THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter XIV: The Saint's Sunset

  The silence that fell over Oskara was not an absence of sound. It was a tangible substance, heavy as molten lead, that seeped into the cracks of the shattered walls and settled over the rubble like a second layer of dust. There were no crickets, no wind whispering among twisted beams, no distant weeping of the living. It was the silence of a hall after the final chord, when the audience has forgotten how to breathe. The night itself seemed to hold its breath, paralyzed before the duel unfolding in its womb.

  In the center of that acoustic void, two antagonistic principles danced their last waltz.

  Ophelia, the Ebony Candidate, felt a new sensation flowing through her veins, strange and electric like lightning in the marrow. It was not the familiar, icy river of mana, nor the crude adrenaline that inflames the senses. It was something subtler, more dangerous. It was doubt. A small crystal of uncertainty that lodged itself in the center of her absolute certainty, and in doing so, released a perverse ecstasy.

  A sigh, almost a laugh, escaped her as she dodged a claw that whistled past, so enormous its shadow was a momentary guillotine.

  —I must admit —she murmured, and her voice was a rough caress in the silence—. It's the first time. The first time in a whole life of certainties that something makes me… wonder.

  A smile spread across her pale marble face. It wasn't the stoic smile of a heroine, nor the fierce grimace of a warrior. It was the wide, almost unhinged smile of someone discovering a new and wonderfully destructive toy. The flashes of the fight reflected in her yellow eyes, turning them into coins of molten gold.

  —Someone here will see the dawn —she sang, spinning on herself like a whirlwind of ebony and silver, the rapier tracing an arc of darkness that nibbled at the dragon's scale—. And someone will become a memory. I wonder who it will be? Who will have the honor of enduring in this night?

  She lunged then, not as a missile of hatred, but as a question made flesh. An interrogation with an edge.

  —Let's see what you're capable of, relic! Today there are no limits, no restrictions! Today we dance until one of us forgets the steps!

  The Undead Dragon responded with a roar that was not sound, but the absence of it. A void that sucked the air around it and returned it as a breath of pure entropy. Its wings, sheets of rotten membrane stretched over scaffolds of whitish bone, beat with monumental laziness. Each wingbeat was a change of season, from the cold of the tomb to the heat of decomposition.

  Ophelia danced at a disadvantage. When the colossus rose, it was an eclipse spitting black and orange flames, flames that did not warm, but instantly aged stone, reducing towers to grey ash. When it swooped down, an avalanche of scales and claws, she became a whirlwind of precise thrusts, each seeking the chink, the scar, the point where death might slip in.

  Chink. Chink. Chink.

  The steel of her rapier, capable of cleaving the soul, bounced off the living obsidian scales with the sound of a discordant bell. Each impact sent an electric tingle up to her shoulder. The black armor, that second skin of solidified shadow, began to show dents, deep scratches that revealed glimpses of pale, bruised skin beneath. A fine thread of blood, scarlet against the silver, ran down her temple and vanished along her jawline.

  The waltz accelerated, becoming a frenzy. Ophelia dodged, retreated, attacked again. Her breathing, once imperceptible, began to form faint little clouds in the cold air. The doubt was still there, in the back of her throat, but now it tasted of strong wine. It intoxicated her.

  The Farewell in the Shadows

  In a side alley, where the shadows of two ruined buildings kissed to form a refuge of denser darkness, Vael stopped Irina with a hand on her chest. The gesture was gentle, but final.

  —You have to take her —he said, and his voice lacked the foolish tone, the lazy drawl. It was flat, clear as broken glass—. As far as you can. Go deep into the ruins, find a cellar, a deep crack. And wait. Wait for me to return.

  Irina, with Elara still unconscious and shattered in her arms, a burden of pain and broken metal, blinked at him. Shock and exhaustion clouded her blue gaze.

  —And you? —The question came out hoarse, desperate—. What are you talking about? We're not… we're not splitting up. Let's all go. Now.

  Vael looked at her. Truly looked at her. And in his green eyes, Irina did not see the clumsy recruit, nor the calculating strategist. She saw something ancient and still, like the bottom of a dry well.

  —Easy —he said, and the word sounded like a ritual, a spell to calm a frightened beast—. You know I always try to help. It's the only thing I know how to do. And that thing… —he nodded towards the distant sound of battle, a dull thunder shaking dust from the walls— …if I do nothing, it will find us. No matter where we hide. Its hunger is a compass. And if I can't stop it… —he made an infinitesimal pause— …I will at least buy you time. Time to flee, for her to stabilize. —His gaze rested on Elara's pale face, on the half-open lips stained with dark blood—. Please, Irina. Listen to me, just this once. You have to protect her. If she is still alive when this is over… there may still be something we can do.

