Akira did not return to camp a hero.
He returned as a man carrying something he could not set down.
The outer perimeter of the Holy encampment lay silent beneath a sky bleached pale by dawn. Prayer banners stirred in the wind, their embroidered invocations whispering absolution with every movement. Priests knelt in early devotion, heads bowed, mouths murmuring familiar truths that had once anchored him.
Desire is corruption.
Demons are its mouthpiece.
The blade is mercy.
Akira passed them without slowing.
His armor bore no visible damage. His sword was clean—ritually so, washed in sanctified oil the moment he crossed the boundary wards. To anyone watching, he looked unchanged.
Only he knew better.
The wound lay beneath his ribs, just above the hip—no deeper than a shallow cut, no wider than two fingers.
And yet it burned like a lie.
He closed the flap of his tent behind him and leaned heavily against the support pole, breath coming slow and controlled. The moment he was alone, the ache surged, sharp enough to draw a hiss from his teeth.
He peeled back the layers of armor and cloth.
The wound stared back at him.
It should not exist.
Demon magic healed wrong—fast, messy, leaving scars that crawled across the skin like regret. Holy wounds, by contrast, were clean. Absolute. Either fatal or forgettable.
This was neither.
The flesh around it was pale, untouched. The cut itself glimmered faintly, not with light, but with absence—as if something had been removed rather than damaged.
Akira pressed two fingers against it.
Pain flared.
And with it—
Darkness.
Not the comforting dark of closed eyes or sleep, but depth. Weight. A cavernous vastness that pressed inward rather than receded.
He jerked his hand back, heart hammering.
"What did you do to me?" he muttered.
The answer did not come.
But something else did.
A memory—not his—rose unbidden.
Stone warmed by living shadow.
A throne that breathed.
A woman standing unbowed before annihilation.
His jaw tightened.
He shoved the sensation down, binding the wound tightly and pulling his tunic back into place as if cloth alone could hold reality where it belonged.
Demons did not leave gifts.
They left corruption.
That was what he told himself.
That was what he had always told himself.
And yet—
She had not begged.
She had not tried to seduce him, twist his thoughts, hollow him out with pleasure and lies.
She had fought him like an equal.
Worse—she had spoken to him like one.
Akira sank onto the edge of his cot, elbows on knees, head bowed.
The priests would say this was temptation.
He was no longer certain.
—
Sleep came reluctantly.
When it did, it did not ask permission.
Akira dreamed of a place that was not a place.
A vast expanse of twilight stretched endlessly in every direction—no sky, no ground, only a horizon where shadow bled into silver light. The air thrummed with restrained power, heavy with unspoken memory.
He was not alone.
He knew that instantly.
He turned—and found her standing several paces away.
Astarielle.
Not armored. Not enthroned. No court, no shadows bowing at her feet.
Just her.
Wings folded. Expression unreadable. Silver eyes fixed on him with an intensity that made his chest tighten.
His hand went to his sword.
It was not there.
Of course it wasn't.
"This isn't real," he said.
Her voice, when she spoke, was quieter than he expected. "That depends on how you define real."
The air between them pulsed.
He felt it then—the same pull as in the chamber beneath Noctyra, stronger now. Not a command. Not an enchantment.
A pressure.
"Get out of my head," he growled.
"I'm not in it," she replied. "Not entirely."
She took a step closer.
Instinct screamed at him to move. To attack. To do something.
He stayed where he was.
"Then where are we?" he demanded.
Her gaze flickered briefly—uncertainty, quickly masked. "The space between," she said. "Where old promises wait to be remembered."
"That doesn't answer anything."
"No," she agreed. "It rarely does."
Silence stretched.
Akira became acutely aware of the fact that she was not trying to influence him. No warmth curling around his thoughts. No subtle pull toward desire.
Nothing.
That unsettled him more than any spell.
"You should hate me," he said suddenly.
Her eyes sharpened. "I do."
"Good." The word came out harsher than intended. "Because I hate you."
"I know."
The admission threw him off balance.
"I felt it," she continued. "Like a blade pressed against my spine. You don't kill because you enjoy it."
He clenched his fists. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know you were a child," she said softly. "Standing in a river that would not answer you."
The world tilted.
Akira staggered back a step, breath catching.
"Don't," he warned. "Don't use that."
Her expression tightened—not with triumph, but something closer to regret.
"I didn't choose to see it," she said. "Just as you didn't choose to feel my city breaking under your feet."
His silence was answer enough.
The pact deepened.
Not by magic.
By recognition.
They stood there, enemies stripped of weapons and certainty, bound by a bridge neither had asked for.
"This changes nothing," Akira said finally. "I will still kill your kind."
"I know," Astarielle replied.
The calm acceptance in her voice unsettled him more than defiance ever could.
"And I will still defend mine."
"Even knowing what it costs?" he asked.
Her gaze did not waver. "Especially knowing."
The air trembled.
Something old stirred beneath their feet—not approval, not judgment.
Attention.
The pact was listening.
Akira felt pressure bloom behind his eyes, a surge of sensation too large to be his alone—fear sharpened into duty, love twisted into command, survival reframed as sin.
He saw it then.
Not her memories.
Human ones.
Cities praying for annihilation in the name of purity. Priests sanctifying slaughter with steady hands. Children learning early which thoughts to bury.
He staggered.
Astarielle reached out—then stopped herself, hand hovering inches from his arm.
The restraint was worse than any touch.
"Wake up," she said urgently. "This connection—if it deepens too fast, it will tear us both apart."
"I don't want this," he snapped.
"Neither do I."
The pact flared—bright, insistent, furious at their resistance.
The world cracked.
Akira jolted awake with a sharp gasp, sweat soaking his skin, heart pounding like he'd outrun death itself.
The tent was dark. Silent.
His wound burned.
He pressed a shaking hand against it—and felt, faintly, a matching ache echo back.
Somewhere far away, beneath shadow and stone, a queen likely sat upright with the same realization.
They were no longer alone with their doubts.
And faith, once cracked, never healed cleanly.