The silence that followed the cataclysm was making static noise. There was no wind to stir the ash, no birdsong to herald the morning.
The wet, ragged rhythm of failing lungs were there to accompany them.
She lay collapsed atop him, her strength finally spent. The twelve seraphic wings erupting from her scapulae, draggled and matted with gore, splayed out across the rubble like a broken curtain. Beneath her weight, the Enemy of the World lay shattered. His obsidian armor was rent asunder, exposing flesh, and the twelve crystalline horns that crowned his brow were chipped and dull.
Gravity bound them together in a grotesque embrace of destruction.
"This seems to be the end of us," she rasped, the words bubbling past lips stained crimson. She lacked the strength to lift her head from his chest, her ear pressed against the fading thunder of his heart.
He rumbled beneath her, a vibration that felt like shifting tectonic plates. "How is it," he coughed, a darker blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, "that the mighty and powerful Hero meets such an inglorious end?"
His voice was a ruin, yet the mockery remained miraculously intact.
She shifted slightly, wincing as a fracture in her armor grated against bone. She looked out at the horizon, or what was left of it. A void where the world used to be.
"Even if we had a glorious ending," she murmured, closing her eyes, "who would be left to tell our tales?"
For a moment, there was only the sound of their dying breaths. Then, a wheeze escaped him. It was followed by a sharp exhale from her. The sound grew, ragged and pained, until they were both shaking with it. There, amidst the annihilation of all things, the Hero and the Demon Lord shared a hysterical laugh.
"HAHAHAHAHA….ha…"
"Do you regret it?" she asked, her voice barely audible over the wind whistling through the ruins.
"Yes."
The admission hung in the cold air, devoid of hesitation. He did not elaborate, but he did not need to. They both understood the truth of his lineage. It was the primordial need of the Demon Kind, a biological imperative woven into the very helix of their existence. Since the first encounter between their races, the demons had been slaves to a visceral bloodlust, a starvation that could only be sated by human suffering. It was not a choice. It was a compulsion as involuntary as breathing.
"We were monsters by design," he murmured, his gaze fixed on the gray nothingness above. "But your kind... you were not blameless. You cast out those of us who sought to conquer that nature. You offered the sword to those who came with olive branches."
"Cruelty is fear wearing a mask," she conceded.
"Perhaps. But it was a rational fear," the Demon Lord countered. "Why should the sheep welcome the wolf, even if the wolf swears he has lost his appetite? We were never crafted to share this existence. Our natures are antithetical. We are the flame and the parchment."
The Hero slowly opened her eyes, the golden irises dimming as life ebbed away. She stared up at the void, searching for a light that was no longer there.
"If the world had been kinder," she whispered, "if the design had been different... would we have been different?"
As the silence stretched between them, they both knew the answer.
No.
The cold was no longer a sensation on their skin; it was becoming a part of their very architecture, seeping into the marrow and turning blood to ice. The world around them had fallen silent, the chaotic symphony of battle replaced by the stillness of a tomb.
"And you?" the Demon Lord asked. "The Hero who stands at the apex of virtue, the woman who carries the hopes of a species on her spine. What regret do you carry into the dark?"
She didn't answer immediately. Her breath hitched, a wet, rattling sound that tore at her chest. She looked past the ruins, past the broken sky, into a memory of a future that never came to pass.
"I think," she whispered, "I would have liked to be small."
"Small?"
"Insignificant," she said. "I wanted a life that didn't require a sword. I wanted… marriage."
The word felt strange in the ash-choked air, a relic from a softer world.
"Marriage," the Demon Lord repeated, rolling the concept over his tongue as if tasting a foreign wine.
"Yes," she sighed, a tear cutting a clean track through the grime on her cheek. "To wake up and know that someone is there, not because I am the Hero, not because I can save them from fire and ruin, but simply because I am me. To be loved without condition. To have a hand to hold when the thunder comes, not because I must protect them from the storm, but because we are weathering it together."
The Demon Lord lay still, processing the alien beauty of the concept. To his kind, existence was a solitary struggle for dominance, a hierarchy carved in blood and power. The idea of a union based not on utility or strength, but on mutual, enduring presence, was fascinatingly inefficient, yet undeniably compelling. It possessed a symmetry that pleased him.
"It sounds… quiet," he said finally.