  Irina looked at him, and in her chest fought frustration, fear, and a terrible understanding. Tears came to her eyes, but they did not fall. They merely glistened, making the world blur.

  —Alright —she whispered, and the word hurt as it left her—. I understand. I… just… —she looked up at him, defiant through the watery shine— …please, don't die, okay? Don't you dare… do that.

  Vael gave her a smile then. Not the wide, foolish smile, but something smaller, more private. A wink of complicity with death.

  —You know I have luck on my side. —He shrugged, a gesture that was almost normal—. I'm not so easy to kill. I won't let myself lose.

  He turned to look towards the alley leading to the plaza of disaster. His back, thin under the torn clothes, looked incredibly vulnerable.

  —Ah! —Irina's voice stopped him, a broken sound.

  She approached, moving with the clumsiness of exhaustion and urgency. She gently propped Elara against the wall, as if she were made of glass. Then, she rose onto the tips of her toes, in a movement that was both desperate and tender. Her hands, dirty and trembling, gripped Vael's shoulders. And she kissed him.

  It was a clumsy kiss, a clash of dry, cracked lips, tasting of blood, dust, and fear. There was no art in it, only a brutal message carved in a primitive act: a clamor, a plea, a farewell.

  She pulled away abruptly, as if burned. She lowered her head, avoiding his gaze.

  —Please —she murmured, her voice tight—. Come back. Goodbye.

  Without looking back, she gathered Elara with a grunt of effort and ran off into the darkness of the opposite alley, her footsteps echoing briefly before being swallowed by the greater silence.

  Vael stood motionless a moment longer. Slowly, he brought his fingers to his lips, where the echo of the kiss still burned, a warm stain in the pervasive cold. His green eyes were lost in the shadow where she had disappeared.

  —I hope it doesn't bother her —he whispered to himself, and the phrase floated in the air, enigmatic and faint, before dissipating.

  The Abyss

  On the broken horizon, the waltz reached its crescendo.

  Ophelia gasped. Her black armor, a masterpiece of artifice and shadow, was now crucified with dents, some so deep they showed glimpses of white rib beneath the bruised flesh. The Dragon, immutable in its majestic agony, kept spitting its fire of old age. The air smelled of burnt ozone and the flesh of a freshly opened grave.

  —Will it be you… or will it be me? —Ophelia's voice emerged between gasps, yet laden with a delirious excitement. She let out a laugh, a strident, beautiful sound that shattered against the dragon's rumble.

  She rose from one knee, a fluid movement despite everything. With the back of her intact hand, she wiped the blood from her lips, leaving a crimson smear on the pallor of her skin. She looked up.

  The Dragon was outlined against the night sky, now devoid of moon, a cutout of nightmare blacker than the surrounding darkness. Behind Ophelia, Oskara burned, its orange flames dancing in ghostly reflections on the low clouds of smoke. A portrait of destruction of obscene beauty.

  Her yellow eyes, beacons in the gloom, fixed on her prey. On her adversary. On her dance partner.

  —TELL ME WHO IT WILL BE! —she screamed, and the cry was not of rage, but of supreme curiosity.

  The Dragon, as if responding to the invitation, inhaled. Its chest, a cathedral of exposed ribs and corrupt flesh, expanded. Within, behind the bony bars, a sinister orange glow ignited, the fire of accelerated decay.

  —Ha… —Ophelia spoke to herself, a smile of red-stained teeth—. I told you I was going to get serious.

  The world stopped.

  Not metaphorically. The air solidified into thick gelatin. Sounds stretched into an infinite groan. Dust motes suspended in the air shone like captured stars. Ophelia raised her left hand, the one that remained, palm open towards the colossus. There was no dramatic gesture. Just a slight extension of her fingers.

  Her voice, when it came, was a whisper that nonetheless cut through the gel of time. Clear. Flat. Absolute.

  —Number Three: Abyss.

  At first, only a tremor. A deep hum that rose from the very earth, as if a giant slept beneath the city and had begun to snore. Then, the ground gave way.

  It did not break. It did not explode. It simply ceased to be. A perfect circle of terrain, hundreds of meters in diameter, directly beneath the Dragon, collapsed downward. But not into a pit. Into a nothingness. A darkness so perfect it did not even absorb light; it denied it. It was a hole in the tapestry of reality.

