I was dying.
Blood fell from the sky, warm and heavy. It splattered against my skin and sank into the torn earth beneath me.
Whether it came from above or from the bodies strewn across the clearing no longer mattered. All of it belonged to the same end.
The moon hung low over the forests of Anstalionah. Its pale light threaded through blackened branches that arched overhead like ribs stripped bare.
I had been driven into the center of the clearing. I was surrounded by steel and fire and chanting voices. I was trapped in a space shaped perfectly for my death.
I forced myself upright and raised my sword.
The blade was cracked and dull. Its edge was chipped down to little more than a memory of sharpness, trembling in my grip as blood ran along its length.
I had carried it across too many roads for something so small. And yet it had never once failed me until now.
Armored figures advanced in a tightening ring. Black plate. Golden seals. Holy symbols stamped into shields that had broken bodies without hesitation.
They shouted my name like an accusation.
Nicholas Anstalionah.
Demon. Heretic. Abomination.
I tried to laugh, but blood flooded my mouth. The sound turned into a wet, broken cough.
Perhaps they were right. I no longer knew where the lie ended and the truth began.
Pain exploded through my back as steel drove into me. The force folded my body forward, and my knees struck the ground hard enough to steal what little breath I had left.
The grass beneath me darkened as it drank what spilled from my wounds. Warm. Thick. Final.
I pushed myself up on shaking arms. I refused to remain there even as my strength bled out into the soil.
I waited a heartbeat too long before moving. The same way I always had, measuring the cost of action until the moment passed and left me scrambling to recover.
Even now, with my blood soaking into the ground, some part of me hesitated. It searched for a better time, a cleaner moment, as though the world had ever rewarded patience instead of resolve.
That pause cost me, as it always did.
Steel found flesh before I could commit fully to the strike.
I lunged, slashing wildly, and felt my blade strike armor with a useless burst of sparks. Someone screamed.
Someone fell.
I did not know who. I did not have the clarity left to care.
Momentum carried me forward for a single step. Then another blade struck home, and this time my body collapsed beneath me.
The world spun. Sound stretched thin and distant, footsteps pounding around me while steel rang like bells tolling something inevitable.
My sword slipped from my hand.
Instinct drove me to claw through the dirt until my fingers closed around the hilt. I twisted aside another descending strike just in time.
Sparks burst across my vision as steel met steel. I rolled through mud and blood and dragged myself upright once more.
Each breath rasped shallow and uneven. My lungs burned as my body failed faster than I could command it.
I had seen that look in the eyes of dying men before.
Now I felt it wearing my own skin.
I recognized some of the bodies scattered through the clearing. Not by their faces, but by the way they lay.
One had fallen clutching his shield too tightly, fingers locked around the rim even in death. Another lay twisted at an unnatural angle where his armor had failed him.
I had put men down like this before.
I had left them cooling in fields and streets and forests no different from this one.
I knew with sick certainty that some of these corpses existed because I had learned how to kill without hesitation.
The knowledge settled heavy in my chest. Not as regret, but as weight. The kind that never leaves once it has been earned.
Death lingered close enough that I could sense its patience.
Then a voice cut through the chaos. Clear. Cold. Merciless.
"Falter, and come to the end of your means."
The battlefield fell silent.
Even my heart stuttered, as though it feared continuing without permission.
The soldiers halted in unison. Their weapons lowered as hatred collapsed into trembling stillness, because a man was walking through them.
His steps were slow and deliberate. Each one pressed the world flatter beneath his feet.
He wore black armor shaped to perfection. A golden lamb rested over his chest, polished and immaculate, raised above the blood it sanctioned.
Silver-blue hair was cropped and parted with care. A small cross glowed faintly beneath his lower lip.
His skin was untouched by filth.
His gold eyes found me, and their weight surpassed anything pain had ever managed to achieve.
I felt small.
This was a Saint. The strongest Saint. The greatest. The most holy man in this world.
St. Griffin.
"Nicholas Anstalionah," he said calmly. "Do you know what I despise most in this world?"
I tried to speak. Blood drowned the words before they could form.
"Nothing," he continued softly. "It is the act of doing nothing that I despise most."
He lifted his sword.
The blade was so dark it seemed to consume the light around it.
The air recoiled from its edge. My breath caught as though the weapon itself had reached into my chest.
"You had power," Griffin said as he stepped closer. "Enough to matter. And you chose to waste it."
He stopped before me.
"You are the worst kind of monster," he said. "A man pretending to be a hero."
The blade pressed against my throat. Cold. Absolute.
"Heaven will never accept you."
A faint smile tugged at my lips as my breath trembled. "Maybe it shouldn't."
Something flickered in his eyes. Something that might have been hesitation.
"Nicholas," he said more quietly, "Mirabel would have wanted better."
Her name struck deeper than any blade ever could.
My chest tightened until it hurt more than my wounds. I forced the words out through the pain.
"Do not speak her name. I wish not for it to be stained by my presence."
Griffin did not answer.
The pressure at my throat increased.
This was the end.
And still I reached inward. Not for mercy. Not for forgiveness. I reached for the will to change.
The world collapsed into darkness.
A voice rose from it. Ancient and familiar. Vast enough to crack the edges of my mind.
[He would soon come to realize he was nothing.]
I drifted in the void between breath and oblivion. Within that nothingness, something took shape in my grasp.
A black rose rested in my hand.
Its petals were dry and cold. Their edges were sharp as broken glass, pulsing faintly as though the world itself were holding its breath.
I closed my hand around it.
[Wake, O beacon of nothing. Your dream is over.]
I crushed the rose. Its petals scattered like ash and dissolved into the dark as the void screamed in protest.
Pain returned first. Sacred. Searing.
Breath followed. Then form.
My body burned as it changed. Skin hardened into bronze and bark. Veins glowed faintly beneath the surface, as though molten light flowed through them.
My hair darkened with streaks of white.
Wings tore free from my back. Black. Smoldering. Alive.
I rose as light split the skies and the world struggled to reform around me.
Then the darkness gave way to a room.
Warm. Still.
At its center stood a massive black bed fit for a prince.
A woman sat cross-legged atop it. She tied her scarlet hair into a bun with gentle, practiced movements.
Ruby eyes lifted when she sensed my gaze. She smiled as though nothing else existed.
"Nicky," she said, "instead of staring, do you not want to help me?"
My breath caught as memory crashed over me.
This was my beloved. My precious. My causation.
Mirabel.
This was the day I pushed her away. The day I chose idleness over purpose. The day she asked me to be more, and I refused.
A month later, war would come.
She would ride out in my place.
She would never return.
I laughed softly, bitterness threading through the sound. "A second chance wrapped in tragedy."
Mirabel tilted her head, amused.
"Nicholas," she said, "you really are a fool."
Her words felt like both absolution and punishment.