"It is," she agreed. "A quiet house. A garden, perhaps. Watching the seasons turn without worrying if the next winter will bring an invasion. Just the slow, steady rhythm of days bleeding into years."
"Why that?" he asked, genuine curiosity cutting through his pain. "You have the adoration of millions. They build statues in your likeness. They sing hymns in your name. Is that not love?"
"That is worship," she corrected gently. "Worship is cold. It places you on a pedestal so high that no human hand can reach you. I didn't want a pedestal. I wanted a hearth."
She shifted, the movement sending a jolt of agony through her shattered frame, but her smile remained, soft and wistful.
"I was an orphan," she confessed. "I never knew the warmth of a parent's embrace, the safety of a home that wasn't a barracks or a temple. I was raised by the Order, forged into a weapon before I was old enough to understand. I have spent my entire life being 'The Hero.' I never had the chance to just be… a person. To experience the warmth of someone waiting for you, not for a report on the battle, but just to ask how your day was. That simple, mundane warmth… that is what I regret missing."
The Demon Lord closed his eyes. The imagery she painted was starkly different from the jagged, violent grandeur of his own life, yet it struck a chord deep within his fading consciousness. A simple life. A life where the weight of the world was not constantly crushing the air from one's lungs.
"I see the appeal," he murmured. "To lay down the crown. To exist without the necessity of conquest or defense. It is a pleasant dream."
For a long moment, they allowed the fantasy to hang between them, a shimmering mirage in the wasteland of their reality. They imagined a world where the twelve horns and the twelve wings were merely curiosities, where their hands were stained with garden soil rather than blood.
"If we are reborn," the Demon Lord said, "perhaps we could find that. A cottage. A garden. That silence you speak of."
The Hero let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob. "Do you believe that?"
"No."
"Neither do I."
The tragedy of it settled over them, heavier than the stone and steel burying them. It was a cruel clarity that came only at the end.
"We are who we are," the Demon Lord said, and there was a tragic pride in his tone. "Even stripped of our memories, even born into that gentle world you crave… I could not turn away. I have watched my kind. They are savage, yes, and driven by blood, but I have seen the beginnings of something else. I have seen them carve art into bone. I have heard them sing songs that are not of war, but of sorrow. They are a young race, stumbling in the dark, and they looked to me for guidance. I love them. I love their potential, their raw, chaotic struggle to exist. If I were reborn, and I saw them suffering… I would take up the sword again. I would be their Lord again."
"And I," the Hero whispered, her vision blurring as the darkness encroached, "I have seen the worst of humanity. I have seen their greed, their fear, their cruelty. But I have also seen a mother shield her child from dragon fire with her own body. I have seen strangers share their last crust of bread in the midst of a siege. There is a light in them, a stubborn, enduring hope that refuses to be extinguished. I love that light. I love them, despite everything."
She tightened her grip on his armor, her fingers numb and clumsy.
"If I were reborn," she admitted, her voice fading, "and I heard them cry out… I would answer. I would always answer."
"So, we are cursed," the Demon Lord concluded, though his tone lacked bitterness. "Cursed by our own hearts. We are bound to our peoples more tightly than we could ever be bound to each other."
"It is a heavy love,"
"The heaviest,"
They lay there, two titans of opposing forces, united by the very thing that made them enemies. A profound, sacrificial love for the flawed, beautiful civilizations they represented. They realized then that the simple life, the marriage, the quiet garden, these were things meant for others. They were the guardians, the martyrs, the foundations upon which those simple lives were built. They were the storm so that others could enjoy the calm.
The Demon Lord gazed up at her, his eyes dimming to a soft, dusky twilight.
"If we are to die here," Dridart rasped, a sudden, strange clarity entering his voice, "then let us play out your fantasy. Let us have this 'marriage' you speak of."
The proposition hung between them. Alice blinked, a flicker of surprise breaking through the haze of agony. Under any other sun, in any other era, the suggestion would have been madness. But here, at the end of history, with their blood mingling in the dust of a broken world, it felt like the only logical conclusion.
A smile broke across her face, the soft and radiant smile of a woman seeing a long-awaited sunrise.
"You really are a fool," she said. "Okay. Let's do it."
Summoning the last dregs of her vitality, Alice tried to move. She sought to take his left hand, the traditional vessel for the wedding band, but her fingers grasped only empty air and torn armor. She paused, the memory of their final clash rushing back. It was her blade, that had sheared his left arm from his body in the battle's crescendo. In exchange, his retaliatory burst of void magic had disintegrated her right leg.