  The inner wall, already mortally wounded, had an edge within that circle. And simply, the affected section vanished, its centuries-old stone blocks disintegrating in silence as they fell into the blackness.

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  From the pit of nothingness, emerged then not a fire, but its antithesis. A black flame. It was not an explosion of matter, but of absence. A vortex of void that rose spinning, a silent, cold whirlpool that sucked everything towards itself. It sucked the Dragon's orange breath of fire, and the fire disappeared, nullified. It sucked the air, creating a mute gale that dragged rubble, dust, the last shreds of fog.

  And then, it sucked the Dragon.

  The beast tried to beat its wings, struggled with monumental fury. Its claws grasped the edge of the abyss, splintering the stone. But the force sucking it in was not physical. It was ontological. A denial of its right to exist in that place, at that moment. With a high-pitched screech, the sound of the universe grating against an impossibility, the colossus was dragged into the vortex.

  It fell, not like a stone, but like a dream dissolving. It passed through what remained of the wall and vanished into the darkness, wrapped in the tentacles of that black flame that was the absence of all flame.

  And then, it closed.

  The circle of nothingness contracted, disappeared. The ground reappeared, but not the old ground. It was smooth, vitrified, black as jet, as if a portion of the city had been sealed under a perfect mirror of obsidian.

  Ophelia fell to her knees on that new, strange ground. She vomited a thick gush of blood, black in the light of the distant flames. The Abyss faded from her hand, but its price was marked: her right arm, up to the elbow, was charred, the skin seared and fused to the bone in places. Greyish smoke rose from the dead flesh. Her magnificent armor, on that side, had partially melted, dripping droplets of dark, smoking metal that solidified upon touching the vitrified ground.

  She remained there, gasping, for three heartbeats of a heart that seemed to want to leap from her chest.

  Then, she disappeared.

  She didn't run away. She simply ceased to be in that place and went to another.

  The Monster's Dawn

  She reappeared on the outskirts, beyond the collapsed wall, on a plain of scorched grass and earth churned by cataclysm.

  There He lay.

  The Undead Dragon was now a parody of itself. Its scales, once of burnished obsidian, were melted and twisted, like black wax dripping from a monstrous candelabrum. Its neck, that long arc of power, was half-destroyed, vertebrae exposed and splintered, the head hanging at an impossible angle, held only by strips of tendon and charred skin. One wing, the left, was irreconcilable wreckage: the membrane in tatters, the main bones fractured in multiple places, hanging like the branches of a dead tree in winter.

  But its eyes.

  Its six red eyes, glowing coals in the elongated skull, burned. Not with fury, nor with pain. With an indomitable presence. With the simple, terrible fact of still existing.

  The sun, a pale, orange impostor, began to scratch the edge of the horizon, dyeing the smoke clouds a color of sickness.

  —I see you refuse to die… —Ophelia's voice came as a gasp, but with a note of almost professional admiration—. Very well. Then come. Let's decide this once and for all.

  She lunged. Not with the feline grace of before, but with the coarse determination of a battering ram. A last charge.

  She attacked. And she noticed, with a clinical coldness that sprang from the very same despair, that it hurt her. Every thrust she managed to drive into the corrupt flesh, every shred of darkness that tore the dying body a little more, cost her. It cost her a shred of her own strength, one more beat of her exhausted heart. Her body, once a temple of perfect power, was rotting from within, poisoned by the proximity of the dragon's entropy and the colossal effort of her own powers.

  The Dragon, for its part, defended itself with slow, heavy movements, like a sinking ship still wielding its cannons. It bit with jaws that no longer had the strength to crush, only to scratch. It used its one relatively healthy wing as a wall, unleashing gusts of wind laden with spores of putrefaction that made Ophelia cough and clouded her vision. But its eyes, always its eyes, followed that tiny, silvered figure with the fixity of fate.

  Ophelia made a decision. That wing was a hindrance. A fan that deflected her attacks, a shield that stole her angles.

  She took a risk.

  With a last vestige of momentum, she leaped over a slow tail swipe, landed on the colossus's back, among the protrusions of deformed vertebrae. The metal of her boots screeched against the melted scale. She ran along the spine, dodging the beast's spasms, until she reached the base of the healthy wing. There, where the tendons, thick as logs, anchored to the body.

  With a cry that was pure tension, she drove her rapier in and cut. It was not a clean slash; it was butchery. The purple blade sank into the necrotic flesh, and the darkness it carried disintegrated the tissues. The wing, suddenly limp, fell like a gigantic sail.

