TEN YEARS AGO.
Longing was the most ruinous desire to exist, it was built on a foundation of hope, hopelessness, and doubt—three deadly states of mind.
Longing could not even begin to describe what Ran was feeling.
He yearned, he hoped, and despaired at the delay of desire.
He hated himself, but at the moment he'd give anything to see her, to be in her presence, even if it's seeing the Fey slaughterfest through her eyes again.
He yearned for even that if it was the least he could get, and it disgusted him.
He disgusted himself.
Laying down to rest, hope surged inside him as he felt his mind fade away. It was a familiar feeling.
His natal bond deepened—and with it, the boundary between their minds thinned.
A part of him screamed against it in rebellion and another welcomed it with victorious relief.
All he saw, at first, was colors.
Flashes of her thoughts, glimmers of her senses bleeding into his. But then it cracked open fully.
There was a bridge of raw soul-thread drawn tight between them. Suddenly, he was her, and she was him. He could see what she saw, feel what she felt.
Basked in the moment knowing he has a limited time to and then, his fear and guilt soared as he was yanked into her perception mid-chargeto bear a front-row seat to carnage.
She was at it again and this time it was an entire realm.
He was her, she was him. They tore through a continent of marble towers, mirror mountain domes, and sands of glass.
A place once radiant was now painted red. Her ecstasy was his ecstasy as her bare feet left prints in blood.
Sounds filled the air, not sounds of screams, but the sounds of death.
She was unrelenting. A Fey Queen ascendant.
She moved like the storm, he moved like the storm, they were the judgment nature had withheld for centuries.
Their eyes glowed with starlight hate, her voice a whisper carried on wind and tremor.
"Màga." One Feyling word, and roots as thick as bridges surged from the soil, crashing through buildings, impaling fleeing citizens.
Nature answered her, but this was not the soft essence of life. This was nature at its wildest, its predatory nature unlocked.
Trees bearing thorns stretching out into the horizon, vines of serpentine grace, roots of earth-shattering thickness—they all attacked by her command, piercing, tearing, constricting bodies until bones snapped wetly.
Flowers bloomed with venom instead of nectar, and pollen that burned the lungs.
"Hyla." Another word—and the corpses answered.
It was the usual song and dance that should have struck terror into Ran, but right now there was no Ran—only a hand of destruction.
Every soul that had been struck down— children, elders, mothers, creatures —at the call of Hyla, they rose again.
Some returned are black revenants, moving like spectres across the realm and spreading waves of death.
Others— corpses twisted and staggered to uprightness, vines threading through sockets and joints, bones exposed, mouths like snapping seed pods.
Her army grew with each step they took, the dead unwilling conscripts to her cause.
What spirit didn't rise in body rose in essence, wraiths of wind and fire—unholy revenants.
The unholy host howled as they followed her like a storm front.
Ran felt it all–
The flicker of lives extinguished as she cut through thousands, the terror in their eyes as she cleaved them down with blades of sunlight and winter, he was exposed to her joy and exaltation.
The weight of her power behind every gesture baptised him in bliss—her fury, joy, focus, it all suffused through his soul.
She wasn't mindless. She was composed, every action and movement was intentional.
Every life taken was a step toward the throne. Every scream was a war hymn in her march, she savored in her own glory.
The hosts continued to spread, collapsing buildings, turning rivers into blood.
A familiar sight began to form on her image anytime she gazed into any reflective surface. Her hair, one lush and silver, was matted in crimson. Her skin, one bright as the sun, glowed like embers beneath smeared gore.
The defenders of the realm had fallen. Even their gods had turned to silence.
And she kept going—and we kept going.
It reached the part that would cause him to lament forever in remembrance, a horror that was now common sight to him.
The battle had waned, There was no more resistance. But she did not stop, it was a slaughter now.
Entire regions became gardens of corpses. No one was given the moment to beg. No one was spared.
Her thoughts flickered through the bond. "This is the cost of being unopposed. This is the cost of power. Mercy is not a crown."
He wanted to pull away. His mind recoiled and his spirit screamed with everything in his being to be severed from hers, but the bond held.
And the real horror was not what she did, but what she felt, what she made him feel.
Elation.
Elation at destruction and suffering. Elation at rising above mortality. Elation at gore and death. At shaping the world in her very image. At being seen, finally by all the powers of the universe, as a power that could not be denied nor stopped.
Her body trembled not from exhaustion, but from intensity and pleasure.
And her eyes— just like ever —were red.
Not just stained with blood, but glowing with a stimulation of euphoria.
The Queen had ascended. Another realm brought to heel.
And through their bond, he saw himself in her reflection.
And he could not look away.
He needed to end this. Her speaking through the bond had provided him a path above being a helpless observer. He could communicate with her.
He took the path with no hesitation. "I wish to make the pact."
She froze from where she stood in a river of blood, drinking in the sight of perversion of power.
"Is that right, Lan néma? You wish to take the vow? To never see me again? I'll be gone beyond your reach, beyond your hopes and desire. Forever you will be known as a child without a mother. Is that what you wish?"
It consumed him, the making of this choice, burned his soul black, but he needed it.
"Y…yes."
"That is your vow."
"It is my vow."
She sighed, a whisper of sadness that caused every plant life around her to wither. "Then it is my vow, as well," she said, binding it. "And do you remember your promise? Should you be the one to return to me, find me again wherever may be, then my dream for you is your destiny, my word is your law. Is that your vow."
"If you agree to free me of the memory of you, the memory of this carnage—then it will be my vow," he said, having mustered every last shred of his courage to speak those words.
She lifted her head to the heavens and laughed. Tinkling silver and crystalline chimes filled the air, the shrill down of it bringing down the fowls of the firmament of the realm.
They collided with their doom, more corpses to slaughterfest just by the power of the amusement of the Yōsei no joō.
"Is that also your wish?"
"Y…yes."
"Then it is my vow," she said, chuckling as she sealed the pact.
"You give me the best of gifts, son."
Ran felt a pit form in his stomach as he heard that compliment.
"Now you won't even remember me nor my greatest desire, you won't have years to prepare, years to work on thwarting my inevitable victory."
And Ran realized just what a fool he was. For his selfishness millions will burn—for his weakness, his need to escape her he'd doomed the universe.
He felt his memory eroding. The last thing he heard from her were the chimes of her victorious laughter.