The world had shrunk to the crater, to the smell of ozone and scorched earth, and to him.
Kephriel stood across from me, a smirk plastered on his perfect face. My chains—black iron and cold blue light—felt like an extension of my own rage, rattling around my fists.
"You took her from me!"
The scream tore from my throat, raw and scraping. It wasn't just my voice. It was the echo of a hundred years of loss.
"I saved you from a beautifully crafted lie!"
Kephriel's voice was a mockery of reason. His own glorious chains snapped forward, not to strike a killing blow, but to bind.
"Now, stop squirming and accept your damnation!"
A single, searingly bright chain shot from the whirlwind around him and cracked against my chest, hard.
It didn't break skin. It broke memoies.
The park vanished.
I was back on the balcony. The twin suns were setting, painting the sky in hues of violet and gold. The scent of night-blooming flowers was so real it made my eyes water. She leaned her head against my shoulder, her sigh a contented whisper against my neck. The feeling of peace wasn't a memory; it was a physical weight, warm and solid in my chest. I was home. I was whole. I was—
The vision shattered, ripped away as violently as I had been.
I gasped, stumbling back into the crater. The ache of the loss was so fresh, so brutal, it was a physical wound. I looked up, and I saw it on their faces.
Niran was on his knees, tears streaming down his face as he stared at a patch of dead grass, seeing a sunset that wasn't there. Dao was hugging herself, sobbing quietly, a shattered look in her eyes as if she'd just lost everything too. Preecha was pale, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, fighting a silence he'd never asked for. Julia was just staring at me, her red eyes wide with a horror that was no longer theoretical. She'd felt it. They'd all felt it.
Kephriel had just used my own happiest memory as a weapon against my friends.
Rage, cold and absolute, erased everything else.
His chains chose that moment to finally close in, trying to wrap around my arms, my torso, to drag me down. The same chains that had bound me in that hospital bed. The chains that bound me to him.
No more.
The black iron of my own chains glowed with an inner, hungry light. I didn't command them. I felt them. I felt the century of loneliness, the despair I'd drunk, the absolute void that he'd found me in. It was all still there, right under the surface of my stolen peace.
With a sound of screaming metal and shattering energy, my chains moved. They didn't deflect his. They clashed, twisted, and with a final, deafening SNAP, they shattered his bindings into a thousand fading motes of blue light.
Kephriel's eyes widened. The smirk was finally, truly gone. Replaced by shock. And something else… respect?
He didn't get a chance to speak.
I lunged. Not with a punch, but with my entire being. I was a projectile of pure grief.
I slammed into him, and the world didn't just turn upside down. It opened.
The park vanished. The crater, my friends, the city, the people—it all peeled away like a cheap painting. We were falling through a screaming, chaotic vortex of color and shadow. I saw glimpses of things—the distorted market, the sterile halls of the afterlife library, the void where I'd met the other versions of myself.
Then, with a final, gut-wrenching lurch, we landed.
The air left my lungs in a rush, replaced by a thick, suffocating heat that smelled of sulfur and burning hair. The ground beneath me was hard, cracked, and radiated a feverish warmth.
I pushed myself up, my new chains slithering around me protectively.
We were in a vast, desolate plain under a blood-red sky. Jagged, obsidian mountains pierced the horizon. In the distance, rivers of something that wasn't lava glowed with a sickly green light. The air trembbled with the sounds of distant, endless screams.
Kephriel rose to his feet a few yards away, brushing ash from his shoulders. He looked around, a wide, terrifying grin spreading across his face.
"Home sweet home,"
he said, his voice echoing in the oppressive silence. He spread his arms, welcoming the damnation.
"Welcome to my office, Rafael."
His chains glowed with a vicious, hungry light. He was finally, truly, going to fight.
And we were in Hell.