  In that same instant of minimal triumph, as her weight leaned forward with the effort of the blow, the Dragon's tail moved.

  It was not a beast's movement. It was the movement of a whip, of a scorpion's stinger, precise and lethal. A final reflexive act of a disintegrating nervous system.

  Ophelia saw it coming. She tried to twist, to push herself away. But her body, exhausted, responded a fraction of a second too late.

  The tip of the tail, a bone sharp as a spear and covered in black pustules, pierced her left thigh. It was not a clean penetration. It was a violation. It tore out a chunk of flesh and metal, shredding muscle and fracturing bone with a dry crack she heard from within.

  The cry she let out was not of pain. It was of surprise. Of absolute incredulity. She flew through the air, away from the dragon, and landed with a dull thud on the soft earth, rolling several meters before stopping.

  She clutched her leg. The sensation was strange: a sharp, deep pain, but surrounded by a glacial numbness spreading from the wound. She looked down, and horror dried her throat. The armor was shattered, and beneath, a crater of torn flesh and splintered white bone gleamed in the dawn's light. Blood welled, not in spurts, but with a slow, terrible persistence.

  —This thing… —she muttered, panting— …refuses to die. It refuses…

  She tried to get up. Her mind, that perfect tool, ordered her body to stand. To fight. But her body, that spent vessel, weighed. It weighed as if filled with molten lead. A cold sweat, alien to effort, drenched her forehead. Death was no longer an abstract threat; it was a physical presence, seated beside her, waiting with infinite patience.

  With a groan that tore her throat, she stood up. On one leg, the right one, swaying like a bird with a broken wing. She panted, and each inhalation tasted of iron and burnt earth.

  The Dragon dragged itself towards her. It did not walk. It hauled itself, using its front claws to drag the ruinous mass of its body. It bled from a thousand wounds, a black, thick fluid that smoked upon touching the ground. But it kept advancing. Its red eyes did not blink.

  Ophelia tightened her grip on her rapier with her left hand. Her right hand, the charred one, she no longer felt. It was a macabre trophy hanging from her arm.

  She infused the last vestige of her power into the weapon. The purple flames that arose were faint, flickering, like the last spark of a candle about to go out.

  —This is the last —she announced, not to the dragon, but to the dawn, to the world, to herself—. I have nothing left.

  The sun, at that moment, fully peeked over the horizon. An enormous, pale orange disk, without heat, without promises. It positioned itself right behind the Dragon, creating a perfect, monstrous silhouette: the hanging head, the shattered body, the outline of the broken wings. A picture of defeat and persistence at once.

  Ophelia steadied herself on her one good leg. She knew where she had to strike. That shattered neck, that point where the head hung by a thread. One last, clean, definitive blow.

  She let the Dragon come closer. She felt the stinking heat of its breath, saw the red flashes of its eyes approaching. She dodged a slow bite, more a reflex than an attack, and then, with all that remained of her strength, will, doubt turned into final certainty, she pushed off.

  It was a lightning attack. A flash of silver and purple, a straight line drawn towards the weak point.

  Just as the tip of the rapier, vibrating with the last darkness, was a hand's breadth from the necrotic flesh of the neck, something moved.

  Not the head. Not the tail. It was one of the Dragon's front claws, the one that seemed most inert. It rose with a final, spasmodic speed, and closed.

  It did not catch Ophelia. It struck her.

  The claws, broken and black, impacted against her chest with the force of a landslide.

  Ophelia was torn from the ground. She flew through the air, a puppet whose strings had been cut. She felt no pain. Only a dull impact, a sudden void in her chest, and then the sight of the orange sky spinning.

  She landed several meters away, rolling over the earth until she lay on her back.

  She couldn't move. She tried, but her legs did not respond. Only an uncontrollable tremor. A thick, wet warmth flooded her torso. She didn't want to look. She dreaded knowing what remained of her chest beneath the shattered armor.

  She groped with her left hand. The ground. The grass. Nothing.

  —Where is it? —she whispered, and her voice sounded strange, distant.

  Her gaze, clouded, scanned the battlefield. And she saw it. There, near the Dragon's front leg, which was now slowly retracting, lay her rapier. The Maw of Nothing. It glowed faintly with a last vestige of purple light, thrown on the scorched grass like a discarded toy.

  —But how could I…? —she murmured, confused. It wasn't that she had lost her grip, that it had slipped…

  Slowly, with titanic effort, she turned her head to look at her right arm. The one she had raised for the Abyss.