With a trembling breath, she adjusted her aim, laboriously dragging her right hand across his chest until her fingers found his remaining right hand. His gauntlet was shattered, exposing the dark, grey skin of his palm. She interlaced her fingers with his, skin against skin, blood against blood.
"I should have gone for the right arm," she quipped, a weak chuckle shaking her frame. "It would have made this ceremony much easier."
"It was my dominant hand, Hero. Had you targeted it, my counterstrike would have been faster. You would be dead, and I would be standing over you, victorious and unwed."
"Arrogant to the last,"
"Honest is the right of all lords".
Alice took a breath, the air rattling in her fluid-filled lungs. She looked deep into his eyes, ignoring the ruin around them.
"Repeat after me,".
She began the recitation, her voice gaining a resonance amidst the desolation.
"I, Alice Linddell, take you, Dridart..."
He watched her, mesmerizingly human in this moment. "I, Dridart, take you, Alice Linddell..."
"...to be my husband," she continued, her thumb stroking the back of his hand.
"...to be my wife."
"To have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health..."
He repeated the ancient human words, tasting the strange commitment they held. "To have and to hold... in sickness and in health..."
"To love and to cherish," she whispered, tears finally spilling over, washing clean tracks through the ash on her face. "Till our souls could not recognize each other, according to Lac's holy law."
Dridart felt a tremble in his very core—not from pain, but from the weight of the oath. "To love and to cherish... till our souls could not recognize each other, according to Lac's holy law."
"In the presence of Lac, I make this vow," she finished.
"In the presence of Lac, I make this vow," he echoed.
The silence that followed was sacred. The wind seemed to hold its breath.
"Dridart," Alice whispered, her eyes fluttering as the darkness crept into her peripheral vision. "You don't have a family name, do you?"
"Demons are born of the mass," he murmured. "We have no lineage. I am Dridart. That is all."
Alice squeezed his hand one last time, her strength failing. "Not anymore. In marriage, we share everything. You are Dridart Linddell now."
"Dridart Linddell," he tested the sound of it. It was heavy, grounding. It was a name that belonged to a life he would never lead, a souvenir from a dream he was just beginning to understand. "It is... a good name."
The silence returned, but this time, it was absolute.
Alice's chest, which had been hitching with the labored struggle of breathing, fell still. The golden hue of her eyes, once vibrant enough to outshine the sun, glazed over, fixing eternally on a point beyond the veil. The tension drained from her body, leaving her heavy—a weight of meat and bone no longer animated by the indomitable spirit of the Hero.
She was gone. The woman who had been the anvil upon which the world broke its fury was simply… gone.
Dridart felt the change instantly. The warmth began to recede from her fingers, but he did not let go. With the last reserves of his strength, he tightened his grip on her right hand, crushing her fingers against his own shattered palm. It was an attempt to tether her to him even as she drifted beyond his reach.
He looked at her face, now smooth, stripped of the pain and the burden of duty. She looked young. Terrible, tragically young.
"Rest well," he rasped, the words scraping against a throat that could no longer draw air. "My wife."
His own vision began to tunnel. The grey sky, the ruined horizon, the face of his beloved enemy, it all dissolved into a static of black and white. The pain, which had been a screaming constant for hours, dulling into a distant, throbbing hum. The cold ceased to bite, it became a blanket, heavy and suffocating.
Dridart Linddell closed his eyes and let the abyss take him.
There was no transition, no tunnel of light. There was only the sudden, violent absence of existence. He floated in a crushing nothingness, a void so complete it felt like being unmade.
Yet, he was not blind.
In the center of that endless obsidian ocean, he saw them. He saw their essences.
His own soul was a mass of roiling, chaotic darkness, a muddy, viscous storm of violet and black. It was ugly, powerful, and terrifying.
And beside it, tethered by an unbreakable, invisible thread, was hers. It was a sphere of blinding luminescence, a white-gold radiance that pulsed with a warmth the void could not dampen. It was the soul of a martyr, shiny and pure.
The muddy darkness sought to recoil, unworthy of the light, but the thread held fast. The brightness did not burn him. It beckoned him. The two forces, diametrically opposed by nature, spun around each other in the dark, a binary star system of sin and salvation.
Then, a voice rippled through the nothingness.
"Your connection is allowed."