine essence flaring like a storm. Memories surged in fragments—his first strike against the Spirit Realm, the way the skies had burned under his wrath, the law he had broken when he dared to touch what was forbidden.
The voice of judgment rose from nowhere and everywhere:
"You defied the eternal law. You turned your gaze upon what should not be yours. You bind yourself now to chains that never break."
He snarled, teeth bared. "You think I regret it? That I would take it back?!"
The void answered only with silence.
His heart twisted. It wasn't the thought of eternal chains that shattered him—it was the thought of her waking, alone, calling for him in the dawn.
---
Morning came in the Human Realm.
Illyria stirred, her lashes trembling against her cheeks. The sun spilled into the small cabin, breaking across the wooden beams in golden shards. For a moment, she reached blindly, her small hand brushing the empty space beside her.
Warmth. Gone.
Her brows furrowed. She sat up quickly, hair falling over her shoulders, eyes darting. The room was too quiet. The air was wrong.
"Dad?"
Her voice cracked. The word lingered in the air, unanswered.
She stood, bare feet slapping against the cold floor as she rushed outside. The forest stretched vast and endless, a sea of green beneath the bright morning. But there was no trace of him. No tall figure leaning against the trees. No voice mocking her, scolding her, or simply existing.
"Dad?!" Louder this time.
The echo came back empty.
Panic swelled in her chest. Her throat tightened. She ran further, stumbling through the underbrush, calling again and again until her voice tore itself ragged. Birds startled from branches, scattering skyward at the sound of her desperate cries.
And then—she broke.
Her knees hit the damp earth, palms digging into the soil as sobs tore out of her in waves. She had not cried like this since arriving in the human realm. She had not let herself grieve, not for her real family, not for her kingdom. But now—now it was for him.
For the man who was not her father, yet had become her anchor. For the cruel god who had turned into the only truth she could believe.
"Why… why would you leave me too?" she whispered, voice hoarse. Her tears soaked into the ground. The forest blurred through her sobs.
---
In the void, Azeriel felt it.
Her voice, faint but piercing, reached even where eternity bound him. Each cry was a dagger, carving through the chains of law. He strained, muscles tearing, power lashing out in violent arcs.
"I told you… I told you I would never let her break again!" His roar shook the void, but the chains held, merciless.
He fought. He raged. He begged.
But eternity is crueler than gods.
Slowly, his struggles weakened. His limbs grew heavy. His fire dimmed. The chains coiled tighter, pressing the breath out of him until even his own voice was silence.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
And yet… his lips curved, faintly, into something that was not defeat.
Because he had heard her. Because she had called him Dad. Because the bond he once thought a game had become the only thing in him that mattered.
"...Well done," he whispered into the void, his final gift.
"My dear daughter. You truly astonished me."