  There was no hand.

  From just above the wrist, her arm ended in a charred, blackened, twisted stump, from which a thin thread of grey smoke rose. She had lost it. In the counterattack, in the chaos, the blow or the power itself had torn it off. And she, in the euphoria of battle, in the fog of pain and exhaustion, had not noticed.

  She looked at the stump. Then she looked at the rapier, so far away. Then she looked at the Dragon, dragging itself towards her again, slower, but implacable.

  Ophelia's mind, that perfect machine of strategy and pride, shattered. For the first time in her existence, she did not know what to do. There was no plan. There was no master stroke. There was only a pool of blood expanding beneath her, a useless leg, a vanished arm, a chest that no longer held air, only fluid.

  —What do I do? —she whispered, and the question was for the void, for the gods who did not listen, for herself—. What do I do? What do I do?

  She was desperate. A knot of panic, cold and metallic, tightened in her throat.

  —I have to get the rapier… with the other hand… —she murmured, but her words had no strength. She knew, somewhere deep in her being, that even if she reached it, she would no longer have the power to wield it.

  Her gaze lowered, contemplating the earth stained with her own blood. Then, very slowly, she raised it towards the Dragon. Towards that monument to corrupt tenacity.

  Then, it happened.

  The Dragon's neck, hanging by that thread of charred tendon, separated. Not with a tear, but with a sigh. The rotten skin, the necrotic flesh, simply peeled away from the bone, like bark from a dead tree. The head, the elongated skull with its six burning eyes, curved to one side, hanging now only from the exposed spine, a macabre pendulum.

  The Dragon stopped. And it began to laugh.

  The laughter came from its open maw, but it was not a sound from a throat. It was a chorus of whispers, echoes of the voices it had devoured, the very earth groaning. A wet, bubbling laugh, laden with the rot of centuries.

  —It seems… —the voice rumbled, guttural, made of many overlapping tones— …my time is up.

  —Haha… —the laughter intensified, a sound that raised goosebumps—. You were lucky, human. Your light… is tenacious. But fleeting.

  As it spoke, its flesh began to fall away. Not to bleed, nor to break. To disintegrate. It turned into a fine, black dust, like ash from a very ancient fire. The chunks broke off and fell to the ground, where the dawn wind picked them up and carried them away, scattering them.

  —I will see you again… —the voice whispered, fading—. In the place where everything burns and nothing shines. Hahaha…

  The red eyes blinked one last time. Then, their light went out. And the head, now only clean bone, detached completely and rolled on the ground before also disintegrating into that black dust.

  Within seconds, where the mountain of flesh and nightmare had been, only a pile of dark ash remained, which the wind set about erasing, and the indifferent orange sun bathing everything.

  Ophelia, with her eyes wide open, watched the scene. A scene drawn from the most ancient myths, the deepest terrors. The defeat of a minor god, its dissolution in the wind.

  —Is it… over? —The question left her lips as a thread of voice. She let out a little laugh, a dry, broken sound that was half relief, half disbelief—. Ha.

  She looked down at her shattered body.

  —Is it over?

  It seemed so.

  An immense, cold, heavy relief spread through her limbs. The pain was still there, sharp and clear, but now it was a familiar companion. The struggle was over. The waltz had concluded. She was the one left standing. Or, rather, the one left lying, but alive.

  —Look… —she whispered, and her voice sounded surprisingly soft—. It's dawned.

  Her gaze was lost in the orange disk, now rising lazily, tinting the sky a color of rotten peach.

  —This sun… I always loved it. —A sad, almost sweet smile touched her lips—. You know? In this world… it's never fully day. It always seems like a sunset. An infinite sunset, waiting for the night to truly fall… but the night never comes. Only this… beautiful twilight.

  The crunch of footsteps on dry grass pulled her from her reverie. Soft. Measured. Not those of an animal, nor the staggering of a wounded man.

  Ophelia narrowed her eyes, trying to focus against the light of the sun that was right behind the approaching figure.

  —Who… are you? —she asked, and her voice sounded weak, distant, as if emitted by someone else.

  The figure stopped beside her. First, it leaned over and picked something up from the ground. The purple rapier. It held it with a certain reverence, observing as the last spark of purple energy died in the blade, leaving it grey and dead.

  —Ah —said the figure, and Ophelia recognized the voice. Flat. Young. The boy from the bell—. The bell boy.

  Vael looked at the weapon and then down at her. His face was in shadow, outlined against the sun.

  —Oh, look at your rapier. Still in one piece. —He tapped the blade with a fingernail, producing a metallic, hollow ting.

  Then, his green eyes settled on her. They traveled over her from head to toe, unhurried, without expression. There was no compassion in that gaze. No horror. Only a serene evaluation, like one observing an interesting natural phenomenon.

  —I have to admit —Vael continued, in a conversational, almost amiable tone— that was a beautiful fight. A proper duel to the death. The kind they sing songs about, no? The two titans, wearing each other down, until only… this remains.

  He made a vague gesture with the hand not holding the rapier, encompassing her shattered body, the battlefield, the scattering ash.

  He took another step closer. His shadow, long and thin in the low dawn light, fell over Ophelia, cooling for a moment the faint warmth of the sun.

  —You know? —he said, and knelt beside her. Now they were at the same height. Ophelia could see his face clearly. The green eyes, empty as frozen lakes under a cloudless sky. The expression was one of absolute neutrality, devoid of any human emotion: fear, triumph, pity—. All around my life, flames have risen. Some small, like trembling candles. Others gigantic, like the one you just put out. Flames of power, ambition, faith, rage… They always try to illuminate something. Their path, their truth, their particular darkness.

  He paused. The wind played with his disheveled hair.

  —But in the end —he whispered, and his voice became even softer, more intimate—, they always threaten to illuminate my darkness. To fill the perfect silence I carry inside with their noise and light. And as She echoes in my mind… my duty is to extinguish them. One by one. Without haste. Without hatred. It's just… what must be done. —He tilted his head slightly, like a patient teacher explaining something to a slow student—. Do you understand this, Lady Ophelia?

  Ophelia looked at him. Her yellow eyes, now dull, glassy, tried to focus on that serene face. Her mind, clouded by pain and blood loss, struggled to process the words. They made no sense. They were like stones thrown into a deep well, falling without an echo.

  —What… are you talkin…? —she managed to articulate, and a thread of bubbly blood trickled from the corner of her lips.

  Vael did not respond with words.

  With a fluid, natural motion, like one bending to pick a flower, he raised Ophelia's rapier. The grey, dead blade gleamed for an instant with an orange reflection from the sun.

  And then he drove it into Ophelia's neck.

  It was not a furious thrust. It was not a mercy stroke. It was an insertion. Precise. Clean. The tip found the space between collarbone and muscle, and penetrated to the hilt with the smoothness of a knife entering soft butter.

  Ophelia felt a cold prick. Then, a strange pressure. Her yellow eyes widened, not with pain, but with absolute astonishment. She looked up, past Vael's arm, to his face. She saw him there, kneeling, his empty green eyes fixed on the point where metal entered flesh. She couldn't believe it. This… this thing. This insect she had used as bait, as a pawn in her game… Was doing this.

  With her remaining hand, the left one, she tried to move. She tried to reach the rapier, pull it out, reach Vael's face. But her fingers only closed on air, weak, trembling. She had no strength. She only had that incredulity turning into an understanding far too late.

  Strength was leaving her. Escaping through the wound in her neck, through the one in her chest, through the one in her leg. A silent river leaving her empty.

  And then came the sound. A soft, wet gurgle that welled from her throat. It was not a cry. It was the sound of blood finding a new path, of lungs trying to draw air and finding only fluid. An angelic and grotesque song that was the prelude to definitive silence.

  The scene froze for Ophelia. Vael, kneeling, his long shadow. The orange, imposing sun rising right behind his head, creating a blinding halo around his dark silhouette. A picture of betrayal and finality of terrifying beauty.

  Ophelia's hand, still in the air, attempted a final grasp. The fingers closed around nothing, and then fell, inert, onto her own bloodied chest. From her yellow eyes, so proud, so cold, two tears welled. They were not of physical pain. They were of the ultimate understanding, of the cosmic joke her life and struggle had been. They rolled down her pale cheeks, cleaning tiny paths through the blood and dust, and were lost in the earth.

  Only the faint gurgle could be heard, growing weaker. The sound of a goddess drowning in her own blood.

  And then, she fell.

  It was not a collapse. It was an abandonment. Her body, now without the tension of will, sank into the earth, as if it finally reclaimed what was its own. Her head lolled, and her open eyes, now glassy and lifeless, fixed on the sky. On that orange sun, that infinite sunset she had loved so much.

  She saw it for the last time. A pale, beautiful disk in a sky the color of sickness.

  And then, she saw nothing more.